The Age of Adaline

Magic realism is characterized by fantastical elements incorporated into an otherwise realistic world. Depicting it in films is a tricky thing. These films often require you to take a leap of faith and trust that the filmmaker knows what they’re doing. They are often immersed in romantic, sometimes nostalgic notions – think Midnight in Paris (2011) where the protagonist finds himself in 1920s Paris every day at midnight, hobnobbing with legendary artists. Filmmakers like Terry Gilliam and Guillermo del Toro are masters of this kind of storytelling, but if it’s not done right you’ve got something akin to the ponderous bore that is The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000). Get it right and you’ve got a classic like Field of Dreams (1989).

In recent years, a little-seen film called The Age of Adaline (2015) was an excellent example of magic realism in the form of immortality of its eponymous character and how it is both a blessing and mostly a curse for them. It was a modest box office hit and received mixed reviews but Blake Lively’s engaging performance and the romance at the heart of the story really resonated and stayed with me.

In 1937, Adaline Bowman (Lively) is involved in a freak car accident that makes her immortal, stuck at 29 years old. She leads as normal a life as she can, raising her daughter and moving around, assuming fake identities in order to elude attention. It understandably puts a strain on their relationship as she watches her child grow old while she remains the same.

Adaline is very careful, changing her identity every decade and not letting anyone get too close to her until one swanky New Year’s Eve party where she meets Ellis Jones (Michiel Huisman). Initially, it is nothing more than a lingering look across a packed ballroom only for them to meet in the elevator where they engage in some clever light banter (“I just wanted to spend 27 floors with you,” he tells her in the lobby.). She’s amused by his playful persistence while he’s intrigued by her undeniable beauty and intelligence, but she skillfully dodges his flirtations. After all, she’s been doing it longer than he’s been alive.

As fate would have it, Adaline and Ellis’ paths cross again when he donates a collection of expensive first edition books to the archives of the library where she works. He even brings her “some flowers” – Daisy Miller, Dandelion Wine, and White Oleander, which is an amusingly clever gesture. He wears down her resolve and she agrees to go out on a date with him. The rest of the film plays out Adaline’s dilemma – does she tell this man she is falling in love with her secret – with a significant plot twist halfway through that puts their budding relationship in jeopardy.

Blake Lively effortlessly conveys the wise-beyond-her-years Adaline without overstating it. The actress has a natural grace and beauty that is stunning to watch but she infuses her character with a subtle, haunted quality of someone that has lived many lifetimes and is something of a lonely figure unable to let anyone get too close as she will be unable to explain why she doesn’t age without sounding like a crazy person. Lively plays someone who is immortal but doesn’t opt for the alien-like otherness that some actors are tempted to go for with these kinds of roles, instead playing a fully-realized character that is warm but guarded.

The meet-cut scenes between Adaline and Ellis are well handled by director Lee Toland Krieger and well written by screenwriters J. Mills Goodloe and Salvador Paskowitz with Michiel Huisman excelling as the charming Ellis who meets his match with the enigmatic Adaline. He’s good-looking, witty and a sincere idealist, whom she finds quite an appealing package. It’s not hard to understand why the usually cautious Adaline begins to fall in love with Ellis. Huisman plays him as a warm-hearted romantic that matches her love of history and literature. He also shows an excellent capacity for light comedy, injecting a given scene with a witty line delivery or an amusing reaction to something someone else says or does.

I like how their relationship develops gradually. They don’t sleep together on the first date. They actually take the time and get to know each other – well, she gets to know him as he talks about his family. There’s a delicious warmth to these scenes as we root for these two intriguing characters to make it work. For a film like this to work the two lead characters have to be perfectly cast and have chemistry together. Fortunately, The Age of Adaline succeeds on both of these counts.

The real surprise of this film is Harrison Ford popping up in a significant supporting role. For years, he’s been phoning in performances and looking uninterested unless he was playing Indiana Jones or Han Solo. He plays Ellis’ father and it is a juicy part that allows him to really sink his teeth into it. He does, delivering a wonderfully layered, heartfelt performance. Ever the gracious actor, he plays well off the rest of the cast, especially Lively because of the unique connection between their characters.

This is particularly evident in an engaging scene where Ellis takes Adaline up to his family’s house for the weekend and one night they play Trivial Pursuit. The interplay between Ford, Kathy Baker, who plays his wife, Amanda Crew, who plays his daughter, and Huisman is well done and believable, right down to the in-jokes and playful needling between them. It is scenes like this that ground the film and make us care about what happens to the characters.

