SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES: Blu-ray (The Walt Disney Co., 1983) Disney Club Exclusive

Jack Clayton was an interesting character. A booze-happy/chain-smoking, self-professed ‘ex-Catholic’, Clayton was arguably as well-known for the movies he never made as the ones he successfully brought to the screen, despite his chronic bouts of agonizing indecision. He possessed an irrefutable flair for literary classics. But his latter age career was repeatedly stalled by bouts of studio-interfering frustrations – to brand him a temperamental artiste – and, the waning/changing film industry, increasingly disinterested in entertaining exotic visionaries while very much in search of the ‘commercial’ craftsman, who could deliver box office in lieu of art. Between the theatrical release of Our Mother's House (1967) and Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983), only the legendary miscalculations on The Great Gatsby (1974) intervened – decidedly another tale for another time. Clayton's meticulousness and perfectionism, much valued in the age of the mogul, were considered vices rather than virtues in the era of the bean-counting Hollywood exec.  Thus, his later years were devoted almost exclusively to impassioned work on personal projects that would – regrettably – never see the light of day and some, unceremoniously canceled just weeks before shooting was scheduled to begin. Clayton’s health was decimated by this declining prosperity, resulting in a near fatal stroke in 1977 and five-years recovery before he would set foot behind the camera again. Something Wicked This Way Comes would survive this purgatory. Ray Bradbury’s dark tale had a curious gestation, after some early hiccups, planned as a Paramount Picture, submarined by power broker, Barry Diller, only to be resurrected in the unlikeliest place such a project could blossom – the Walt Disney Company!

For Clayton, Something Wicked This Way Comes would prove the final insult to his artistic integrity – the project having originated more than twenty years earlier after its author, Bradbury, obsessed with Singin’ in the Rain (1952), having seen it more than 40 times, cobbled together a 70-page treatment from his own 1948 short story as a gift to that movie’s star, Gene Kelly in 1957. Alas, Kelly could not get funding for the project, despite directorial interest shown by Clayton in 1959. And thus, Bradbury set about to revive Something Wicked This Way Comes as a full-fledged novel, later published in 1962. From this inauspicious beginning, Bradbury and Clayton became reacquainted in 1969 after Peter Douglas (son of Kirk, and aspiring to be a movie producer), Clayton and Kirk Douglas had lunch to discuss Bradbury’s novel.  Bradbury then wrote a sprawling 240-page screenplay he later whittled down to a more manageable 120 pages, green lit for production at Paramount Pictures. But then, a power struggle between the studio’s newly anointed president, Barry Diller and head of production, David Picker resulted in Something Wicked This Way Comes being put into turnaround. Clayton was so enraged, he put his fist through an office window. So, Peter Douglas came to bat, buying back the rights before selling Something Wicked This Way Comes to Disney Inc. with Clayton attached to direct. Clayton ought to have been on ‘cloud nine’, except that he and Bradbury almost immediately began to dicker over the details after Clayton hired John Mortimer to do a polish on his screenplay.

As eventually cobbled together with intermittent bouts of darkly purposed finesse, Something Wicked This Way Comes opens in the Illinois hamlet of Green Town. We meet reticent Will Halloway (Vidal Peterson), and his more refractory ally, Jim Nightshade (Shawn Carson), departing school after being detained for ‘whispering’ in class. The boys, born minutes apart on Halloween, now live next door to each other; Will, with his grey-haired father, Charles (Jason Robards) and mother (Ellen Greer), and Jim, with his single mother (Diane Ladd). Tom Fury (Royal Dano), a lightning rod salesman, arrives and sells his wares to Jim, claiming it will protect him from an upcoming storm. Not long thereafter, Will and Jim hear of a carnival heading into town, led by ominous proprietor, Mr. Dark (Jonathan Pryce). Setting up overnight, Will and Jim take notice that many of the townspeople who attend Dark’s show of oddities immediately become spellbound by their experiences, especially amputee/bartender, Ed (James Stacy), who sees his missing arm and leg reflected back at him in a mirror, and, the boy’s spinsterish school teacher, Miss Foley (Mary Grace Canfield), who desires to reclaim her youth. Will and Jim observe that a carousel – a major attraction - is closed, and later, witness Mr. Dark using it to transform his assistant, Mr. Cooger (Bruce M. Fischer) into a little boy. Will and Jim attempt to inform Miss Foley about what they have seen, but are confronted by Cooger – as a boy – who pretends to be Foley’s nephew. Foley is later transformed into her youthful self, but strangely loses her vision, taken by Cooger to Dark. Now, Will and Jim witness Fury being tortured by Mr. Dark, desiring to gain access to the secret of an upcoming storm. Fleeing into the night, Will and Jim are attacked by spiders. But the lightning rod Fury gave Jim saves them from certain death.

By dawn’s early light, Mr. Dark leads his carnival, now also consisting of some of the mesmerized townspeople, through the streets in a spurious ‘parade’ – actually, a search party on the prowl for Will and Jim. Deducing the boys are in trouble, Charles manages to momentarily thwart Dark in his quest. Dark temps Charles with the promise of restoring his youth. But after Charles resists this temptation, Dark knocks him out, making off with Will and Jim back to the carnival. Charles regains consciousness as storm clouds advance on the town. He hurries to the carnival, managing to spare his wife a similar fate from Dark’s powers of persuasion, before ducking into a hall of mirrors where Dark again taunts him with the promise of his youth. One of Dark’s cohorts, the Dust Witch (Pam Grier) tries to imprison Charles but is destroyed by Fury who impales her with a lightning rod. As the carnival is consumed in a nightmarish twister, Charles, Jim and Will escape with their lives – heading back into town with Dark’s terrible vengeance on them having come to its cataclysmic end.

