Based on the novel by Ray Bradbury (who also had a hand in developing the screenplay), Disney's 1983 Something Wicked This Way Comes tells the tale of a mysterious carnival that infiltrates a small, rural American town in the dead of night; and then begins granting the townspeople's secret wishes and desires. As is often the case, wishes so easily granted exact a terrible and unexpected price. Two young boys, goody-two-shoes Will Halloway and the rather unfortunately named Jim Nightshade (different as day and night yet best friends and blood brothers, natch) discover the carnival's sinister purpose and become the endangered targets of the carnival's ringmaster, the elegant and wicked Mr. Dark.

Despite being a family film, Something Wicked explores some very heady and dark material. Aside from the obvious terrors associated with our deepest desires, Something Wicked also examines the dread of coming of age, of losing one's innocence, growing apart from one's friends, and being forced to confront the humanity and mortality of our parents. Adult psychology doesnt escape this story unscathed either; the grown-ups in the film (which often equates being old with being afraid) confront fear, longing, regret, the anxiety of not doing right by future generations, the call of temptation, and the age old questions of good, evil, and whether being one inherently protects us from falling victim to the other.

Unfortunately Something Wicked suffers by constantly striving to maintain a family-friendly focus. All of the dark shadows and things that go bump in the night are prettily sanitized through the use of painfully obvious dialogue, cookie cutter characters (each with a carefully presented foible as to make the movie parabolic) and pristine back-lot sets that reassure the watcher that their own soul is in no mortal danger; that what passes is strictly fantasy. This distancing does disservice to the ominous nature of the story. Even worse, scenes that are specifically meant to inspire creepy, crawly terrors go so far over the top that viewers are more likely to giggle than gasp. (There is a spider sequence that drags on for so long even the actors seemed more bored than frightened before it ends.)

There are several saving graces to this movie, all of which are in the casting. Jason Robards (as the aging father of young Will) & Pam Grier (as the stunning carnival siren) both give commendable performances that raise the movie above the script's mediocrity. Most outstanding, however, is Jonathan Pryce as the nefarious Mr. Dark, proprietor of Mr. Dark's Pandemonium Carnival. Pryce is everything a preternatural villain should be: suave, baleful, remorseless, well-dressed, desperate, and just foreign enough with his UK accent to suggest that although he looks human, he is something very different from the folks in this simple, sleepy, small American town. It is much to Pryce's credit as an actor that his delivery of the often heavy-handed dialogue ("Here's a couple of fine new books," he says, coming across the boys hiding in the library, "I'll enjoy cutting this one's pages.") comes across as deliciously sinister rather than plain silly. His scenes with Robards are some of the best in the film and one wishes there were more of those and less cheesy special effects with wax body parts, Technicolor stage blood and characters running pell-mell through the least believable cemetery ever committed to celluloid.

The Disney DVD offers little by way of extras: there is the de rigueur scene selection, the original theatrical trailer, alternate French and Spanish language options, and (somewhat unusually) the option to watch the movie in either wide or full screen ratio.

I find myself wishing that, since the film was made in 83 and this DVD was released in 2004, the DVD makers had included audio commentary from the actors. I'd be particularly interested in how actors Vidal Peterson & Shawn Carson (who played Masters Halloway and Nightshade, respectively) view the movie as adults, as I adored Something Wicked as a child, but as a grown up I find it dissapointingly less menacing than I remembered. That said, I still maintain an inexplicable fondness for this film and secretly hope Mr. Dark and his carnival roll into my town someday.