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Overview
Time to revisit our childhood. Oh the pleasant memories – biking to friends houses, staying up all night playing games, pissing our pants from the Mr. Dark and the spiders. Ah, yes, lovely childhood.
This one has is more personal for Rhys and I because it was one of our childhood scary movies. We both remember being a bit freaked out by this one. It’s difficult to find – an actually scary Disney movie, so of course they want to keep it kind of buried.
This is also one based on a book, which if you haven’t read, you owe it to yourself to do. Ray Bradbury’s writing isn’t for everyone, but it’s worth the time to read this classic. His other one, the Halloween Tree, is also an interesting story. If you are looking for something to get a hesitant reader to read and they enjoy light horror, give these a try.
So how do we feel the movie held up and what are our thoughts several decades later? Check out the full episode to find out.
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Transcript
Stephen: [00:00:00] Today we have a great episode because this is a blast from our childhood. This is what we had when we were kids.
Rhys: It’s true. And it’s one of the last movies to have the late, great, amazing pile of actors of the fifties and forties all in one place. So
Stephen: And not only that, it’s one of the few, pretty scary movies from Disney.
Rhys: Yeah. We’ll talk about that too. When we talk about something wicked this way comes.
Stephen: What a great intro.
All right. I’m going to start using those as clips. There you go, sure Yeah, so something we get this way comes now I remember this one and watcher in the woods together all the time And they did a remake of watcher in the woods. I’m not sure if they did a remake of this one.
Rhys: They have not this was, this fell into that era from 1970 to 1988, which is actually actively referred to as Disney’s dark period.
[00:01:00] And it included such movies as the black hole something wicked this way comes the black cauldron,
Stephen: which is one
Rhys: watcher in the woods. Return to Oz, which if you’ve ever seen is a very bizarre little show.
Stephen: It’s a bizarre book too.
Rhys: And Dragon Slayer. Oh, yeah. I just actually saw that
Stephen: advertised in an old comic book.
Oh yeah. It’s funny because three of those you cannot
Rhys: find, you cannot find something wicked this way comes. It’s not on Disney plus neither is Watcher in the Woods. And neither is dragon slayer.
Stephen: Yeah. I actually have something wicked this way comes obviously and watch her in the woods, but not dragon slayer.
I, now that’s a challenge. I need to go find it.
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. Apparently they don’t want it found.
Stephen: Yeah. There’s a couple of things they’ve put up that didn’t think they would, a few things like these and song of the South and that we probably won’t ever see.
Rhys: [00:02:00] Yeah. Yeah. Before we get too much further, I have a shout out to A Twitch streamer, but goes by the handle of hypnotic underscore phantom.
I came across him cause he was streaming silent hill one. And that’s his thing. He streams a lot of older creepy games and it’s not a huge community, it’s a fun one anyways. And Hey, how’s it going?
Stephen: That’s a great game too.
Rhys: After he did that, he did Alan Wake.
Stephen: Oh, I love Alan Wake, one of my top games of all time.
Yeah.
Rhys: Yeah. I knew that. I was thinking, yeah, Steve would like this.
Stephen: If he needs suggestions amnesia is wonderful. Blood is great.
Rhys: Yeah. I think I, he was just on the other day. He was doing, he’s doing the new Laura Croft, not the new Laura Croft, but the first of the new ones.
Stephen: Okay.
Rhys: And I said he should do last of us.
That’s a good one too.
Stephen: Good story. This movie is based on a book which We don’t have a lot of but we do have some [00:03:00] good ones and it’s a ray bradbury book who he’s way more known for sci fi But not this middle grade stuff, but he has at least two Horror books for middle grade kids this one and halloween tree both of which i’ve read and enjoyed but these are definitely not The standards for middle grade reading nowadays it is he is a much more difficult read than oh, yeah You really you have to pay attention and be thinking while you’re reading it because he doesn’t Drag you along with a, with your brain shut off.
There are times that you’re like wait, what is going on? Where are we? He’s doesn’t feed you lots of crap. It, the stories move fast and they’re dense.
Rhys: I would like in Bradbury’s work to today’s generation for when, like when we read wind in the willows.
Yeah,
where every chapter you had a page that was like, this is vocabulary.
You need to know for this chapter. And it was words. You had no idea what they meant. So [00:04:00] I, it’s the other cool thing about Bradbury is that he was very media savvy. He had his own television show,
Stephen: right?
Rhys: So he’s not one of those kinds of authors who was like, I’m this famous author and I’m going to stick to books.
He was constantly like, you know what I could do TV or, Hey, I could do movies. The whole reason though that we are doing something wicked this way comes aside from the fact that this is one of the few movies that I saw In the theater that’s on my list this is a Jack Clayton film.