Jack Clayton had perceived Something Wicked This Way Comes as an extension of the supernatural themes he had explored in The Innocents (1961) – children, haunted by the unknown and compelled to face their demons. Alas, Clayton’s rough cut of Something Wicked This Way Comes alienated Disney execs, understandably weary the Disney brand should go out on a picture dedicated to the occult and evil entering the hearts and minds of children – their core audience. Thus, Disney exercised the only clause it had – final cut, retiring the movie for a full year while it quietly sidelined Clayton and took over artistic control, shoring the more darkly ritualized moments, removing Georges Delerue’s original score and eventually, firing editor, Argyle Nelson Jr., replaced by Barry Gordon who proceeded to re-conceive the entire movie practically from scratch. This added 6 months to the work and $5 million to the picture’s budget. It also presented Disney Inc. with a minor quandary as the picture’s two pint-sized stars, Vidal Peterson and Shawn Carson had grown in the interim. Sacrificed, a much-celebrated, CGI opening montage to have depicted Dark’s carnival magically unfolding itself, and, a sequence in which a disembodied hand attempts to seize the boys while they sleep. In lieu of this latter excision, a new, and decidedly cringe-worthy sequence was shot, involving the boys under siege by live spiders. Bradbury was hired to write a new monologue – read over the opening credits by Arthur Hill – to clarify the story, and several new effects were added to augment the storm sequence. As an interesting aside: Disney Inc. buried Delerue’s orchestrations for almost 30 years. Delerue considered these among the greatest he had ever composed for film. But the company did allow French label, Intrada, to release barely 30 minutes of truncated cues from Delerue’s 63-minute symphonic compositions on CD in 2011. When it was released, Something Wicked This Way Comes failed to find its audience. The picture was quickly retired and buried in the Disney vaults, along with its other failures from the period – 1980’s The Watcher in the Woods, and 1985’s Return to Oz. This, however, did not prevent a cult following from springing up. Indeed, and arguably, the greatest movies – according to some – are always the ones they haven’t seen.

At a then staggering $20 million, of which only a paltry $8.4 was recouped in box office revenues, Something Wicked This Way Comes was decidedly a bomb. It remains an unevenly paced and slightly curdled horror movie, appallingly maimed by Disney Inc.’s last-minute tinkering to will a ‘family drama’ out of its supernatural fantasy, and, by the insertion of some truly tepid and unconvincing special effects. In spite of these, the picture retains its downhearted grasp on the audience, its erudite, melancholic attributes, never entirely to fade into that sunny self-imposed obscurity of a happy ending. Bradbury’s screenplay relishes the rhythm of the spoken word, lyrically extolled in the performances given by Jason Robards and Jonathan Pryce. Brazenly romanticized as a Norman Rockwell portrait at the outset, the pervading evil to slowly erode this beauty whiling saturating the intellect, thereafter, steadily encroaches on a disquieting masterwork of restrained terror and refined and menacing sophistication. Far from the artistic flop it was branded by Disney Inc. at the time, Something Wicked This Way Comes offers something for both adults and the kiddies – the terrible price to be paid for the pride we invest in our bygone daydreams, and, the promise of parental allegiance to protect and navigate use through the follies of youth, expertly interwoven into this intricate tapestry of bucolic life, threatened by Dark’s slow-evolving dread. If neither is thoroughly satisfied in the end, the flipside is neither is completely disappointed from the experience, having seen it.

I suppose I should have seen this one coming but hope continues to spring eternal, that the present governing regime at Disney Inc. will suddenly realize the goldmine it sits atop and begin doing right by its deep catalog in hi-def. Silly me. Something Wicked This Way Comes is another Disney Club ‘exclusive’. At the very least, this exclusivity, and the hefty price tag attached, ought to have dictated an expectation for a quality master being offered for collector’s consideration. But that’s decidedly not what we get here. Let us set aside the obvious misfire of not including already produced extra content to augment any of their ‘club exclusives’ and concentrate on the 1080p quality. It’s just not here. While image sharpness is often admirable, and colors can occasionally advance to a level that will marginally impress over the tired old DVD release, what is here is riddled in age-related dirt and scratches that ought to have been eradicated before any hi-def scanning was performed. Contrast is anemic and film grain toggles between thickly accurate to leaning towards a digitized appearance without slipping entirely into a pixeled mess. Composite mattes and SFX have devolved the image quality even further, showing early signs of vinegar syndrome as color fidelity and contrast appear severely off and faded. The 5.1 DTS audio has a few surprising touches, like the storm that rages across all channels with renewed clarity, and some interesting directionalized sound effects as the Will and Jim wander through the carnival – sounds of laughter, music coming from the rides and so forth. But overall, dialogue is front and center and sounding thin and dated. Bottom line: while Disney continues to minimize the appeal of this movie – hardly in league with their ‘classics’ of yore, Something Wicked This Way Comes has some truly bone-chilling moments of Gothic-inspired terror to recommend it. Coupled with its stellar performances, it certainly deserves better than this! Judge and buy accordingly.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

3

VIDEO/ADUIO

3

EXTRAS

0