I like that The Age of Adaline addresses the problematic effects of immortality in a scene between Adaline and her now old daughter (Ellen Burstyn) who says that she’s thinking of moving to a retirement community in Arizona much to her mother’s chagrin. Both actresses play this scene quite well as the mother/daughter friction plays out between two people that, visually, look like they should swap roles.

The Age of Adaline is a nuanced, romantic story fused with the notion of immortality in a way that feels genuine and not some gimmick devised to separate it from other films of its ilk, avoiding the usual romantic clichés in a way that feels fresh. Krieger does this in a way that doesn’t insult your intelligence while enveloping it in an austere look and framing reminiscent of David Fincher but with a lot more warmth and this draws you into the cinematic world he has created. It is saddled with too much voiceover narration that, at times, is clumsily written, but it exists to further enhance the fairy tale vibe of the film. Less is more should’ve been the directive in that department. That being said, The Age of Adaline was a small film that sadly flew under a lot of people’s radar. It stayed with me as its characters and story resonated in a way that was pleasantly surprising. It stayed with me for days and that rarely happens. That’s when you know a film has worked its magic on you.

King Kong

Considered to be one of the greatest movie monsters of all time, King Kong has enjoyed many cinematic incarnations, most recently Peter Jackson’s lavish love letter to the 1933 classic. There is something inherently and powerfully mythic about Kong that inspires filmmakers to revisit the monster time and time again but none have managed to best the original despite innovations in special effects technology. Why is that? At its heart, King Kong (1933) is a cautionary tale about the hubris of man and the dangers of interfering with the laws of nature.

Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) is a fearless adventurer/filmmaker who travels all over the world looking for dangerous animals to capture on film. He represents said hubris and sums up his larger than life ambitions quite well early on when he tells his backers, “I’m going out and make the greatest picture in the world – something that nobody’s ever seen or heard of. They’ll have to think up a lot of new adjectives when I get back.” Denham was the James Cameron of his day.

This time around, however, he has to have a woman in his movie because the public wants romance. He finds his leading lady, Ann Darrow (Fay Wray), on the street, caught trying to steal a piece of fruit, and is struck by her beauty. She is just desperate enough to accept Denham’s vague yet persuasive pitch. Pretty soon, everyone is on board for a long cruise to a distant and exotic land. On this latest excursion, Denham has not disclosed to the crew of the Venture where they are going or for how long.

Once the ship reaches a certain point, Denham reveals his mission to the Captain (Frank Reicher) and the first mate, Jack Driscoll (Bruce Cabot): he plans to find an island not located on any map. Its denizens are far removed from civilization and worship a god known only as Kong, a mythic creature he hopes to find on the island and photograph. Denham describes him as “neither beast nor man. Something monstrous. All powerful. Still living, still holding that island in a grip of deadly fear.” It’s a tantalizing teaser that makes us want to know more.

The first 20 minutes of King Kong do an excellent job of establishing the main characters and their relationships with each other while creating an air of mystery about their destination. Denham remains elusive about his intentions until the Venture arrives at specific coordinates. They find the island and it is revealed in an atmospheric sequence that begins with a memorable shot of the ship enshrouded in fog. The closer they get, the faint sound of tribal drumming can be heard, which effectively creates a foreboding mood. The establishing shot of Skull Island is incredibly evocative and is an impressive sight to behold, capturing an eerie tone that is quite thrilling to behold.

Once Denham and his crew land on the island, they run afoul of the natives who offer Ann as a sacrifice to Kong, a giant ape. It is a fascinating snapshot of the times – the thinly-veiled xenophobia as Denham thinks he can fast talk his way through negotiations with the village chief, as if this place is just another location that is there for him to use. From this point, King Kong becomes a rousing action/adventure movie as Denham and company discover just how dangerous this island is as they encounter all sorts of lethal creatures that do a good job of thinning the away party’s numbers.

