Return from Witch Mountain is the 1978 sequel to Escape to Witch Mountain. It is once again directed by John Hough, with the screenplay by Malcolm Marmorstein.
Extraterrestrial siblings Tony and Tia, played again by Ike Eisenmann and Kim Richards, take a vacation with their uncle, but they get separated from each other at the Rose Bowl Stadium in Los Angeles. Tony winds up using his psychic powers, and this is witnessed by evil scientist Dr. Victor Gannon (Christopher Lee) and his bitterly bankrupt backer Letha Wedge (Bette Davis). Dr. Gannon kidnaps Tony and turns him into a hypnotized servant doing Gannon's evil bidding. Tia has to use her psychic powers to find and rescue her brother. Jack Soo of Barney Miller stars as Mr. Yamamoto the truant officer.
Tropes found in Return from Witch Mountain:
- And Starring: The cast roll here ends with "and Denver Pyle as Uncle Bene".
- Artistic License – Nuclear Physics: Well, there's no telling what a "plutonium furnace" is. Beyond that, the operators are afraid that stopping the cooling pumps will start the "chain reaction," when a chain reaction is what's supposed to happen. The danger with a loss of coolant is overheating, causing a steam explosion.
- Big Bad: Dr. Gannon, a Mad Scientist who seeks to become the most powerful man in the world.
- Bond Villain Stupidity: This is a kid's movie from Disney, so Dr. Gannon can't kill Tia when he has the chance. He instead puts her in a state of "comatose neutralization", from which she is liberated by the Earthquake Gang. Possibly justified if Gannon wanted to make Tia his slave too, although there's no hint of this in the film. Made worse when Dr. Gannon does attempt to kill Tia during the climax, so there wasn't much of an excuse why he couldn't have earlier except, again, kids' movie from Disney.
- Cool Car: Dr. Gannon's Citroen DS sedan and Mr. Yokomoto's Ford Econoline. The latter gets battered during a chase but gets restored to pristine showroom condition at the end of the film.
- Contrived Coincidence: Not the most carefully plotted film. Or maybe Los Angeles is a really small town.
- Who just happens to be outside the entrance to the museum? Mr. Yokomoto, the truant officer who was chasing after the kids of the Earthquake Gang earlier in the movie.
- Whose cab does Alfred the goat leap into? The one belonging to the cabbie who picked up Tony and Tia at the Rose Bowl at the start of the movie.
- The abandoned house where the Earthquake Gang hides out is, conveniently, within walking distance of Gannon's mansion.
- When Tia and the Earthquake Gang kids are desperately trying to get to the plutonium plant, who do they find by the side of the road? Mr. Yokomoto again, as he's just waiting around next to his smashed van.
- Darker and Edgier: While still a frequently comedic family film, thanks to Sequel Escalation and Christopher Lee as the villain, the movie can frequently get more intense than it predecessor.
- Deadpan Snarker: Letha.
- Driving a Desk: Very noticeable in multiple scenes, and maybe even cheaper looking due to the fact that by 1978 Hollywood cameras could capture scenes inside a moving car, making this trope unnecessary.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: The one time Letha shows genuine horror instead of Pragmatic Villainy is when Gannon uses her nephew as an Unwitting Test Subject and endangers his life.
- Finish Him!: "Finish her!", cries Dr. Gannon, but Tony resists squashing Tia with a 125-ton crane, and Gannon's mind-control device shorts out.
- High-Heel–Face Turn: Averted with Letha Wedge. She's the only female villain and she only reluctantly goes along with Dr. Gannon's schemes. However, her objections are pragmatic rather than moral. In the end, she's punished along with the male villains.
- Hollywood Density: Averted. Tony uses telekinesis to send the gold bars sailing out to Sickle — who is knocked backward by the force of the first one hitting his chest. The second one knocks him to the ground. Thereafter Sickle retreats under the car for cover, as the stream of gold bars that Tony is sending out of the museum batter the car into a shapeless wreck.
- Impairment Shot: From Tia as she is chloroformed.
- Instant Cooldown: Played completely straight. The reactor is in the red zone (and the scientists have been saying for a while that it's almost at the point of no return); Tia mentally tries to fix the coolant system in a struggle with Tony (the needle wavers back and forth within the last quarter of the red zone), then Tia wins and the needle retreats into orange, yellow...(about 3 seconds of screen time) and the camera cuts away. It's not shown again but it's clear that things are back to normal (and even pulling up parts of the reactor room and crashing them together so that they explode doesn't disturb the reactor subsequently).
- Instant Sedation: Happens to both Tony and Tia, on separate occasions.
- When the villains kidnap Tony, they give him a surprise injection with a hidden syringe. He has time to gasp in surprise before he immediately falls unconscious.
- Later on, when Tia tries to rescue Tony, she gets chloroformed by Sickle, and is out in seconds.
- Mad Scientist: "My experiments are more important than the law," says Dr. Gannon, who seems to want the usual Mad Scientist reward package—money, power, recognition as the man who's controlled "molecular flow."
- Mind-Control Device: Dr. Gannon has a little gizmo that you attach to the victim's neck. This renders the victim a mindless slave that will obey the commands Gannon speaks into the radio controller attached to the device. At the climax, Tony's struggle to resist the order to murder Tia makes the controller explode, freeing Tony.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Cripes, "Letha Wedge"?
- Newscaster Cameo: Real Life radio personality Gary Owens is the man who delivers the radio bulletin about the crisis at the plutonium furnace.
- Non-Giving-Up School Guy: Mr. Yamamoto, the truant officer who really, really wants to get the kids of the Earthquake Gang back into school. After he helps save Tony, the kids agree to go back to school so they can be as smart as Tia and Tony.
- Sequel Escalation: In the original film, the kids' freedom was the only issue at stake. In Return, they have to stop a madman from nuking Los Angeles. The sequel also features more action and special effects than the original.
- Series Continuity Error:
- The first movie clearly establishes that Tia, the more powerful of the siblings, is the only one who can use telepathy—she projects her thoughts to Tony but he has to talk back with his mouth. In this film, both kids talk to each other telepathically.
- The first movie also demonstrates that while Tia doesn't need any sort of aid, Tony needs a Magic Music harmonica to focus his telekinetic powers. In the sequel Tony doesn't need his harmonica to move stuff around.
- Neither of these is necessarily a continuity error. Three years have passed since the first movie, and they have spent those three years among their own people on Witch Mountain. Either Tony's powers have increased during that time, or Uncle Bene has taught him how to communicate telepathically and how to use his telekinesis without the harmonica, or maybe a little bit of both.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Dr. Gannon describes Tony's power as, "molecular mobilization." That's just an overly fancy way of saying, "moving stuff."
- Timmy in a Well: Dr. Gannon keeps a goat named Alfred in his lab for—some reason. Anyway, Tia sends Alfred the goat off to get help. Alfred makes his way to the Earthquake Gang's hideout, snatches Tia's vest, and leads the gang back to her.
- Traveling at the Speed of Plot: How far is it from the Earthquake Gang's hideout to Dr. Gannon's mansion? It seems to vary depending on the needs of the plot.
