So tonight I watched Something Wicked This Way Comes for the first time since seeing it in a theater sometime in the spring of 1983. Sadly it is unavailable for streaming. It may be on Sling TV with a Premium Subscription which I don't have and am not getting, but I found a very watchable VHS copy on Internet Archive and mirrored it from my phone to my TV. At the time I first saw it I remember being disappointed by certain aspects, because it didn't entirely fit my vision from reading the novel. The biggest problems I had with it were, Charles Halloway in the book was 54 years old. Jason Robards in 1983 was 61 years old and looked possibly older, though as far as personality he played the part very well. Vidal Peterson played Will well but I didn't feel that Shawn Carson entirely got Jim. Still, there were good aspects to the film. I thought much more highly of it this time through including that Shawn Carson wasn't so bad. It is beautifully filmed and there are so many nice little touches, many directly from the novel. I felt at the time and still say that Jonathan Pryce's performance as Mr. Dark was the best part of the film. It was worth watching just for him. There will NEVER be a better Mr. Dark! (Also I saw the movie with my sister and in the scene with the parade where Mr. Dark gives Charles Halloway the evil stare, my sister remarked he looked just like her ex-boyfriend, which really helped.) Although this movie is about kids, it is not for kids. During the stripping scene, a guy in the theater yelled, "This is a DISNEY movie?" There is also a lot of black magic and some violence. The whole thing is just too intense for kids. I also came away feeling somewhat less animosity towards Jack Clayton or at least some confusion as to exactly what was done how and where. A huge problem with the movie was that director Jack Clayton rejected Ray Bradbury's script and hired someone else who delivered a clunker script and Disney execs were horrified when they saw the finished movie. Bradbury said not to waste time apologizing to him but to call back the actors and reshoot. It's been remarked that the child actors looked significantly older in some scenes. Well, I watched closely and the only scenes where I thought the kids looked significantly older were the spider scene (which was mostly unnecessary and too long) and the mirror maze scene. This makes me wonder whether Jack Clayton shot all the scenes which appear to be done earlier and the film was just reedited. I know people who have studied this in depth and can perhaps clear this up for me. Ray Bradbury was solely credited with the script--the other writer was not mentioned. The book is better, though the movie climax is more dramatic. Much the same as with The House With a Clock in Its Walls years later, it went from just the evil gizmo being smashed in the book to a much more exciting and thrilling spectacle in the film. I now tend to agree much more with the folks who hail Something Wicked This Way Comes as an underrated classic. Unfortunately it is a neglected classic. Disney lost a disastrous amount of money on it and is ashamed of it. I read that they even discontinued their Buena Vista distribution which they had used for years. When my sister and I visited Disneyland in 2010, the mechanical witch from the movie was set up telling fortunes at a quarter apiece, I joked trying to earn back all the money they lost. The fortunes we got were strangely appropriate. This film is highly recommended for whatever age you think your child can handle certain aspects and up.

Clayton didn't outright reject Ray's script. He just turned up at a script meeting with a new version, causing Ray to ask "What the f*** is this???"

I tell the story of the re-editing and partial re-shooting of Something Wicked in my podcast - based largely on production documents in Bradbury's files. Some of Ray's claims of what happened are true, but some are exaggerated.

Direct link to the podcast episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/...1939?i=1000613486403

Thanks.