Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983) Review

A dark and brooding look at the sinful desires that corrupt people is not what you would expect out of Disney as a theater goer in the early Eighties. Yet that is exactly what this movie is. When a strange carnival named Dark's Pandemonium arrives at a small town, harrowing encounters with Dark and his minions follow. Soon the lives of the townsfolk are on the line, if not their very souls.  Filled with horror, regrets, and menace the movie is ultimately about fathers and sons. UPDATED January 2014 with better screen captures and completely rewritten text.

The late Seventies had not been kind to the Walt Disney company at the box office. In an attempt to regain lost audiences the studio had been moving more toward the serious side in their films; starting in 1979 with The Black Hole and the dollowing year with The Watcher in the Woods. 1982 was supposed to be the year of big change with the experimental TRON and this gothic movie hitting theaters to revitalize the company’s box office success.

Alas, that plan fell apart due to a disastrous test screening that led to reshoots a year later designed to make the movie more acceptable to a family audience. However, those changes did not change the movie enough and the end result was still a dark and terrifying movie that was guaranteed to give small kids nightmares.

Spirited Away (2001) Review

aka Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi

Drawing on the best elements from his previous movies, director Hayao Miyazaki created a beautiful animated tale of a sullen ten year old girl thrust into a world of magic and spirits. Filled with scares that every kid can relate too, it also has a warmth that cannot be denied while teaching lessons on responsibility, hard work, and love.

There are great films and then there are truly great films that last the test of time. Spirited Away is destined to be the latter and I would go as far as to call it Japan’s equivalent to The Wizard of Oz. Both feature a girl as a protagonist dealing with a very strange parallel world while being helped by locals. There are also feuding witches and a search for something special involved, but in the end I consider this movie to be far more emotionally moving than the American classic.

All movies introduce their main character early on, but I can’t remember seeing a heroine start out by sulking in the back seat of the family car. At the ripe old age of ten, Chihiro thinks she has very good reason to be miserable. The family is moving to a new town and the first bouquet of flowers she has ever received was from her classmates as a farewell present. And those flowers are already dying. Life is being so unfair.

The Watcher in the Woods (1980) Review

One of Disney’s biggest failures, this spooky thriller was aimed at teenagers and was supposed to herald a new era at the venerable movie studio. All the ingredients were there: a popular novel to adapt, the director of the Witch Mountain movies, a starlet coming off a huge hit, and Bette Davis to add gravitas. Ultimately, it failed to jell due to an uneven match of old Disney style and gothic horror. UPDATED October 2012 with new screen captures and massively rewritten text.

In 1980, Disney released an adaptation of Florence Randall’s popular teen novel, The Watcher in the Woods.  This movie was supposed their first PG film, but bad screenings led to protracted reshoots and eventually recuts of the ending. As a result, it came out in a limited release April of 1980, after the Autumn 1979 debut of The Black Hole. Even then, the studio decided to recut it.  While not a great movie, it has some redeeming points to it, mainly found in the alternate endings on the DVD releases.

I vaguely recall seeing the movie in the old Spring Grove Theater and being very disappointed in it.  In fact, this may have been the film that taught me to distrust movie adaptations of novels.  Having been weaned on old Hammer horror movies, there was nothing there to scare me.  However, viewing it as an adult, I can see plenty to creep out and scare kids (or sheltered adults) throughout the movie.  The director, John Hough, also directed one of my favorite scary movies, The Legend of Hell House, and I have to wonder what the movie would have been like made by another studio than Disney.

The Black Hole (1979) Review

After Star Wars was a huge success, Disney decided to try to try their hand at a serious science fiction film. The result was a very uneven, but visually impressive movie about explorers finding a derelict spaceship near a black hole. Filled with robots, lasers, and an underlying mystery, it was not a great success. But for those of us who saw it in the theater it was a memorable experience and I have a fondness for this very flawed film.  Come, enter The Black Hole with me…

UPDATED & REVISED July 2012: In memory of Ernest Borgnine

The movie has an overture that plays before it starts, which was a relic of a bygone era even in 1979. John Barry’s brilliant soundtrack is introduced here and can be argued to be the best thing about the entire film. It is grand, dark, and mysterious with stately marches mixing with somber swirling statements. An interesting statement of tone, it sets the mood in a very un-Disney way. This was an announcement that the studio would be branching out from their standard family fare.