Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983)

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Will and Jim hear about a strange travelling carnival from a salesman, so they decide to see what it's all about. But Will is fearful, as most carnivals end their tours after Labour Day, and it's the middle of autumn. When Mr. Dark rides into town at midnight, setting up his massive carnival in a matter of seconds, the boys are both thrilled and terrified. It seems to be just another carnival at first, but it is not long before the forces of darkness are manifesting from the haunting melodies of the carousel, which can change your age. With his collection of freaks and oddities, Dark intends to take control of the town and seize more innocent souls to damn..........With Disney going dark in the eighties with their live action movies, they hit an undeserved slump, which is highly unfair, when material like this is the outcome.Sinister from the word go, the film is dark to its core, and it revels in the fact right until the last shot, and it never pulls its punches, which some may find difficult to digest, coming from the studio that loves fun, brightness, and laughter, as this is the other end of that spectrum.But as entertaining and genius as it is, it's easy to see why it failed, and journeyed into obscurity. It's way too dark for children, it's the stuff of nightmares, literally.And on the flip side of this is the fact that many would be deterred by the Disney moniker. Many would think it would have a saccharine edge to it, but this couldn't be further from the truth. Imagine a Disney film where a man has a spell cast on him where he feels what it's like to die, or children are covered in spiders, and a man is aged, explicitly on screen, and this is your movie.Pryce is wonderful as Mr. Dark, charming, suave, but just one scene changes all that when he discovers Robards is lying to him. That's when the film goes even darker.If you ever get a chance to see this wondrous film, do so, but do it on a cold winters night,with all the lights off.You'll think twice about the carnival for a long time after......

The devil-comes-to-town premise is one that Stephen King has practically built half his smelly career on. He has used it – or shall we say "ripped it off" – from Bradbury (and others) and turned it into countless formulaic stories and novels. Satan comes to a small town to wreck havoc, and it's always the same shticks, over and over, at least when it comes to his drivel. There are, however, worlds between how an intelligent, skillful writer such as Bradbury treated this idea and how a commercial, fluff-for-the-masses mediocrity such as King does. SWTWC is a moody, subtle, enjoyable take on the subject. King treats this type of story (his favourite story) with much more pomp, clichés, and very exaggerated and annoying small-town stereotypes – most of which reveal this left-winger's barely hidden resentment towards small-town folk (and people in general; perhaps he's just frustrated that nearly all of us are much prettier than him). King wrote these kinds of stories with the primary intention of dragging small-town America through the mud, because - as every good Marxist - he detests the success of democracy and Capitalism, and nothing annoys him more than religious folk. (I am an atheist myself, and yet I do not hate believers the way King does.) No such pathetic, sociopathic, misanthropic tendencies are to be found in SWTWC.The movie has an excellent visual quality; the photography, the look of the movie is reason enough to watch it. Most of the special effects stand up very well to today's CGI; there is very little of that miserable cheesy quality or hoakeyness that some 80s fantasy movies have. It's a Disney flick, but it strikes a fairly decent balance between a kid's movie and adult horror, although obviously leaning more toward the former. Nowadays, the Disney conglomerate would be hard-pressed to squeeze anything of quality out of its ravaged/fruitless Mickey Mouse butt, let alone make a movie that either kids (with taste) or adults (with brains) can like. (I do not count Pixar's movies as Disney produce.)The only "beef" I have with SWTWC centers around Jason Robards. No, not the actor himself; he is excellent, as always (one of the very few top-notch nepotists in Hollywood). I am referring first-and-foremost to the age difference between him and his wife, played by a useless nepotist that goes by the name of Ellen Geer; she was 42 at the time of filming, he was 61, which is simply ludicrous. Far from make-up reducing the difference between them, they actually look as if there's 30 years between them - though this is by no means intended as a compliment to the homely Geer. Robards looks like the kid's grandpa, not his father. The other thing that I found silly was Mr. Halloway's unlikely/exaggerated obsession with his failure to save his son from drowning a few years earlier. It would make perfect sense had his son drowned - but he didn't. Halloway (Robards) even states that he harbors ill-feelings toward the man who saved his son – which I find highly far-fetched and a bit of a leap; it would imply that the life of his son takes a backseat to his own Ego, i.e. the issue of whether he is a "real man" and brave father. Still, I guess the story needed some kind of "inner conflict" in order to make the all pieces fall together in the movie's evil-snuffs-it finale.For other film versions of Bradbury's material, I highly recommend "Fahrenheit 451", and especially the lesser-known, fairly ignored gem "The Illustrated Man".

I try not to watch Disney movies as they invariably are very schmaltzy, preachy and basic for my taste. This film as others have noted is about as dark as Disney has ever got. But most importantly, its entertaining, this is an old-fashioned good versus evil tale set in pre-war small town America. Carnivals were always big deals in the pre-TV era and Disney spent some good money on production to bring it all to life. Johnathon Pryce has always played the part of the villain well and he doesn't disappoint here. The special effects by 80's standards were good enough, veteran director jack clayton made this very watchable, keeping up a level of suspense throughout and while not terrifying, there were some very creepy scenes that made this a bona fide horror movie.

After Walt Disney died in the late '60s, the Disney company then proceeded for the next ten years or so diminishing the audience for its movies by making (mostly) mediocre and formula movies, and refusing to accept that tastes had changed. Finally realizing they had to shake things up, they spent the next few years making un-Disney-like movies to attract a wider audience. "Something Wicked..." is one of those movies, and it was rejected by audiences at the box office. Seeing it, it's pretty easy to see why. The Ray Bradbury story was no longer fresh, and probably seemed very familiar to audiences. Also, at least the way it's presented here, it comes more like a short story that has been incredibly padded (with stuff like dream sequences and a good amount of talk) to run an hour and a half. The characters don't come alive, even the Pryce villain character. Substandard photography and special effects not only add to the feeling of half-hearted effort by the filmmakers, but make the movie look tacky. Though I have not read the original story, I'm pretty confident that this is one time you should stick to the book.