by Jason Adams
Consider this just a half entry in our "Great Moments in Horror Actressing" canon as I'm somewhat waylaid with New York Film Festival screenings at the moment. But I wanted to mark the release of the "Renee Zellweger as Judy Garland!" bio-pic this week with a quick thought. No The Wizard of Oz is not a horror movie. As far as I can suss out Judy Garland never starred in a proper horror movie. (Feel free to set me straight, as I'm not a Judy expert.) But I don't think we really give her enough credit for how fully she sells Dorothy's many many moments of sheer unadulterated terror in The Wizard of Oz, all the same...
Oz is a movie that, for all its childish checkered dresses and ruby slippers, has been emotionally scarring generation after generation of children, giving them nightmares to spend a lifetime grappling with. Flying monkeys tearing her friends to itty bits, her precious little dog being snatched away time and time and time again -- if Judy wasn't selling those scenes as well as she did, if her tears hadn't seemed wholly authentic every time up to bat, would those moments have retained half their power?
It really does make me wonder what Judy might have done with a proper horror movie. She was so good at displaying heart-rending vulnerability to an audience. What would she have done with a Wait Until Dark or a What Ever Happened to Baby Jane all her own? If she'd lived longer would she have made one of the so-called "Hagsploitation" films that were both a boon and a burden to "actresses of a certain age" in the 1970s? Imagine that!