Amy Gumm wants to get the hell out of Kansas. She is sick and tired of being mocked at school for her worn out clothes and trailer trash mom. After getting kicked out of school for getting into a fight with a pregnant girl (a fight that Amy did NOT start she would like me to point out), she comes home to find her mother out of her usual funk and primping for an evening at the local dive bar. The news on the TV in the living room shows radar towards Dusty Acres (their luxurious trailer park). Like the caring mother she is, she leaves her child in a trailer without tornado shelter to get drunk...
I bet you can't guess what happens next?
In a cloud of dust, the trailer, along with Amy and Star, her mother's pet rat, are lifted off the ground! In an intelligent move, Amy loses consciousness while the trailer flies through the air and is aroused when it comes crashing back to land. Looking around at her newly redecorated (with scrap metal and dust) home, Amy sees a bright pair of green eyes peering in the window. A boy, almost her own age, tells her to slowly move to the window which she crawls through just in time to realize the trailer landed precariously balanced on the edge of a deep crevasse. She only just makes it out before it crashes into the abyss. Pete, the young man who helped her, give Amy a cryptic message about getting to the Emerald City, and how she is the only one who can help Oz (which doesn't seem to freak her out nearly as much as it should) and helpfully disappears. Amy is left on the yellow brick road...with only one way to go.
Along the way Amy makes friends with a Munchkin and a flying monkey and gets filled in on the history of Oz. Dorothy returned to Kansas, apparently decided it wasn't so much fun after all, and came back to Oz where she was crowned a princess and slowly became drunk with power. She has been mining the countryside of Oz for magic ever since and her rule is one of cruelty and pain. To move things along, Amy gets herself (and her companions) captured by the Tin Woodman (a Freddy Kruger version of his former self) and taken to the palace in the Emerald City.
Dorothy isn’t exactly happy to see a fellow Kansan in Oz, and decides to do away with the competition by sentencing Amy to death. Luckily Pete, the fellow who got her out of the trailer before it was smashed to smithereens, works in the palace and strikes a deal to get Amy rescued and inducted into the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked. The price she pays for her life…her freedom. The Order tells her that she must be the one to Kill Dorothy…dun dun dun!
Queue the training montage with attractive instructor!
Amy goes from bitter Kansas outcast to trained assassin in no time with a few months of combat training, magic lessons and etiquette instruction. Amy is prepared to infiltrate the palace as a maid in disguise, get close to Dorothy and slit her throat.
Fans of the original Oz books might shy away from this series (it stings to have your childhood heroes presented as evil, murderous despots). For anyone who enjoyed the movie, but never delved any deeper into the series this is a delightfully twisted fairytale!