Peril lurks at every turn as Kong is forced to take out a Tyrannosaurus Rex in an exciting and fantastically-realized battle. The stop-motion animation is particularly impressive here – giving the knock-down, drag-out fight a visceral quality that is missing from Jackson’s movie with its heavy reliance on CGI re-imaging. There’s an almost tangible quality to the ’33 version that no amount of then-state-of-the-art motion capture work in Jackson’s incarnation can hope to replicate. The Kong effects still hold up after all these years and one marvels at how the big ape’s fur ripples in a given scene or how the filmmakers expertly cut back and forth from long shots of a stop-motion animated version to close-ups of his head crushing some hapless victim in his mouth or large hand or foot stomping someone that gets in his way. Conversely, the pained expression on his face when he realizes that he’s bleeding from machine gun fire during the film’s climactic battle is particularly heartbreaking.

Robert Armstrong plays Denham with the kind of can-do, might-makes-right, self-made man qualities that would be popular in many 1980s action movies. For example, once Ann is captured by Kong, Denham and Jack go rampaging through the jungle needlessly killing a dinosaur after they’ve already subdued it with gas grenades. Denham represents naked ambition – a man that will risk life and limb to get what he wants even if it means taking an impoverished woman off the street and convincing her to make a film on an exotic land far away. She’s starving and has nothing to lose, which makes her decision an easy one. He wants to capture the giant ape so badly that he even considers using Ann as bait. All he sees is dollar signs – fame and fortune no matter the cost.

Fay Wray is excellent as Ann, a woman drawn to Denham’s expedition as a way to escape her poor living conditions only to become a part of something that she hadn’t bargained for in her wildest dreams (or nightmares). Her screen test for Denham does a nice job of showcasing Wray’s acting chops as Ann has to react to her director’s instructions. The actress is so convincing that she has the ship’s crew invested in her performance. Right from her first on-screen appearance, we empathize with Ann and care about what happens to her, which is important when she arrives on the island and is immediately put in peril. Wray also has the challenge of acting opposite Kong and it is her reactions that help flesh out the creature and make him sympathetic.

Kong’s “inspection” of Ann is that of an adolescent discovering women for the first time – he’s inquisitive and tentative, intrigued by what she wears and even how she smells. It is a fascinating scene in large part because it gives Kong some depth – he’s not just some dumb monster rampaging through the jungle but rather a curious creature fiercely protective of Ann.

The movie was remade in 1976 and again in 2005 by Peter Jackson who re-imagined it as an epic, mega-budget, fanboy love letter to the original that inspired him to become a movie director in the first place. Clocking in at double the running time of the ’33 version, Jackson’s movie is an ambitious juggernaut that, like his The Lord of the Rings trilogy, is ambitious in scale and scope and yet still has that personal touch.

Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) is a struggling Vaudevillian actress whose venue has been closed down due to poor attendance. The country is in the grips of the Great Depression and times are tough. Carl Denham (Jack Black) is a filmmaker working on an adventure film that is in danger of losing its funding. However, he has come into the possession of a map to a mysterious island that may save his film. Denham even tricks up-and-coming screenwriter Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody) to stay on board so that he can finish the film’s screenplay. In desperation, Denham steals the existing cans of film and assembles a cast and crew (including Ann) and sets sail for the island on his map.

Jackson follows the story structure of the original quite faithfully but fleshes out each segment so that we spend more time in New York City/on the boat, Skull Island and back in the city. He takes the elements from these segments and amplifies them. For example, Kong doesn’t fight a Tyrannosaurus Rex, he fights three of them! Jackson also goes to great lengths to flesh out the main characters and show what motivates them, developing their relationships. By the time we get to the action sequences we know what makes them tick, what is at stake and what they have to lose thereby making the action sequences more compelling.

He still manages to think like an independent director by inserting whimsical interludes, like those early on in the film between Denham and his assistant (Colin Hanks). It is these details that are just as important as capturing Manhattan circa 1930s. Jackson thinks on a macro and micro level unlike Michael Bay who works on a grandiose level.

The attention to period detail is incredible. ‘30s era Manhattan is faithfully recreated with the extensive use of warm, golden lighting being quite inviting. There is a scene where Denham convinces Ann to join his expedition that takes place in a diner, which looks like something out of an Edward Hopper painting. Another example is the glowing, warm light that comes out of the portholes of the Venture in the background of a scene that suggests warm life and a more intimate feeling. There is a connection between the characters and all the elements in the scene.

