Something Wicked This Way Comes

Plot

In Green Town, Illinois, two young boys, a reserved Will Halloway and somewhat rebellious Jim Nightshade, leave from an after-school detention for "whispering in class" and hurry home. The boys live next door to each other and were born a minute apart on Halloween. Will lives with his mother and father Charles while Jim lives with his single mother; it is heavily implied that his father walked out on them. A lightning rod salesman named Tom Fury arrives and sells one to Jim, claiming that it will protect him from an upcoming storm. The boys soon hear of a carnival coming to town led by the ominous Mr. Dark.

The carnival arrives and is set up overnight. Will and Jim notice that many of the residents seem oddly entranced by some of the attractions such as the amputee bartender Ed who sees his missing arm and leg return in a mirror and the boys' teacher Miss Foley who wishes to regain her youth. Will and Jim see a carousel that is closed off and are confronted by Dark, who quickly becomes suspicious of them. Later, they witness him using the carousel on his assistant, Mr. Cooger, who reverts to a little boy. Will and Jim head off to see Foley, but she is with her "nephew", who is actually Cooger, and are forced to leave.

Foley suddenly becomes younger, but loses her vision and is taken by Cooger to Dark. Will gets into an argument with Jim when the latter reveals that he has always been envious of the former being older and wants to use the carousel. They then witness Fury being tortured by Dark, who wants the secret of the upcoming storm and uses his other assistant, the Dust Witch, to seduce him, but to no avail. The boys run when they are found out and try to go to bed. In the middle of the night, the duo are attacked by tarantulas, but the lightning rod that Fury gave Jim earlier saves them.

In the morning, Dark leads his carnival, now consisting of some of the townspeople, in a parade, though Will and Jim deduce that it is a search party for them. Charles eventually figures out that the boys are in trouble and when confronted by Dark, manages to deter him. Charles, Will and Jim head to the library where the former reveals that the carnival had come to town before and that his own father had fought them. Dark arrives, searching for Will and Jim and offers Charles his youth back, but he resists. He knocks out Charles and makes off with the boys back to the carnival. Charles regains himself and heads to the carnival just as the storm arrives. He runs into Jim's mother and deters her before she too succumbs to Dark's powers.

Production

Ray Bradbury first wrote the original screenplay adapted from his 1948 short story "Black Ferris" in 1958, intended for Gene Kelly as director. Financing for the project never came, and Bradbury converted the screenplay into a novel, published in 1962.

In 1971, Bradbury agreed to write a new screenplay based on the novel for Jack Clayton, with whom Bradbury previously worked on Moby Dick. In January 1973, Sam Peckinpah was announced as director for the film, with a script written by Bradbury.

In June 1976, Clayton returned as director and the property was being developed by The Bryna Company, a production company formed by Kirk Douglas. Douglas became interested in the property after meeting Bradbury at a bookstore in Los Angeles, and intended to star in the film. Douglas' son Peter Douglas was set to produce, with Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler. They secured a deal with Paramount Pictures to finance the $6,000,000 production, to be filmed on location in Texas. However, production never began and the film was eventually put into turnaround by Paramount CEO Barry Diller over the objections of feature division president David V. Picker. At various times, Mark Rydell and Steven Spielberg expressed interest in making the film.

At this time, Walt Disney Pictures was focusing on films with more mature themes in an attempt to break free from its image as an animation and family film studio. In 1981, they acquired the film rights to Something Wicked This Way Comes and announced that it would go into production with a $16 million budget. They asked Bradbury for his input on selecting a cast and director, and he suggested Clayton, feeling they had worked well together at Paramount. Peter Douglas returned as the film's producer, but Kirk Douglas was unable to appear in it despite playing a major role in its pre-production. In a 1981 issue of Cinefantastique, Bradbury said that his top choices for Mr. Dark were Peter O'Toole and Christopher Lee, but to keep the budget down, Disney decided to cast Jonathan Pryce, who was still relatively unknown.

Principal photography began on September 28, 1981, and lasted 77 days. Filming was mostly on Disney's Golden Oak Ranch in Newhall, California, as shooting on location would have been too costly. Some exterior scenes were shot in Vermont. As the film progressed, two visions emerged for the film: Bradbury and Clayton wanted to stay as faithful to the novel as possible, while Disney wanted a more accessible, family-friendly film. Bradbury and Clayton fell out when Bradbury learned that Clayton had, at the studios insistence, hired John Mortimer to do an uncredited revision of Bradbury's screenplay.

Reception

Box office

The film grossed $8.4 million at the domestic box office against its $20 million budget.

Critical response

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four, and wrote: It's one of the few literary adaptations I've seen in which the film not only captures the mood and tone of the novel, but also the novel's style. Bradbury's prose is a strange hybrid of craftsmanship and lyricism. He builds his stories and novels in a straightforward way, with strong plotting, but his sentences owe more to Thomas Wolfe than to the pulp tradition, and the lyricism isn't missed in this movie. In its descriptions of autumn days, in its heartfelt conversations between a father and a son, in the unabashed romanticism of its evil carnival and even in the perfect rhythm of its title, this is a horror movie with elegance.

Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote the film "begins on such an overworked Norman Rockwell note that there seems little chance that anything exciting or unexpected will happen. So it's a happy surprise when the film...turns into a lively, entertaining tale combining boyishness and grown-up horror in equal measure"; according to Maslin, "the gee-whiz quality to this adventure is far more excessive in Mr. Bradbury's novel than it is here, as directed by Jack Clayton. Mr. Clayton, who directed a widely admired version of The Turn of the Screw some years ago, gives the film a tension that transcends even its purplest prose."

Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times praised the film as "one of Walt Disney's best efforts in recent years—a film that actually has something to offer adults and adolescents alike."

Variety wrote that the film "must be chalked up as something of a disappointment. Possibilities for a dark, child's view fantasy set in rural America of yore are visible throughout, but various elements have not entirely congealed into a unified achievement...Clayton has done a fine job visualizing the screenplay by Bradbury himself, but has missed really connecting with the heart of the material and bringing it satisfyingly alive."

Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film 2 stars out of 4 and wrote that it "opens promisingly" but has a script which "tries to cram too much material into one story" and a climax that "couldn't be more disappointing", with "neon special effects that overwhelm the last half hour of the movie. The result is an oddball combination of a Twilight Zone episode with the climactic, zapping-the-Nazis scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark."

Accolades

The film won the 1984 Saturn Award for Best Fantasy Film and Saturn Award for Best Writing, and was nominated for five others, including best music for James Horner and best supporting actor for Jonathan Pryce. It was also nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation and Grand Jury Prize at the Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival.

Home media

The film was released by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment on Blu-ray for the first time on September 07, 2021, as a Disney Movie Club exclusive, which has since closed and therefore is out of print.

On October 3, 2025, it was made available to stream on Disney+ in the US, making it the first time the movie has been available on any streaming service, it is still unavailable in the UK/Europe.

Remake

In 2014, Disney announced a remake of Something Wicked This Way Comes with Seth Grahame-Smith writing the script, making his directorial debut, and producing with David Katzenberg from their producing banner KatzSmith Productions. Reportedly, Grahame-Smith wanted to focus mostly on Ray Bradbury's source material from the book.