Stephen: Oh, really?
Rhys: Yeah, because we’re revisiting old directors and Jack Clayton was the British director who did the Innocence.
Stephen: Yeah, which is a great one. And this is a, this movie is really faithful to the book. And there are a few parts in the book that I thought, We’re like, what is he saying is going on? Hard to understand the movie clarified it. Cause they had to be very visual.
Rhys: Yeah, I can [00:05:00] see that. Bradbury was around until 2012.
He passed away in 2012. And he has 123 credits to his name and IMDb. He had his own TV series that ran from 1985 to 1992 with 65 episodes. He was good friends with Gene Roddenberry. The famous animator, Chuck Jones, and yeah, and Italian Gaio film director Federico Fellini.
Stephen: I recognize that name.
Rhys: Yeah. He, it’s also said that his great grandmother, Mary Bradbury was a convicted Salem witch who managed to, yeah, she managed to escape before she was hung.
But, not only did Bradbury write this book, he also worked with Clayton as the screenwriter to adapt it into this film.
Stephen: And that really shows, because even though it’s almost a 50 year old movie, it’s creepy. It’s got, and this is one of those, we’ve [00:06:00] talked about this. We talked with Brian about this.
What is horror? What makes horror? This one doesn’t have a ghastly monster. It doesn’t have a slasher with a knife. It has a well dressed, groomed vampire looking guy. And the is really the horror.
Rhys: Yeah. It’s
His presence and the whole concept price and I were talking about this, cause he watched it with me and we’re trying to liken it to something that we would know like the people on the train and he calls them like the twilight people or something like that. I’m like, they’re almost like Fay where they have their own rules.
That they follow and they’re vastly more powerful than we are. But if you can trick them around with the rules, you can get away with it.
Stephen: Very much. So I see that. And you mentioned the train, this is a very good period piece. It takes place during the height of vaudeville and traveling circuses.
And, this was the entertainment people were looking forward to, and they do a really good job of [00:07:00] making it even for the time, making it feel like it’s, almost a hundred years ago now.
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah, they do. We’ll talk about Clayton a little bit and then we’ll get back into the film itself.
Clayton was born in 1921 in Brighton, England, and he’s one of those cases where he climbed his way up the corporate ladder. He started out. As a studio tea boy who was like on the studio, basically bringing coffee to people, except in England, of course, it’s tea.
Stephen: So there you go. New generation.
You can work your way up from that really crappy job where you start.
Rhys: Yeah. And he did, he, he went all the way up from there to best boy to gaffer, that kind of thing. He was doing all that stuff until he finally became a director. And it’s I’ve came across so many people who said, Jack Clayton, never.
Made a movie. He didn’t want to, which is probably why he doesn’t have a huge list of films. He has eight completed movies because he wasn’t, yeah, he wasn’t going to do them if he didn’t want to. [00:08:00] And every one of them were based on a novel.
Stephen: Nice.
Rhys: He didn’t do anything that was just made like the innocence.
He had the innocence and then you had shoot, what were some of the other titles? Oh, Room at the Top. And he’s also probably best known, aside from the innocence, for The Great Gatsby. In 1973, with Robert Redford, it was, it is like the quintessential, if you talk to any fans of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and they’re like, if you’re going to see any movie, you This Gatsby from 73 or 74 is the one to watch.
Stephen: That’s why nobody’s remade it since, or have they, and it just, they
Rhys: have, yeah Leonardo DiCaprio was in it. That’s
Stephen: right.
Rhys: Yeah. Clark, Joe Clark, who is the editor who worked with him on the innocence, had this quote about him that I think sums him up well. He says he was a complex man. He drank too much, smoked too much, and was dangerously unpredictable.[00:09:00]
Jack was a barroom brawler who would if provoked attack people with his fists. He was also charming and seductive which masked his many faults. I was like, wow, because if you ever see pictures of the guy, he doesn’t look like somebody who would pick a fight in a bar, but
Stephen: apparently if they did a movie of his life, John Wayne would have played him.
Rhys: Yeah, could be his first movie was room at the top in 1959 and it is credited with ushering in the realist movement in British cinema, which became known as the British new wave. Throughout the sixties. It was critically acclaimed and it gave him the leverage and the funding to make the second movie that he wanted to, which was the innocence,
Stephen: which is a good one,
Rhys: but again, his most successful film was 1974 with the great Gatsby, one critic even said it was better than Fitzgerald’s novel.
