Retrospective: Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983)

[Shane Burridge]

Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983) 100m

A failure or a success, depending on how you look at it: upon my first viewing, I 
opted for the former, upon the second I became more charitable. The problem, 
as apparent within its opening moments, is the marriage of the word WICKED 
with WALT DISNEY, which is not too promising a combination. First indications of 
SOMETHING WICKED were hopeful, with Ray Bradbury writing the screenplay 
adaptation of his own novel, and Jack Clayton brought on board to direct (with 
Bradbury's approval). A few years earlier Disney might have gotten away with it, 
but when the early 80s saw a revitalization of horror movies, and special effects 
were now the expected hook for big-budget films, WICKED didn't hold up. In the 
first place, its particular tone of horror was not in the same excesses of its 
contemporaries, and secondly, many of the animation effects sequences looked 
stale, added afterwards by nervous execs who could see the likes of Spielberg 
out-Disneying the studio at its own game.

Bradbury has never been the easiest writer to adapt to the screen - he wrote few 
novels in favor of short stories, and his lyrical style is better suited to the printed 
word than the filmed image (as uneven films like FAHRENHEIT 451 and THE 
ILLUSTRATED MAN demonstrate). WICKED draws upon two aspects prevalent 
throughout Bradbury's work: nostalgia and dread. In the case of the first, the 
small-town atmosphere is lovingly brought to life in the film's opening scenes and 
there's certainly no fault to be found with its widescreen visuals. Dread, however, 
is trickier to pull off, especially for audiences expecting their horror to be more of 
the seat-jumping variety. Since the Disney logo robs the film of any threat that 
would crank up the tension for horror fans, WICKED needs to be viewed as a 
different kind of film. In some ways, its almost a subversion of Disney norms - 
there's a visiting carnival, two young boys given the run of the town (Shawn 
Carson and Vidal Peterson, and a homey setting populated with slightly dotty 
inhabitants on first-name terms - and by all accounts it's the type of place we'd 
expect to see Toby Tyler or Pollyanna ambling around the corner. Plucky though 
these and other previous Disney tykes may be, they would be over their heads 
in the town that Bradbury gives them - the villains are not the usual jewel 
thieves, smugglers or bank robbers, but supernatural figures that prey on human 
misery by building up hopes and then shattering them, leaving their victims as 
lifeless husks.

Jonathan Pryce cuts a fine figure as Mr Dark, the owner of the visiting carnival, 
resisting the urge to play the role too theatrically (even though, as a carnival 
operator, he has the licence to huckster things up). In the film's best scene, he 
confronts Jason Robards, the ageing father of one of the boys, and rips pages 
out of a book as if they were potentially regained years being torn from his life. 
It's a welcome confrontation as it's one of the few times we see adult characters 
(i.e. experienced actors) playing against each other. Carson and Peterson hold 
their own by doing everything they're supposed to, reacting every way they 
should, and delivering Bradbury's dialogue without making it seem forced (it's 
probably second nature to Carson as he had already been spooked by a dark 
carnival in Tobe Hooper's horror flick THE FUNHOUSE). Still, perhaps they're a 
little too innocent, inheriting the Disney tradition, or curse, of all juveniles, and 
consequently incapable of recognizing real evil. They observe the grotesquery 
of the carnival with incomprehension, its backwards-spinning carousel with 
wonder, and in one scene, the bare midriffs of belly dancers with something a 
little more than boyish curiosity. Perhaps feeling that kids couldn't really be 
afraid of intangible horrors, the studio added a sequence where the boys are 
"attacked" by troops of spiders. Not surprisingly, it's the worst scene in the film. 
However, if Bradbury's novel had been made by any studio other than Disney, 
there undoubtedly would have been many such conventional 'fright' scenes. 
As it turns out, the rigors of the studio may have provided the film with the 
right amount of subtlety to make it more faithful to Bradbury, if not to horror 
fans of the 80s.

sburridge at hotmail.com

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