I was lucky enough to see the high-definition remastered 70th anniversary edition of "The Wizard of Oz" on Wednesday night at Penn Cinemas.

The screen was big, the theater was sold out and the audience was reverential when that ominous music started playing while the MGM lion roared.

We were off to see what in my book is the best movie ever made.

What other movie has such impressive special effects, wit, suspense, great acting and an extremely high scariness quotient?

Seventy years may have passed since it was released, but nothing looks or feels dated in it.

What other movie has such a huge, emotional heart? And I'm not talking about the Tin Man here.

It got me when I was a child, and, I discovered, it still gets me as an adult.

A DEFINING TECHNOLOGY
The high definition made everything crisp and clear, but not so crisp and clear it was distracting — except maybe in Munchkinland, where you could practically see the glue on the Munchkins wigs.

Judy Garland's rich performance just radiates from that great big screen. Everybody's does. Even Toto's.

Kansas was gorgeous on the big screen in its sweeping sepia tones.

And the scary moments? Scarier than ever in high def. The cyclone, the witch's castle, Miss Gulch on her bicycle — I found them all still extremely terrifying, though I didn't end up cowering behind my grandmother's sofa, sobbing my little heart out.

Every year when I was growing up, we went to my grandmother's house to watch "Oz." She had a color TV, though everything seemed to have an orange or a green tint.

When the date rolled around, I was filled with excitement. It was like a miniature Christmas.

And every year, even though I practically knew the dialogue by heart and knew exactly where the commercial breaks would be, I got caught up, holding my breath, crying for Dorothy and Toto, ready for the crazy scary stuff.

My older brother and sisters ridiculed me, but I didn't care. I knew that Miss Gulch and her alter ego, the Wicked Witch, were — and remain — the most terrifying villains of all time.

And I got caught up this time too. The puffs of red smoke every time the witch appeared? Dorothy seeking out Auntie Em in the crystal ball, only to see the witch cackling at her? Oh my. And those monkeys!

"Oz" was such a part of my imagination when I was a kid, I actually thought flying monkeys and tin men existed out there somewhere. I wasn't quite sure about talking scarecrows, though.

This time, my emotions were, I think, running even higher.

NOT THE SAME OLD SONG
Hearing "Over the Rainbow" when you're 7 or 8 is one thing. Hearing it at 50? Wow.

When Dorothy tells the Scarecrow she'll miss him most of all, how can you not think about the people you really do miss most of all?

And when she says there's no place like home, I realized that my home from back then is gone. My grandmother's gone, my parents are gone. My siblings live half way across the country.

And that, of course, is the real key to why "The Wizard of Oz" is such a beloved movie.

For all its spectacle and scary moments, it's about keeping love in your heart, especially for the people around you, the ones it's so easy to take for granted.

By holding on to the movie, you can hold on to them too.

jholahan@lnpnews.com

Footlights appears every other Saturday.