“Beware the Wheelers?”

It took me a while to determine which character would be the final Childhood Villain in this series. I needed six and thought Moominpapa would make a good final choice but I didn’t have six so I had to draw Moominpapa as number 4 and think more about the last two. Judge Doom came to me after half remembering some other claymation horrors but number 6 was eluding me. I persisted because I wanted a set of six but mostly because I knew deep down in my blurry subconscious there was one more character left.

That horrific creation, the last terror of my childhood, was not one character but a screeching, scraping gaggle of henchmen called The Wheelers, from the bleak, nightmarish children’s film Return to Oz (1985).

Of the six villains I’ve drawn, I’m most confident that The Wheelers will cause a shiver to anyone who saw this strange film as a child. I watched it again recently for reference and I enjoyed its dark themes and the expansion of the world of Oz beyond the first film. There was, I learnt, 14 Oz books by L. Frank Baum (and 26 more by other authors) and Return to Oz is an amalgamation of 2 of them. I liked it as a child too, drawn to its spookier elements (swappable heads, talking pumpkins) but I do recall an undercurrent of dread. Re-watching it I observed the danger never lets up. The opening scenes where Dorothy is taken for electro-shock therapy become increasingly grim and gothic causing her to escape to her fantasy land, Oz. Once there, Dorothy and her new companions are always either on the run, imprisoned or gambling for their lives. This is exemplified most by Tik-Tok, a clockwork robot of the Army of Oz, whose three functions (thinking, speaking and moving) are constantly winding down.

Among all this trepidation, the most memorable monsters are, of course, The Wheelers. We see their silhouettes spying on Dorothy from afar as she enters the ruined Emerald City. She discovers graffiti that reads “Beware the Wheelers” and finds everyone turned to stone. Right then The Wheelers make their screeching entrance:

They appear later in the film but are less frightening once we know more about them. It is this scene in particular when they appear as unknown antagonists that terrified the young Cadwell. I think they’re ingeniously and freakishly designed, a mix of dirty, Vaudevillian waiters and a neon-clad, punk, street gang. The sound of their screeching wheels that precedes their arrival, foreshadowed in the Asylum in Kansas and echoing around the ruins of the Emerald City, is the kind of sound that sets anyone on edge and The Wheelers are a great and horrifying embodiment of that noise.

The Lead Wheeler (played by Pons Maar) was the only one who spoke rather than cackled. I based most of the design on him and one of the other 11 Wheelers who had bright pink lapels. Their physicality is limiting in regards to poses, but their costumes, a mix of many influences, could be pushed in lots of interesting directions. I wanted to hint that they may be corrupted members of some old Circus of Oz. I emphasised the coils around Lead Wheelers shoulders that wormed down his arms and I simplified the sleeves so the dirt and smudges gained from riding along the ground (and putting on makeup somehow) wouldn’t be lost. I tried to hint at faded paint on the wheels and redesigned the gargoyle face on the helmet.

Here are some sketches I made while watching the film:

Next week: Nothing!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this Childhood Villains series and at least one of them has freaked you out. I’ll be doing some promotional postcards of all 6 of them, news about that soon. Sweet dreams.

“Holy smokes, he’s a Toon”

Fifth in my Childhood Villains series is the sinister, screeching Judge Doom from ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit?’ (1988) as portrayed by the fantastic Christopher Lloyd.

I grew up on steady diet of old Warner and Fleischer Brothers cartoons so I loved seeing all the old cartoon characters in the same film when I was a kid. I still think it’s a funny and wonderfully made film. 20 years later it still makes you wonder “How did they do that?” which is lacking in anything computer generated nowadays.

With the exception of Moominpapa, all the villains in this series are supposed to be scary and I think they only do their job right if they do freak us out a little. Judge Doom is a stern figure throughout most of the film, but it’s only after he’s flattened by a stray steamroller that he’s revealed as a Toon in human disguise. There’s a section of stop motion animation of the flat Judge Doom getting to his feet and wobbling over to an air pump to blow himself back up again. The slightly jerky animation adds to the freakishness of this scene and when followed by the high pitched, red eyed reveal of the real Judge Doom, it creates a wonderfully frightening villain.

I wish Christoper Lloyd was in more films these days.

Next week: The Wheelers!