Jackson is also a master at creating the kind of atmospheric worlds in his movies that immerse the viewer completely. The places the characters inhabit have that lived in look and an authenticity that gives this world texture. The lighting in this film is impressive with nods to Classic Hollywood cinema. For example, Naomi Watts looks absolutely radiant in the initial scenes on the boat as Jackson manages to top the visual splendor of James Cameron’s Titanic (1997). In sharp contrast is his depiction of Skull Island as a horrifying, foreboding place, a harsh environment filled with jagged rocks and inhabited by nightmarish natives. There is something very unnatural about them and it’s in their wild and crazed eyes.

The movie takes us deeper into the island as the rescue party sets out to find and bring back Ann from the clutches of Kong. This is an action-packed section that manages to top anything seen in the first three Jurassic Park movies. The Brontosaurus stampede, for example, is intense and exciting as is the Tyrannosaurus/Kong rumble in the jungle.

Jackson is able to create almost unbearable amounts of tension out of every exciting chase as the rescue party is picked off by Kong and other nasties on Skull Island. He also gently guides us into terror as we go from the whimsy of the Ann-Jack romance to the tension and an unease of the fog-enshrouded, uncharted waters of the island. Its first appearance, cued by ominous music and then the sight of the massive wall appearing out of the fog is impressively staged.

At the time, Kong was arguably the most realistically CGI rendered character ever put on film (even topping Jackson’s previous achievement with Gollum from the Rings films) and this is due in large part to Andy Serkis providing the basis for the ape’s movements and the realistic expressions on the animal’s face. For example, there is a scene where Darrow performs for him and we see his mood go from anger to bemusement and back to anger when she stops. We see all of these emotions play out on Kong’s face in completely believable fashion. It really is an astounding achievement as over the course of the movie we begin to empathize with Kong just like in the original.

I’m of two minds when it comes to this cinematic incarnation of Kong. On the one hand, I appreciate the skill and artistry that Jackson instills in every single frame of his movie, but on the other hand, it still feels like nothing more than a really expensive fan letter to the original with the mandate that bigger is better. That being said, it’s a really well-made fan letter to the original.

The ’33 King Kong version is ultimately a tragic monster movie as the poor ape is taken from his natural habitat and exploited for profit only to meet an untimely demise amidst the concrete jungle of New York City. The real villain is Denham whose lust for greed results in the deaths of many people during the course of Kong. The movie is certainly a stinging indictment against the hubris of American culture imposing itself on foreign civilizations. Denham and his landing party interrupt an important ritual thereby offending the natives and they don’t expect any kind of reprisals? And then they capture Kong and exploit him like some kind of freak show for the rich and privileged to gawk at in amazement. No wonder Kong gets mad, breaks free and trashes New York City in an attempt to be alone with Ann, the woman he has fallen in love with. By the end of the movie, Denham has a lot of blood on his hands and a lot to answer for.

What makes Kong such a compelling monster that still beats all the CGI creations of today is that his creators were able to impart a personality by giving him such an expressive face that is able to convey a wide range of emotions – anger, curiosity, pain and even love. It is really a shame that most people who were raised on CGI effects laden movies probably won’t appreciate the artistry that went into making Kong and laugh at the dated effects. For those of us who grew up in the pre-CGI days, weaned on glorious Ray Harryhausen classics like Jason and the Argonauts (1963), Kong still thrills. It is also one of the best action/adventure films ever made.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

The 1980s was a fertile period for fantasy films and Disney tried to capitalize on this in the early part of the decade with an adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s classic novel Something Wicked This Way Comes. This was a turbulent time for the Mouse House as they struggled with making commercially successful live-action and animated movies. So, they decided to take a chance on a few projects that did not originate in-house and were not typical Disney fare, including Tex (1982), Tron (1982) and this Bradbury adaptation (1983). The author adapted his own work and legendary director Jack Clayton (The Innocents) came on board, but the project was plagued with several post-production problems that threatened its integrity. This is apparent in the amped up, special effects-laden finale, but it does little to diminish the power of the film.

Something Wicked This Way Comes is narrated by Will Halloway as an adult (Arthur Hill) reflecting on his misadventures as a 12-year-old (Vidal Peterson) with best friend Jim Nightshade (Shawn Carson) during October in the small town of Green Town, Illinois. We see them playing together after school and Clayton really captures the carefree life that kids enjoy at that age, how “you want to run forever through the fields, because up ahead, 10,000 pumpkins lie waiting to be cut,” as the voiceover narration says. In a few minutes, Clayton captures a bygone era so brilliantly that you can almost touch the leaves or smell the crisp, cold air. The film is drenched in autumnal atmosphere, thanks to legendary cinematographer Stephen H. Burum (Rumble Fish), so that you want to run forever and can almost smell the smoke in the air as the voiceover narration informs us.

