{"id":303556,"date":"2025-10-14T20:44:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T20:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/303556\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T20:44:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T20:44:11","slug":"step-right-up-for-dark-live-action-disney-classic-something-wicked-this-way-comes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/303556\/","title":{"rendered":"Step Right Up for Dark Live-Action Disney Classic \u2018Something Wicked This Way Comes\u2019\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cFirst of all, it was October\u201d is how Something Wicked This Way Comes begins, and while Halloween<\/a> is barely mentioned by name, the movie is drenched in the spirit of spooky season<\/a>. It\u2019s framed as a memory from the narrator\u2019s adolescence, but it also digs deep into the regret-laden conscience of the boy\u2019s aging father.<\/p>\n

Oh, and its central menace is a diabolical traveling carnival that preys mostly on adults but doesn\u2019t hesitate to threaten meddling 12-year-old boys. That\u2019s heavy stuff for a Disney movie, but the early to mid-1980s marked a moment when the company was experimenting with darker live-action fare. Nothing too risque, of course\u2014nothing from this era earned the then-new PG-13 rating<\/a>\u2014but it was a time when kids of a certain age could reap foundational nightmares from the likes of Return to Oz (1985) and The Watcher in the Woods (1980).<\/p>\n

The Watcher in the Woods still hasn\u2019t crept its way onto Disney+<\/a>, but the arrival earlier this month of 1983\u2019s Something Wicked This Way Comes has given fans of alien body-swappers and late-period Bette Davis fresh hope. (Return to Oz is available, however, and anyone who thinks maybe the Wheelers aren\u2019t as scary now as they were 40 years ago\u2014well, joke\u2019s on you.)<\/p>\n

Just a few years past his back-to-back Oscar wins for All the President\u2019s Men and Julia, Jason Robards stars as Charles Halloway, the librarian in sleepy Green Town. When Something Wicked begins, Charles and his son, Will (Vidal Peterson), have a superficial relationship with no real emotional connection.<\/p>\n

\"Somethingwickedrobards\"\u00a9 Disney <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is really the story of my father,\u201d the adult Will tells us in voice-over, and while his family may not be picture-perfect, it\u2019s far preferable to the home life of Will\u2019s best friend, Jim Nightshade (Shawn Carson). Jim lives next door to Will with his ditzy mother (Diane Ladd), and they both hold out hope that Jim\u2019s wandering father will one day return.<\/p>\n

But the boys have each other, and through their eyes we get a grasp of Green Town and its residents: the lonely barber who dreams of female companionship, the bar owner who pines for his football glory days despite now being a double amputee, the spinster teacher who wishes she was young and beautiful, and the cigar-store owner who\u2019d give anything to be rich.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy neighbors gave me my first glimpses into the fearful needs of the human heart,\u201d Will recalls, and we see that amplified when the mysterious Mr. Dark (Jonathan Pryce) brings his carnival to town. It\u2019s an immediately sinister arrival, occurring in the dead of night and with such a rapid setup that we know something supernatural is afoot\u2014even if the Macbeth-quoting title hadn\u2019t already given that away.<\/p>\n

Will and Jim, of course, are immediately intrigued\u2014though Will, who wears glasses and has a greater respect for danger, hesitates more than the spirited Jim. The people of Green Town also can\u2019t keep themselves away, and the more vulnerable among them are quickly singled out and exploited by Mr. Dark and his minions.<\/p>\n

That includes the alluring Dust Witch, played by Pam Grier, whose charisma provides more dazzle than any of the movie\u2019s now-dated special effects\u2014though a warning to arachnophobes, the Dust Witch\u2019s tarantula army appears entirely real.<\/p>\n

\"Somethingwickedboys\"\u00a9 Disney <\/p>\n

It\u2019s clear from the start that Something Wicked This Way Comes\u2019 main reckoning will come down to father and son, with the other key characters\u2014including the reckless Jim, the slippery Mr. Dark, and Tom Fury (Royal Dano), a lightning rod salesman who blows into town full of prescient warnings about gathering storms\u2014pushing them toward reconciliation.<\/p>\n

Charles\u2019 desire to connect with Will is impeded by an uncomfortable memory; some years prior, Will nearly drowned, and Charles, whose own father never taught him to swim, stood by helplessly. The incident has been gnawing at Charles ever since and has lately been compounded by his depression over his advancing age and his intense awareness of being an old dad to his young son.<\/p>\n

Again, this is heavy stuff for a Disney movie, and though Something Wicked This Way Comes had an apparently bumpy road from production to release, Bradbury did adapt his own novel for the screenplay, and it\u2019s mostly faithful, not just in story but also in themes. You can see why this work in particular has been cited as influencing Stephen King and R.L. Stine; it frames nostalgia as a place where warm memories and freaky terrors can seamlessly coexist.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s therefore especially fitting that Charles has to reach back into his own childhood to unmask Mr. Dark, consulting his father\u2019s dusty, late-1800s diary recording Green Town\u2019s earlier encounter with the peculiar carnival. His face-off with evil gives Pryce (early in his career here, a few years before his breakthrough in Brazil) a chance to toss off lines with just the right blend of camp and ferocity\u2014\u201cWe suck that misery and find it sweet!\u201d\u2014that cut through some of the gloom.<\/p>\n

While Something Wicked This Way Comes doesn\u2019t lean into Halloween to provide its scares, it does pile on the autumnal dread. Brittle leaves swirl through the air as Will and Jim grapple with their oversized coming-of-age moment\u2014and Charles realizes though he might be getting older, he has a lot of life left to live, not to mention a lot to live for.<\/p>\n

\"Somethingwickedcarnival\"\u00a9 Disney <\/p>\n

It may have taken a while for Something Wicked to find its way to streaming, but October is the perfect month for its debut, not to mention the ideal moment to appreciate its chilling charms.<\/p>\n

Something Wicked This Way Comes is now streaming on Disney+.<\/p>\n

\n

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel<\/a>, Star Wars<\/a>, and Star Trek<\/a> releases, what\u2019s next for the DC Universe on film and TV<\/a>, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cFirst of all, it was October\u201d is how Something Wicked This Way Comes begins, and while Halloween is…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":303557,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[13205,171,53,100076,154088,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-303556","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-disney-plus","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-movies","11":"tag-ray-bradbury","12":"tag-something-wicked-this-way-comes","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115374474808733748","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303556\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}