"First of all, it was October, a rare month of boys; full of cold winds, long nights, dark promises."
Something Wicked This Way Comes is a 1983 dark fantasy film, directed by Jack Clayton and starring Jason Robards, Jonathan Pryce, Diane Ladd, and Pam Grier. It was based off Ray Bradbury's novel of the same name; Bradbury himself penned the script, though John Mortimer rewrote a good deal of it before filming began.
Young boys and inseparable friends Will Halloway and Jim Nightshade are enjoying their autumn when a mysterious carnival rolls into their small Midwestern town. The owner and ringmaster, the suave yet ominous Mr. Dark, offers to grant your deepest wish... for a price. Will and Jim discover Mr. Dark and his traveling band have come to claim the innocent souls of the town and lead them to damnation, and now that they know, the carnival's legion of horribles have their sights set on silencing them. With the help of Will's father Charles, they must find a way to save the town and stop Mr. Dark.
Something Wicked This Way Comes contains examples:
- Adaptational Attractiveness: Pam Grier was cast as the Dust Witch, so they made the character into a beautiful and glamorous Hot Witch instead of the stranger, creepier looking character of the novel. At one point, the mask slips, and the Dust Witch shows she's close to the novel's description.
- Adaptation Deviation: A few plot points have been changed, but since the screenplay was written by Bradbury himself, the changes were pragmatic (For example, the idea of putting a smile on a bullet would have been too goofy for a film, and a very different but appropriate death for Mr. Dark)
- Adaptational Heroism: In the film, Tom Fury, the lightning rod salesman, escapes from Mr. Dark and kills the Dust Witch with a lightning rod. In the novel, he's turned into a dwarf enslaved to Mr. Dark and the Carnival and remains a passive victim for the rest of the story.
- Ascended Extra: Tom Fury, the lightning rod salesman, gets a longer subplot than in the book.
- Chekhov's Gun: Tom Fury's lightning rods come in handy late in the film.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: In his initial appearance, Tom Fury seems like a kook, if not a complete shyster, hawking lightning rods while vaguely predicting a coming storm. It turns out he knows the truth behind Dark and the Autumn People, and is instrumental in defeating them, by killing (or at least banishing) the Dust Witch.
- Do Not Touch the Funnel Cloud: Averted; while the tornado at the end does focus on the Carnival, it's clearly depicted with an immense base of swirling vortices and debris at its base.
- Emotion Eater: Dark's carnival belongs to a race called the Autumn People feed on despair, loneliness, and resentment.Charles: I know who you are. You are the autumn people. Where do you come from? The dust. Where do you go to? The grave.
Mr. Dark: Yes. We are the hungry ones. Your torments call us like dogs in the night. And we do feed, and feed well.
Charles: To stuff yourselves on other people's nightmares.
Mr. Dark: And butter our plain bread with delicious pain. So, you do understand a little.
Charles: You are known in this town. My father knew you.
Mr. Dark: Your father? The preacher? That half-man?
Charles: He lived on goodness.
Mr. Dark: Tasteless fare. Funerals, bad marriages, lost loves, lonely beds. That is our diet. We suck that misery and find it sweet. We search for more always. We can smell young boys ulcerating to be men a thousand miles off. And hear a middle-aged fool like yourself groaning with midnight despairs from halfway around the world. - The End... Or Is It?: Mr. Dark's corpse is removed from the carousel in such a way as it might be resurrected.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Mr. Dark views kindness and positive emotions such as joy and hope with bored contempt. Whenever his attempts at Flaw Exploitation fails, he fundamentally can't understand why and gets angry that somebody wouldn't put their selfishness above others.Charles: The wrong will fail, the right prevail, with peace on Earth, goodwill to men.
Mr. Dark: It's a thousand years to Christmas, Mr. Holloway.
Charles: You're wrong. It's here, in this library tonight, and can't be spoiled.
Mr. Dark: Did Will and Jim bring it with them on the soles of their shoes? Then, we shall have to scrape them. - Familial Foe: Reading old diaries, Will and his father learn that Will's grandfather also battled their Emotion Eater nemesis the last time he came through town, nearly five decades earlier.
- Faux Affably Evil: Mr. Dark is polite, urbane, and eloquent. He remains so even when interacting with the boys and Charles, who know exactly what he is, while still being gleefully malevolent.
- Flaw Exploitation: Mr. Dark knows everything about you and will make laser-precise cutting remarks — gleefully.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: The Carousel, which Mr. Dark used to help entrap Ms. Foley and intended to use on Jim and Will, ends up being his undoing.
- Humanoid Abomination: The carnies are in truth immortal beings called the Autumn People, who feed on despair, and "come from the dust and go to the grave."
- Mook–Face Turn/Shock and Awe: In the film, Mr. Electro kills the Witch with an electrified lightning rod.
- Nothing Is Scarier:
- Mr. Dark taunts Will by claiming the boy's mother rode back and forth on the carousel "until she was quite, quite mad". It turns out to be a lie, but he certainly sells it with the line, "You should have heard the one single sound she made".
- When Mr. Dark finds Will and Jim in the library, he chortles, "Well, here's a couple of fine new books! (shaking Will) I'll enjoy ripping out this one's pages." We never learn what Mr. Dark was going to do to Will if he had the chance, but it certainly wasn't pleasant.
- Older Than They Look: Mr. Dark speaks of Charles' father as if he knew the man, and since Charles himself is middle-aged (and doesn't remember the carnival, implying that visit was before he was born), it was probably close to half a century earlier. Dark, meanwhile, doesn't seem out of his 30s (Jonathan Pryce was 34 during filming).
- Spared by the Adaptation:
- Mr. Cooger. In the novel he's aged 100 years on the carousel and eventually crumbles to dust, which is the fate met by Mr. Dark in the film.
- Tom Fury is spared his Fate Worse than Death in the novel, where he's turned into a freakish circus dwarf. In the film, he's tortured by Mr. Dark but eventually escapes and kills the Dust Witch that helped enslave him.
- Terrifying Pet Store Rat: The tarantulas handled by the Dust Witch and set loose on Jim and Will are red-legged tarantulas: a docile and quite harmless species often sold in pet stores because they can be safely handled.
- Title Drop: Just like the novel, Charles says the film's title while quoting Macbeth once Mr. Dark enters the library.Charles: "By the pricking of my thumbs / Something wicked this way comes."