Traveling lightning rod salesman Tom Fury (Royal Dano) tells Jim that his house is in need of protection. While Tom is trying to make a sale, he is also foreshadowing the danger that will threaten Jim and his friend later on. Something Wicked offers a loving, romantic look at small-town life as we meet key townsfolk who all know each other. This sets up the fragility of the town’s infrastructure and how one dark storm can threaten it, giving Will (and us) his “first glimpses into the fearful needs of the human heart,” as his older self sagely observes. Clayton introduces all of these personable pillars of the community so that we become invested in them and this establishes just what is at stake. This pays off later on so that we are put on edge when we see them in peril as their very dreams and desires are preyed upon in order to take their souls.

One night, a train brings a carnival to town. Jim and Will sneak out of their respective homes to take a look at the train as it arrives. All the tents and attractions are erected simultaneously as if by magic. The boys soon meet Mr. Dark (Jonathan Pryce), the proprietor of the Pandemonium Carnival and an enigmatic figure full of mystery and magic. We get a little teaser of this when Jim and Will first meet him and notice a constantly moving and swirling tattoo on his arm. They also witness other strange magic at work, like a striking carousel that goes in the opposite direction, causing those that ride it to get younger. Mr. Dark subsequently uses the Dust Witch (Pam Grier), “the most beautiful woman in the world,” to bewitch and seduce the men in the town.

Something Wicked is chock full of gorgeous cinematography, like the shot of the carnival at night in silhouette while dark storm clouds gather overhead. There is also disturbing imagery like when Jim and Will discover the latter’s head decapitated by a guillotine or a menacing green mist that pursues the boys as they run home or the onslaught of spiders that invade Jim’s bedroom, reaching a nightmarish pitch until they wake up.

Thankfully, Shawn Carson and Vidal Peterson aren’t the typical precocious child actors, but instead deliver thoughtful performances as our adventurous protagonists that become involved in a battle for the very soul of their town hanging in the balance as they must stop Mr. Dark with the help of Will’s father, Charles (Jason Robards), the town’s librarian.

He’s a wise, older man with a heart condition and Clayton offers a visual cue as to the man’s fragile health by placing a coffin in the background of a scene with the librarian looking rather apprehensive in the foreground. The always reliable Jason Robards anchors the film with his trademark gravitas as he plays a man full of regret over things in his life he didn’t do. There is a nice scene between Charles and Will where he confesses his regrets. It is a touching moment with a tinge of melancholy that sets up the librarian’s desire to redeem himself. Robards brings a world-weariness to a man that has never left his town and never took any real chances in life.

Jonathan Pryce is well-cast as the malevolent Mr. Dark, using black magic to take the souls of the townsfolk. The actor has loads of charisma with a commanding voice that has a cultured, Shakespearean air to it. He has nice scene with Robards where Mr. Dark exerts his influence to question Charles about Jim and Will’s whereabouts. It’s great to see two talented actors like them square off against each other. They manage to top this scene with another where they quote literature to each other as a way of verbal sparring with some exquisitely written dialogue being brought wonderfully to life.

The roots for Something Wicked This Way Comes originated from Ray Bradbury’s childhood: “When I was seven years old, one of my cousins died, way out in the farm country. At three a.m., I would wake up and hear a locomotive passing by in the distance. For me, that was like the sound of the dead going by in the night. I never forgot it.” He always loved circuses and magic and this resulted in a short story entitled, “The Black Ferris” which was first published in pulp magazine Weird Tales in May 1948. Ten years later, actor Gene Kelly wanted to work with the author. The two men met and after screening Invitation to Dance (1956), Bradbury wrote an 80-page treatment entitled, Dark Carnival. Kelly wanted to direct it, but was unable to secure financing and it was shelved.

