SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES (1983)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

One of the most "wicked" things about this WICKED is the problem of attribution. Ray Bradbury is the sole credited writer of the screenplay-adaptation of his 1962 novel of the same name. Yet Bradbury fell out with director Jack "THE INNOCENTS" Clayton because Clayton commissioned a script rewrite by one John Mortimer without Bradbury's consent. This tempts me as reviewer to treat WICKED as Clayton's vision. Yet the producers at Walt Disney took control of Clayton's finished film and re-cut it in the hope of making it less "dark" and thus more appealing to audiences (to no avail, since the movie was a notorious box-office bomb). Reputedly the Clayton final cut resides in a vault somewhere, and chances are not good for cineastes to render any judgments thereon.

Yet with all that said, I'm still going to write my review as if this WICKED was Clayton's movie, because no matter what Disney cut or re-arranged, I don't think they were able to compromise the type of poetics the director brought to the table.

Of course most of the mythopoeic content of WICKED comes from Bradbury's book, and his original screenplay may have provided many of the tropes Clayton used. But I still see a distinctly different poetic tone between book and movie, and I tend to believe Clayton, acting through Mortimer, is responsible for that. It's because of that difference that I chose not to re-read Bradbury's novel prior to writing this review. I had re-read it about a year ago, and decided that most of the changes made for the movie were improvements on the book, which I sometimes found too sentimental and/or too episodic. 

The biggest difference between book and movie, though, is the attitude toward sex.

There are spotty references to sex in the 1962 novel, as when the two grade-school protagonists Will and Jim spy on some women (a troupe of actresses, I think). But IMO Bradbury is not really comfortable dealing with the mythology of sex, even in a novel that is, like the movie, concerned primarily with the male perspective on life. I find it hard to believe that Bradbury's movie screenplay would have reworked his novel to play up sexuality, and so I tend to see the hands of Clayton and Mortimer in the transformation.

The locale of Green Town, Illinois becomes the site of a cosmic struggle. "Good" is represented by dull normality, of small businesses run by men, who are, in Eliot's phrase, ruled by "excellent intention and impure heart." "Evil" is incarnated by polymorphous beings who speak to the "desperate wickedness" of normal men's hearts, tempting them with visions of abnormal greed and lust. These beings are the crew of Mister Dark's carnival, which comes to Green Town pretending to be entertainers, and intending to draw the men-- and just one woman that we know of-- into their dominion. Only Will and Jim (Vidal Peterson, Shawn Carson) can clearly see the metaphysical peril of the carnival. But Will mirrors the uncertainty of his elderly father Charles (Jason Robards), while Jim, deserted by  a long absent father, seems more than half persuaded to join the legions of Mister Dark (Jonathan Pryce).

Of the three adult Greentowners victimized by Mister Dark, the boys' teacher Miss Foley is the most interesting transformation. As in the novel, the teacher is deceived into temptation by one of Dark's minions. But in the novel, she tries to leave adulthood behind by becoming a child, whereas in the finished film, Foley regains the beauty of her mature youth. Similarly, whereas the women of Green Town are either sedate wives or spinsters, Dark's Carnival can conjure forth a whole harem of exotic dancers, or individual temptresses (like the one who beguiles Mister Tetley), or the reigning female presence, the Dust Witch, given a more sensuous presence by Pam Grier than the character possesses in the novel.

I think Bradbury came up with the notion that the carnival had appeared to earlier generations of Green Town inhabitants, but I don't remember from the novel the sense of these evil spirits being pursued by thunderclouds, which through some arcane process have the power to banish the carnival-denizens. This notion, whoever came up with it, bestows greater consequence upon the figure of Tom Fury, the ititerant lighting-rod salesman. In my opinion he doesn't add up to much in the book. But the screenplay ties him more intimately to whatever presence rules the thunder and lightning. And even when I saw the movie in 1983, the moment wherein Fury stabs the Dust Witch with a lightning-rod struck me as a deferred sex-act, the sort of thing I can't see Bradbury coming up with.

WICKED uses a lot of content from the novel, but I think Clayton probably originated quite a few of the more dazzling sequences, even in this Disney-edited version. Perhaps more importantly, Clayton shows his facility with directing actors to bring forth intense cinematic performances, as is the case with both of the antagonists: the devilish Dark and the vacillating Charles Holloway, who must find a way to overcome the impurities of his heart to save his son and his son's best friend. Royal Dano is also strong as the mad prophet Tom Fury, and though the two juvenile actors are just fair, they still put across the proper level of callow ambition and fears about the potential of adults for betrayal.