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“First of all, it was October” is how Something Wicked This Way Comes begins, and while Halloween is barely mentioned by name, the movie is drenched in the spirit of spooky season. It’s framed as a memory from the narrator’s adolescence, but it also digs deep into the regret-laden conscience of the boy’s aging father.
Oh, and its central menace is a diabolical traveling carnival that preys mostly on adults but doesn’t hesitate to threaten meddling 12-year-old boys. That’s 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—nothing from this era earned the then-new PG-13 rating—but 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).
The Watcher in the Woods still hasn’t crept its way onto Disney+, but the arrival earlier this month of 1983’s 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’t as scary now as they were 40 years ago—well, joke’s on you.)
Just a few years past his back-to-back Oscar wins for All the President’s Men and JuliaJason 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.
“This is really the story of my father,” the adult Will tells us in voice-over, and while his family may not be picture-perfect, it’s far preferable to the home life of Will’s 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’s wandering father will one day return.
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’d give anything to be rich.
“My neighbors gave me my first glimpses into the fearful needs of the human heart,” Will recalls, and we see that amplified when the mysterious Mr. Dark (Jonathan Pryce) brings his carnival to town. It’s an immediately sinister arrival, occurring in the dead of night and with such a rapid setup that we know something supernatural is afoot—even if the Macbeth-quoting title hadn’t already given that away.
Will and Jim, of course, are immediately intrigued—though Will, who wears glasses and has a greater respect for danger, hesitates more than the spirited Jim. The people of Green Town also can’t keep themselves away, and the more vulnerable among them are quickly singled out and exploited by Mr. Dark and his minions.
That includes the alluring Dust Witch, played by Pam Grier, whose charisma provides more dazzle than any of the movie’s now-dated special effects—though a warning to arachnophobes, the Dust Witch’s tarantula army appears entirely real.
It’s clear from the start that Something Wicked This Way Comes’ main reckoning will come down to father and son, with the other key characters—including 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—pushing them toward reconciliation.
Charles’ 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.
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’s 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.
It’s therefore especially fitting that Charles has to reach back into his own childhood to unmask Mr. Dark, consulting his father’s dusty, late-1800s diary recording Green Town’s 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—“We suck that misery and find it sweet!”—that cut through some of the gloom.
While Something Wicked This Way Comes doesn’t 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—and 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.
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.
Something Wicked This Way Comes is now streaming on Disney+.
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