Bradbury took his treatment and adapted it into a novel called Something Wicked This Way Comes, which was published in 1962. Over the years it sold more than 18 million copies and Hollywood came calling with producers Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler buying the rights and the likes of Sam Peckinpah, Mark Rydell and Steven Spielberg considered to direct at one point or another. Peter Douglas, son of actor Kirk Douglas, met Bradbury in a bookstore in 1975 and subsequently bought the film rights to the novel. Douglas made a deal with Paramount Pictures and then-president David Picker, but with the stipulation that Bradbury, who had a close affinity for his novel, would adapt it himself. However, Picker left, according to Clayton, after an “alleged feud” between him and studio chairman Barry Diller and his replacement wasn’t interested in the project. After a year of it being in turnaround, Douglas was in danger of losing his option on the book and his father stepped in, giving him the money to renew the option.

Douglas met with director Jack Clayton, who was interested, and then approached Walt Disney Productions in 1981. Studio executives were looking for “something unusual,” according to Bradbury, and agreed to bankroll the film. The author had always wanted to work at Disney. In 1962, Bradbury had sent Walt Disney a copy of his novel and got a letter back saying that he liked it, but felt it wasn’t right for the studio. While working on the screenplay with Clayton, Bradbury realized that he had to be ruthless and this resulted in omissions, the diminishing of screen-time for characters he loved, like the Dust Witch, and images from the book that they felt could not be translated onto film.

Almost $3.5 million (from a $16 million budget) worth of sets were constructed by production designer Richard MacDonald (Cannery Row). It was a challenge casting child actors for the roles of the two main children because Clayton preferred to work with kids that had very little experience. Principal photography began in September 1981 on the back lot of Disney Studios. Originally, Clayton had planned to shoot in a town in Texas, but it was too close to rainy season and shooting on a back lot allowed them to stay on schedule. During filming, Bradbury kept his distance, but snuck onto the set “at sunset, just to stand in the band cupola … It was just great to be surrounded by this small town, I felt I was home.” Shooting lasted 63 days, which Clayton felt was too fast, especially dealing with special effects.

Almost a year after principal photography ended, several scenes were reshot and Disney spent $3 million on post-production special effects, utilizing the same computers that created the effects for Tron. It took so long because during filming, Disney’s most experienced visual effects artists were busy with Tron and during that time the effects tests were always wrong. It was only when they were done with Tron that Clayton was able to get proper effects done for his film. A few years after the film’s release, actor Jonathan Pryce was rather candid about the problems the production ran into. He said that Something Wicked “wasn’t conceived as a special effects film because the budget originally wasn’t there.” He claimed that Clayton originally envisioned a film about atmosphere “implied by people’s fears, and through the actors and acting,” and this resulted in Disney executives panicking because they assumed audiences wanted to see a special effects-heavy film like Star Wars (1977). Pryce also claimed that the studio spent millions of dollars on computer graphics that weren’t used in the final cut.

Something Wicked This Way Comes enjoyed mostly positive reviews. Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars and wrote, “In its descriptions of autumn days, in its heartfelt conversations between a father and a son, in the unabashed romanticism of its evil carnival and even in the perfect rhythm of its title, this is a horror movie with elegance.” The New York Times’ Janet Maslin wrote, “Without Jason Robards as the father who has disappointed Will, and is given a chance to redeem himself through the evil that the carnival creates, the movie might be nothing but eerie.” However, in his review for Starlog, author Alan Dean Foster wrote, “Something Wicked gives us a charming remembrance of Midwestern boyhood, but it doesn’t terrify us. The evil in Something Wicked does not go bump in the night without first saying, ‘Excuse me.’”

Some films only affect you as a child, benefitting from being seen at an early, impressionable age, and lose their power as you get older. This is not the case with Something Wicked This Way Comes, which is an enthralling dark fantasy – a horror film for children yet will appeal to adults as well. Careful what you wish for because you just might get it is the film’s central theme. There is no easy way to realizing one’s dreams. They should be achieved in their own natural way, but that should be left up to the individual, not dangled in front of them like some kind of carrot, dazzling them so that they don’t think of the consequences. Something Wicked is a fantasy horror film not afraid to expose children to the darkness of the world and doesn’t do it some sanitized way, but one that put its youthful protagonists in real danger while imparting important life lessons.

SOURCES

Lofficier, Randy and Jean-Marc. “Jack Clayton: Directing Something Wicked This Way Comes.” Starlog. June 1983.

Lofficier, Randy and Jean-Marc. “Ray Bradbury: Weaving New Dreams and Old Nightmares at Disney.” Starlog. July 1983.

Pirani, Adam. “Jonathan Pryce: The Boy from Brazil.” Starlog. April 1986.

Szalay, Jeff. “Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes.” Starlog. May 1983.