**Contains spoilers ** Where do I begin with this one? Okay, you'll have gathered that the film is based only very loosely on the book. And by very loosely I mean its taken a few basic ideas - a girl called Dorothy, three workers from her farm in Kansas who (sort of) become a scarecrow, a tin woodman and a lion, and a far off land called Oz where resides a 'wizard'.

Larry Semon's complete re-working of the story just fails. It is an awkward mish-mash of ideas. Some of the elements of Baum's original story are shoe-horned into the plot without much logic behind them, and there are a number of sub-plots that are not satisfactorily resolved.

Dorothy loves her Auntie Em - but once the action switches to Oz, Auntie Em and Kansas are just forgotten about.

Then there's Oliver Hardy's character which is inconsistent throughout the film. When we first see him he's kind and protective towards Dorothy. At the end of the film he's one of the prime villains! Likewise Dorothy's Uncle Henry is initially hostile towards her, then is a protective guardian before becoming a bit of a villain again by the end.

Most disgracefully the film's eponymous character, the Wizard, is hardly in the plot at all. He's not a wizard but a charlatan and has little relevance to the story other than to provide a (very tenuous) reason why the farmhands disguise themselves as a scarecrow, tin man and lion.

Dorothy totally lacks any motive throughout this film. The plot is more centred around Semon's character who loves Dorothy but spends most of the time clowning around totally independently of her. His gags are mostly physical and some of the stunt-work is impressive but there are also sequences which go on well past the point where the idea has been milked, notably an impossible scene where Semon is hiding in wooden crates and somehow manages to teleport himself from one to another! Given the otherwise complete absence of magic in the film, the sequence defies explanation.

Also confused is the idea that the ruling Prime Minister of Oz is going to whatever lengths necessary to retrieve papers that prove that Dorothy is the true ruler of Oz. Now even overlooking the extraordinary coincidence that his men turn up to get them on the very day she is about to be given them, it begs the question why he left the papers there in the first place when they could easily have been destroyed. And to add to the lunacy, even when the papers are found and their contents made public, in the end it makes little difference to his position! As a framing sequence we see a grandfather figure relating the story to a little girl. This starts off well enough as the viewer gets the impression that what we are seeing is what the girl is hearing/imagining, but later on when we cut to these characters the grandfather doesn't even have the book out and the girl is in a separate room! The ending is also muddled. Dorothy falls for the prince she hardly knows (just like that) and the supposed hero of the film, Semon, is seen falling (to his death?) from an aeroplane. And the wizard himself just disappears from the proceedings about halfway through! Hardly a fairytale ending!

This movie was reportedly the one that sunk Larry Semon's career. Instead of the usual short films he was known for, Semon decided to do something "important" and made this (for the time) long film adaptation of THE WIZARD OF OZ,....or at least that's what the title indicates it should be. The story, it seems, bears little similarity to either the 1939 movie or the books. In fact, apart from a few names here and there, it is pretty much unrecognizable as the story about Dorothy and Oz. Instead, it was just an excuse to string along a lot of familiar and not especially funny gags--like I have seen in several other Larry Semon films, the big stunt is his swinging from tower to tower. A neat stunt the first time you see it, but not when it's old material and has nothing to do with the plot.

Overall, I consider this movie a wasted effort. I know that Semon COULD be funny--like he was in his short films. But here, it's just a confusing and dreary mess. Likewise, having Oliver Hardy in the film SHOULD have been an asset, but he was pretty much wasted as well. While not exactly a classic, the 1910 short silent version was much better and stuck closer to the original story and the 1939 version is a classic. This one is better off staying forgotten or seen by the morbidly curious as the project that may have ultimately destroyed Semon's career.

PS--In addition to being a terrible movie, there is a Black man named "Snowflake" that likes to eat watermelon! Ugghh!!!

This WIZARD OF OZ is merely a frantic slapstick showcase for LARRY SEMON, apparently a silent comedian who is unknown to today's audiences and who died at a young age (39). He had a hand in the production and even designed his own Scarecrow costume, but the film is a curio that starts with a toymaker (again, LARRY SEMON) who tells a little girl the story of Dorothy (DOROTHY DWAN) from Kansas who, it turns out, is heir to be ruler of The Land of Oz.

But the story he tells has nothing whatsoever to do with L. Frank Baum's story as we know it from the '39 version starring Judy Garland. And this Dorothy is a grown-up young lady of 18 who bats her eyelashes and puts a finger to her lips in a coy manner as though signifying youthful uncertainty.

The only connection to the Oz story Baum gave us is the tornado, the effects for which are very good for 1925, and the combination of the Tin Man, The Scarecrow and The Cowardly Lion. OLIVER HARDY is the Tin Man (before his screen partnership with Stan Laurel),SPENCER BELL, a black man, is the Cowardly Lion and LARRY SEMON hogs the whole show as The Scarecrow. The best I can say for Lemon is that his costume and make-up for the role is laudable.

But the fragments of story used here are all over the map, the key to everything being the chance to have all of the performers involved in slapstick stunts. Only MARY CARR as Aunt Em is spared this indignity.

There are a few well staged moments that one can appreciate but all in all it's a bit too much for any adult to watch and I have no idea what children thought of this bizarre exercise in slapstick comedy.