User Reviews

Perky Dorothy Gale (delightfully played with infectiously spunky aplomb by the adorable Meredith Salenger), the abjectly craven Cowardly Lion (a hilariously whiny Curtis Eames), the brave Tin Man (a fine Guy Stevenson), and the witless the Scarecrow (solid Ron Repple, Jr.) get hopelessly lost in the woods while filming a documentary on the Yellow Brick Road. Everyone soon succumbs to blind panic and morale rapidly deteriorates when no one can find the Yellow Brick Road. Director/co-writer Michael Rotman offers a wickedly amusing send-up of both "The Blair Witch Project" and "The Wizard of Oz" which perfectly nails the primitive homemade low-budget quality of the former and savagely pokes fun at the sweetly endearing characters in the latter classic family film. The biggest laughs are delivered by seeing these lovable childhood favorites swear, bicker and fight amongst each other in a most base and selfish manner, with Dorothy in particular proving to be a complete foul-mouthed riot (choice sidesplitting line: "Where the *beep* is the Yellow Brick Road?"). The ending is likewise positively sidesplitting, with the Scarecrow hanging upside down from the ceiling of a dark basement and Dorothy feebly kicking her ruby slippers together as she dies. Special kudos are in order for David M. Barsky's shaky hand-held cinematography. A total hoot.

"The Oz Witch Project" is a 9-minute live action short film from 1999 and this means it will have its 20th anniversary 2 years from now. 1999 is also the year when "The Blair Witch Project" hit theaters and now almost two decades later it is still a defining work when it comes to modern horror films. I myself could not agree more as I really love this film and there probably is not another horror film that scared me as much as TBWP did during the first viewing. But back to this one here. It mixes TBWP with The Wizard of Oz, another classic though much older obviously. The characters are the ones from Oz and Dorothy and her friends end up in the forest. The costumes are okay and the one joke when Dorothy wants to start singing and gets interrupted harshly was fairly funny, but the rest here really is not a success by any means. It looks fairly amateurish, the production values are relatively low and the "funny" parts are not really that entertaining either. Eventually, the only reason this work by Emmy nominee Mike Rotman is still known today is because of the two big movies it makes fun of. I would love to say that I recommend the watch only to these who really love these two films, but as I count myself into that category too and I did not find it appealing at all, maybe those who hate the films should be the ones who get the most excitement out of these slightly under 10 minutes. But do these people even exist? Oh well, maybe you can watch it if you like Meredith Salenger (new fiancée of Patton Oswalt). But I suggest you don't watch.