Stephen: You have to love it or,
Rhys: yeah. So he met with Bradbury and Pete Douglas. Now, this is funny to me. Kurt Douglas, famous actor, [00:10:00] son, Michael Douglas, famous actor, had another son named Pete and Pete didn’t want to act. And so Kurt Douglas. Went to Bradbury and said why don’t we get something wicked this way comes made, and I’m going to buy the rights and give them to Pete and Pete can get these made, get this movie made.
And so they tried in 1969 to get it made by Paramount and because of this stupid internal fighting that was happening at Paramount, it got shelved for the longest time and then. They finally managed to sell it to Disney in the eighties, Jack Clayton in 1977 had a stroke and he had taken time off to recover and he was just about to get back into it right when this option came up with Disney and this movie in the eighties.
And this was the project that he came back to.
Stephen: Wow. That’s that does sound like [00:11:00] a nice. Yeah.
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. Over the years, because he was only going to do movies, he wanted to Clayton turned down being the director of alien and a 1983 version of the born identity.
Stephen: Oh, wow.
Rhys: Starring Burt
Stephen: books were that old
Rhys: starring Burt Reynolds as Jason Bourne.
Stephen: I’m actually glad they waited for Matt David. Good. I just can’t imagine Smokey and the Bandit, dude. Ha
Rhys: ha! Stephen King tried to do a screenplay adaptation of this when Disney was going to move forward with it. But he got turned down because Bradley was already attached to it.
And who better to do it than the actual author of the book itself?
Stephen: Yeah, I don’t think King would have been able to do this one justice. It’s really not his style. No. The movie itself, maybe, but the style of the writing is not anything like King’s writing. I don’t think it would have come off real well.
Rhys: Bradbury originally [00:12:00] wanted Spielberg to direct. But Spielberg was otherwise occupied. He also, they also offered the role of Mr. Dark to Edward James Olmos.
Stephen: Oh, that’s interesting.
Rhys: Yeah. But he turned it down as well.
Stephen: I think that worked out well, because I can’t imagine it being creepy like it is with Spielberg and, some of the other actors in there.
I think it fit really well.
Rhys: Oh yeah, everything came together. They even were banding about Peter O’Toole and Christopher Lee to be Mr. Dark. But still, Jonathan Pryce just does such an amazing job.
Stephen: And he’s not as well known sometimes I think seeing a well known actor in some of these parts Takes away from it because you have so much baggage The actor brings in and i’m not saying baggage in a bad way.
It’s just you know him from so many things You know, that’s one of the things i’ve always said I liked about star wars was all the actors We didn’t know when they come into the movies and yeah, even the new movies Look at some of [00:13:00] those actors how big they are You know, it did that with the prequels too.
Rhys: Disney also wanted the Charles Hathaway role to be offered to Dick Van Dyke, Walter Matthau, Jack Lemmon, Hal Holbrook, or James Gardner. But Bradbury’s only choice for the role was Jason Robards.
Stephen: And he, this part for him reminded me of his part in the dream sequences in dream a little dream. Yeah.
Rhys: Yeah.
Yeah. The movie is an hour and 35 minutes. A nice, nicely paced film. It was estimated to have a 19 million budget and it cleared 16 million at the gate. So it was shot in the town of Morrisville, Vermont. If those of you who like to hunt down places and it was nominated for nine awards and at one, two 40 minutes, a little bit longer. It made 30, [00:14:00] 000 in the theaters. So it certainly wasn’t big. It was nominated for nine awards and it won four. So the results are pretty comparable when you’re comparing the two.
Stephen: Yeah. But 30, 000 in the sixties is however much now,
Rhys: yeah. So Clayton and Bradbury work together really well throughout this until, and this happens with Clayton a lot.
He pissed bradberry off by bringing in another screenwriter and not telling him so he brought in john mortimer who he worked with on the innocence? Who also worked on a TV series called Rumpel of the Bailey, which I used to watch as a kid with my dad. And he was big. He was a very vocal defendant of the Sex Pistols and anti censorship.
But he’s not even credited in the film for the work that he did. So Clayton and Bradbury kind of had a falling out about that. He had the movie scored by [00:15:00] a long time musical connection of his name George De La Rue, who has 396 credits. The vast majority of this guy was like scoring music in the forties and they’re almost all French.
Some of the things that he did in
Stephen: those notes were French sounding.
Rhys: But hang on in modern times, he did Salvador platoon. He did the sound for amazing stories, beaches. Steel Magnolias and love story, but, and we’ll see this more coming up. Disney meddled in everything in this film and they found
Stephen: out good,
Rhys: right?
They found that Dela Rue’s score was too creepy and not audience friendly enough. So they canned it. And had it rescored by a guy named James Horner. James Horner is pretty well known Wrath of Khan, Search for Spot, Cocoons, Aliens, Young Guns, Hocus Pocus, Field of Dreams, [00:16:00] Braveheart. The thing that kind of gets me is that James Horner’s done 194 different things.
