Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983)

 

I’m  not sure if Something Wicked This Way Comes is the best story about what boyhood in October is like but it feels exactly what it felt like for me when I was a boy looking forward to Halloween.  Add in a dark foreboding carnival and it’s an automatic classic.  I’m talking about the book by Ray Bradbury of course, not the film.  Honestly, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen the movie before.  I mean I almost had to, but I don’t remember a thing about it.  The book was on the mandatory summer reading list back when I was in middle school.  Yes, I went to one of those middle schools that gave summer homework.  You had to read a book from a list they provided over the summer vacation.  Then you had to write a book report on it that was due on the second day of classes when school resumed in September.  I’m not sure which grade I did this for, I want to say seventh so that would have made me twelve years old.  The boys here are fourteen, so the ages are comparable.  They don’t look or act like fourteen, but we’ll just go with it. 

 

 

Right away the movie does a great job of capturing what October is, especially in an area of the country (I’m in the northern part of the USA) that has similar weather to what we see depicted here.  The winds turn chilly, the leaves change color, the shadows lengthen, and thoughts turn to pumpkins, ghosts, goblins, and of course candy on Halloween night.  Ray Bradbury wrote the screenplay for the film which took a long road on the way to being made.  Believe it or not Bradbury originally wrote a screenplay all the way back in 1948.  How is that possible when the original book wasn’t published until 1962, you might ask.  Well, he had a short story titled Black Ferris which he turned into the screenplay.  When the screenplay was not picked up by any studio, he turned it into a novel that was then published.  Jack Clayton, who specialized in making movies based on books, asked Bradbury to write a screenplay to make Something Wicked into a movie.  Clayton’s body of work also includes The Great Gatsby and The Innocents.  The film was eventually picked up by Disney Studios who were then trying their hand at more mature live action films instead of the animated films they had made their reputation on. 

 

 

Production of the film suffered through many rewrites, reedits, scenes added, scenes deleted, a new beginning, a different ending, you name it, the production of this movie was hit with just about everything a film can be hit with.  Let’s talk about the stars of the film a bit.  Starring as the two boyhood friends Will Halloway and Jim Nightshade are child actors Vidal Peterson and Shawn Carson of which neither went on to do much else.  They both serve the film well and their performances are more than adequate although Peterson’s turn as Halloway is just a notch better for me than Carson’s Nightshade.  The boys, who were born a minute apart on Halloween, live next door to each other and are best friends.  They live in Green Town Illinois which is as close to calling it Anytown USA as you can get.  Jason Robards (Once Upon a Time in the West, All the President’s Men, and Philadelphia) is Charles Halloway, Will’s father.  Diane Ladd (Chinatown, Wild at Heart, and Christmas Vacation) is Jim’s mother Mrs. Nightshade.  Now as I already mentioned a carnival is coming to the small town.  Why the hell is a carnival coming around in late October?  That seems weird. 

 

Oh, and weird it is!  The carnival is run by a sinister man who goes by the name of Mr. Dark.  Dark is portrayed by Johnathan Pryce (Brazil, Evita, and The Pirates of the Caribbean film series) and played damn near perfectly.  As it has been more than a couple decades since I last read the novel, I will say Dark always gave me an incredible sense of impending doom which is captured here right out of the book and placed neatly on my screen.  Mr. Dark scared me then and he scares me still.  Also starring as the almost just as creepy Dust Witch is Pam Grier.  Grier of course is a favorite of mine having appeared in Coffy, Foxy Brown, and Jackie Brown.  This is her second appearance in the 2024 Countdown to Halloween as she previously was in Pet Sematary Bloodlines.  The Dust Witch is one of Mr. Dark's assistants at the carnival.  Almost immediately after the carnival comes to town and is set up overnight, they have a parade in town to mark their arrival.  Mr. Dark offers some of the troubled townspeople an answer to their prayers.  He makes an old teacher young, a former football star turned amputee is given back his arm and leg, and even Jim’s mother is tempted by the thoughts of her estranged husband coming back to her. 

 

Only these granted wishes all come with a price.  Will, Jim, and Will’s father must ignore Dark’s temptations and overcome the evil carnival from taking them for its own.  Also starring as Tom Fury, a lightening rod salesman is Royal Dano (Killer Klowns From Outer Space and Messiah of Evil) who you can count on to bring a little something special to his role every time.  Well, OK, maybe not every time as he plays his role fairly straight forward here.  Not everything is to be praised here as I have a bit of a gripe about the music.  First, the music that ends up being in the film isn’t the original score recorded for the film.  What we get is just two different pieces of music that are played throughout the film.  One of the pieces of music sounds almost exactly like the Imperial March from the Star Wars film franchise.  While I like the music, every time I hear it, I expect to see Darth Vader walk into the scene. 

 

 My only other gripe is some of the effects look rather cheap.  I know a lot of the special effects that were filmed ended up on the cutting room floor but what is left in the film nearly looks like animation overlaid on the film.  I also have to give it a little leeway in that the film is forty years old.  I also have a bone to pick with Disney studios.  When they first discussed the film with Bradbury and Clayton, they made it clear they wanted a film that was more mature, darker, and sophisticated than their usual animated cartoon films.  Then they see the dailies and tell Carson it’s too dark, they want it to be more family friendly.  Excuse me?  WTF is that?  Make up your mind.  That move cost months and thousands of dollars.  And what they ended up with Bradbury didn’t very much like calling it a “nice” film.  Other than that, I have nothing to complain about and now I want to read the book again to see if this movie is as good as I think it might be.  In the meantime, I will give this three and a half hall of mirrors out of five, after I read the book I might have to up the score but this feels right for now.