Something Wicked This Way Comes

Roger Ebert started his review by comparing, “The opening scenes of “Something Wicked This Way Comes” might remind you a little of Orson Welles’ “The Magnificent Ambersons.” Both films begin with a nostalgic memory of what it was like to grow up in a small Midwestern town, back before everything became modern and a sense of wonder was lost.”

What the two films also have in common is a love of language. The screenplay for “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” released in 1983, was written by Ray Bradbury, based on his novel, and it’s one of the rare American films to taste the sound of words, and their rhythms. That’s true in the writing, and it’s also true in the acting. Ebert pointed out, “Jason Robards, who has the lead in this film, is allowed to use his greatest gift, his magnificently controlled speaking voice, more poetically in this movie than in anything else he’s done in years.”

The movie is a fantasy, the story of how Dark’s Pandemonium Carnival came to town one night (arriving on a great carnival train with no engineer at the front and no passengers in the cars), and of how the carnival’s main attraction was temptation.

What could it tempt you with? What anything you wanted the most. With the Robards character, an old small-town librarian with a young song, what he wanted the most was life and youth. This task he gets set on is a hard one. If he can resist that want, he can redeem the whole town. If he resists, everything goes wrong. The scenes with the carnival are an interesting mix of special effects and nostalgia, including a merry-go-round that spins backward into time.

The carnival owner, Mr. Dark, played by Jonathan Pryce, is quite possibly a sidekick of Satan. Also, his assistants include the very beautiful Dust Witch, played by the splendid, lovely Pam Grier in a career change role after her decade of tough women.

“Something Wicked This Way Comes” is a horror film, but it’s all around a different type than the ones we got at the time. Ebert said, “The new breed of horror movies are essentially geek shows, exercises in despair in which all hope has been abandoned and evil rules the world. Bradbury’s world of fantasy calls back to an earlier tradition, to the fantasies of Lord Dunsany, Saki and John Collier (but not H. P. Lovecraft!) — horror fantasies in which evil was a distinct possibility, but men also had within them the possibility of redemption.” Robards is given a choice in this movie, and it is a choice. Things don’t need to end in disaster.

Ebert noted, “There’s another interesting thing about this movie. 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 this descriptions of autumn days, in the genuine conversations between a father and a son, in the shameless fantasy of its haunted carnival and even in the perfect rhythm of its title, this is a horror movie with style.

Honestly, when I saw it, I can give it credit for given an atmosphere, but I don’t think this will be one that I will see it again. I know there is a fanbase for this one, and it is a movie you can see around Halloween time, so you can see it on Disney+ and it won’t hurt. However, I don’t see myself returning to this one after seeing it once. Check it out and enjoy, as I do believe this does has potential and people can enjoy it.

Look out tomorrow when I look at a short in “Disney Month 2025.”