Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983)

Expected more

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

One of the things that Ray Bradbury did better than most was to find that delicate balance between Light and Dark in his stories (and his characters). While SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES director Jack Clayton gives it the ol' college try, he as often as not misses the mark in that regard. The cinematography is gorgeous, and the scenes are staged and directed with great skill, but the movie more often than not fails to clearly delineate between the truly Light and the unfathomable Dark that is the great motif of this movie. The Dust Witch, for instance (Pam Grier), comes across as a sexy seductress, to be sure- but scary...? Not that I saw. Likewise, Dark himself (Jonathan Pryce), although he does deliver his lines with almost serpentine sliminess, is something less than scary. The fx don't help, nor does the happy ending: it would've been preferable to see the town looking like a ghost town in the end, with empty shops and maybe even the ghosts of proprietors past (and passed) moving through the dark to disappear forever from the minds of those who once knew them.

Maybe it is because I grew up with this movie, that I love it so. Especially watching it around this time of year. It drips Autumn and all its beauty and decay. Sure, the sets look like movie sets, but I feel this adds to the storybook like quality of the piece. I have read the book too and do see how someone in love with the book might be upset at this retelling. It doesn't bother me though and I will tell you why.The atmosphere of this movie is amazing. The director, who also made The Innocents which is another favorite horror movie of mine, knows how to craft an image. The acting is all good. Mr. Dark, Jonathan Pryce, is my favorite, stepping out as the evil carnival owner just a scant few years away from Brazil, even though I never knew him in this movie until it was pointed out to me. Ah, acting and a beard makes all the difference. I would marry Mr. Dark, but then I am a Gothic minded girl who wouldn't mind the Dust Witch in the entourage. I really think happiness is over rated too, take me with you! I suppose, this wasn't the point of the book or movie, but I digress. The child actors are good, really, no one acts horrible in this movie. It adds to the theater like quality of the movie, its dreamy and murky. I never knew Pam Grier of Coffy fame was the Dust Witch. Again, the power of acting and character actors can take it to the next level. I have no idea why this movie would get a "rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, yet the audience rating is 63%, goes to show you how the movie is actually loved. The scene with Mr. Dark tearing out pages in a book to show Will's father's life passing by is wonderful, in fact, Jonathan Pryce, does a bit of a running monologue for the most part and makes it believable. Add the carnival and all its craziness and the Dust Witch in her shroud, setting fashion standards for the gothlings to come, it is a formula win for me.I wish the scene with the Dust Witch in her balloon could have been added. It would have been cool to see. Or Mr. Dark being killed by happiness, which we all know is the best way to kill a goth. I wonder how the original cut of this was before special effects were drizzled all over it. I almost have to see the film Hysteria now because Jonathan Pryce looks like an older Mr. Dark in it. Growl!

Ten years old I was when I first saw "Something Wicked This Way Comes"… It was a movie that I loved and got fascinated with from the very first moment and long afterwards. Today I re-watched it for the first time in more than twenty years and, although I still definitely loved it a lot, it also brought me to draw another additional conclusion: this film is far too disturbing for 10-year-olds! Okay it's a Disney production and the story qualifies as a fantasy, but there are a few petrifying characters as well as a handful of sequences that are downright nightmare-inducing, like the giant spider invasion in the bedroom or the climax on the merry-go-round. Scenes like these, as well as several others, apparently got unconsciously burned on my retina because I immediately experienced flashbacks to childhood nightmares when I saw them again. I've always been intrigued by the "darker" kids' movies (other favorites include "Dark Crystal", "Island at the Top of the World", "Return to Oz" and "Escape from Witch Mountain"), but "Something Wicked etc…" is inarguably the darkest of them all.The story sprung from the versatile mind of the widely acclaimed and immensely popular author Ray Bradbury. He loved this story so much (or maybe didn't trust anyone else?) that he himself adapted his own novel into a movie script and, for the direction, opted for the reliable and highly professional Jack Clayton. The result became a, as mentioned already, pitch-black fantasy movie that is perhaps flawed and definitely comes across as dated in the year 2012, but it still ranks as the creepiest and less sentimental Disney movie ever released. The arrival of the ominous Dark's Pandemonium Carnival is an all but joyous event in a sleepy little town during autumn. The eerie Mr. Dark and his crew particularly target the nostalgic and phantasmagoric adults in town, who are all too willing to sacrifice whatever it takes make their dreams come true, whether it's richness, lust or eternal youth. The most rational person in town is actually a young boy, Will Halloway, and he has more than his hands full with helping his friend Jim and even his own father Charles to resist the carnival's Temple of Temptation. "Something Wicked This Way Comes" is a masterfully narrated story, with a terrific gloomy atmosphere and wonderfully imaginative decors & set pieces. The merry-go-round, the mirror palace, the exotic show … They're all very uncanny! My main complaint is actually that, after a rather slow-paced and patient introduction of the film, the middle-section and especially the finale, seem overly rushed and incomplete. I think I would have much rather seen "SWTWC" as a mini-series, perhaps in three or four episodes of one hour running time each, but further elaborating on all the hinted sub plots like Jim Nightshade's father, Tom Fury the lightening expert and the background of the townspeople. Stellar performances all around, most notably Jason Robards as the wise father and Jonathan Pryce as the wayward Mr. Dark, but also from the young actors and B-movie queen Pam Grier as the seductive but dangerous circus wench. I'm not sure if I'll let my own kids watch it when they're still too young and easily petrified, but it forever remains an all-time favorite childhood classic.

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.