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Something Wicked This Way Comes
Be careful what you wish for, as you might end up really bored
1983
Review: February 27, 2006
Director: Jack Clayton
Starring: Jason Robards, Jonathan Pryce, Diane Ladd, Vidal Peterson, Shawn Carson, Pam Grier
If you MUST watch the movie, this may be the only way to stand it.
THE SETUP:
Evil carnival comes to town, granting people their dearest wish, but at a price, bwah, ha, ha…
DISCUSSION:
I had high hopes for this one. It’s always fun to revisit the films of one’s youth, though in this case I never saw it when I was younger, I just remember seeing ads and articles for it. A good spooky story is always welcome, and this one was based on a story [and has a screenplay written by] Ray Bradbury, who I remember reading and enjoying as a boy [and whose A Sound of Thunder was just turned into an awesome trash-tacular!], so all systems were go with watching the shit out of this one.
The first 15 seconds were good. There we have the title, spelled out in red paint, then washed away in two splashes, then run backwards to create the sense of words coming together. It’s a neat effect, and I love simple yet effective tricks like that. It’s all downhill from there.
The badness starts with this hideously wholesome and dull voiceover covering every scene [unnecessarily]. It’s like the voiceover from A Christmas Story, but without the humor or irony. We’re introduced to everyone in town, including an amputee who used to be a football hero, a guy obsessed with winning the lottery, and a bearded barber who wants to meet women [though he wouldn’t be lonely for a second if he’d just stop in his local bear bar]. There’s also these two annoying boys, our protagonists, and the grandfather of one of them, played by Jason Robards. There’s some subtext dropped about how the grandfather is “old,” enough to set up what we know will be his transformation by the end. It’s all already hideously obvious.
Anyway, a spooky wind and then a train come into town, and suddenly there’s a carnival run by a young Jonathan Price all set up and ready to go. Only our main characters seem to think it’s somewhat odd that this elaborate carnival shows up overnight, but I think we’re supposed to think there’s some sort of spell.
At the wicked carnival people get their wishes come true—and this is where the movie starts falling apart. The amputee gets his limbs back, the bear gets a bunch of women to fawn all over him [on a stage at an exotic dancing show], and the old spinster gets to be a beautiful young hottie—but goes blind, oh tragic irony. The boys see all this while sneaking around the carnival, and they also see this merry-go-round that spins backwards, taking its riders back in time. They get caught, the escape, they go tell grandpa, adventures ensue… and it’s all really dumb.
Along the way there is a bit of surprise at the level of gore for a PG-rated Disney movie. When’s the last time you saw a severed head in a Disney movie? Or a man’s hand crushed until the flesh splits open? Surprise. It was also almost to the very end that I looked at the carnival ice queen and thought “You know, that looks like Pam Grier. That IS Pam Greir.” Yup, it’s Pam Greir, but she isn’t given much to do except stand around and glower.
Things go from incoherent to downright DaDa at the end, where all semblance of sense-making is irretreivably lost, and you’re just begging it to please end. There is a somewhat cool effect at the very end when there’s a tornado that sucks the carnival straight up into the air, but by then Wonder Woman could show up and it would make sense given what an all-round mess this is. Ugh, a real slog.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
No, there’s really no reason to.