But like George LaRue had already done like 200 scores when James Horner was born. You know what I mean?
Stephen: I would love to hear that original music because I thought the music was great. It fit well, it was, not over the top and but I’d love to hear what they thought was too creepy and how that would change the film.
Rhys: Clayton loved it so much. He had it performed at his memorial when he died.
Stephen: Well,
Rhys: no, but it’s a, what’s the last song you want played, when people are hanging out.
Stephen: We played boxcar Willie at my father’s funeral.
Rhys: Well,
Stephen: you
Rhys: got to play with it. Like, Clayton turned in his final version of the film and Disney sat on it for a year.
Then they completely sidelined him. Re edited the film, cut tons of material, and even reshot entire sections. Wow. Yeah. And [00:17:00] this is the part that amazes me. I didn’t even know this was like an actual option at the time. Originally, the opening was going to incorporate the first ever use of computer generated graphics.
Okay. Having the smoke from the train as it came out, swirl around and turn into the various pieces of the carnival itself Disney didn’t think that it could get, it could actually be done. So they canceled it. So they just canceled the whole scene. They scratched it.
Stephen: Successful despite themselves.
I
Rhys: know. And then there’s a big scene where the boys get caught and the dust witch is sending out this green cloud. It was originally supposed to be like hands, a bunch of hands coming after them and they run back to their house and they all hide in their hands. And these hands are supposed to be like coming in all over the place.
Lightning strikes. Disney’s that’s not going to work either. Make it spiders. So they turn it all into spiders. And if Lee Dyer is the one who directed all these which is funny, cause he’s not a director. [00:18:00] He’s if, even if you look him up, he doesn’t have anything listed that he’s directed. He was an animation, visual effects guy.
He did the effects for Tron and Mary Poppins and the animation for heavy metal. He can draw. Breasts, realistically enough. But if you look at the scene with the boys in the tarantulas, the boys seriously look older because that was shot a year after they did the rest of it. They were literally like four inches taller than they were in the rest of the movie and they use actual spiders.
So those boys had like rashes that lasted for two weeks from all of the tarantula stings that they were getting Having them climb all over top of them
Stephen: That would like that all the in the film industry nowadays all the kids groups and all the animal groups both would oh, yeah
Rhys: Yeah, and nowhere in any interview.
I came across and Clayton say he was disappointed with the end outcome he was, it was never like, Oh, this really sucks. Bradbury on the [00:19:00] other hand, Bradbury was not happy with what Disney had in the end. He liked the original cut first.
Stephen: And we’ll never see that original director’s cut.
We’ll never hear that music. Cause we can’t even get this. It was on VHS. That’s the only place they ever really released
Rhys: it. Yeah. Yeah. Now we’re going to talk about the actors a little bit and this is not unlike the sentinel This is like a who’s who of famous older actors people. They’re a bunch of my didn’t even list They were like in every western but every western television show they were in at some point in time
Stephen: Yeah back in the 60s time Everybody was in everything because all those series needed so many people all the time to feed them It’s like ncis now.
It’s like everybody you ever know has been on ncis
Rhys: and it’s not You It’s not unlike, it’s not like I’ve seen all the movies of the eighties, but this really, to me feels like the last [00:20:00] big hurrah of all of those people being in one film. And then from there on out, all those people would never be in that concentration again.
It was, they would guest spot here and there, but now you had the brat pack and, he had all these other, people who are now like that age in our time,
Stephen: it’s a big Nexus movie. Yeah.
Rhys: Yeah, you’re right. Vidal Peterson plays Will Holloway. He was born in California around 1969.
He was in 13 pieces that includes three episodes of Mork and Mindy. He was in the Thorn Birds which I enjoyed a lot. He was in an episode of next generation and an episode of deep space nine. And that’s it, Sean. Sean Carson played Jim nightshade, and this was his last movie. He was only in three.
He was in cry for the strangers and the fun house and this, and you cannot find any information about either of these guys anywhere. The closest I found [00:21:00] was Sean Carson being quoted in a book about this movie. About the spiders being a problem. Other than that you can’t hear it. There’s nothing else out there about these two, which really, piqued my interest.
I really tried nothing.
Stephen: Wow. Yeah. Jake Lloyd that played young Anakin in star Wars, it was such a bad experience. He like literally became like a gang member and quit acting and everything. So some of the stuff these kids go through when filming.
Rhys: Yeah. That could be it. That it was just a miserable experience.
He ended up with a rash for two weeks from handling tarantulas. I get it. Jonathan Price plays Mr. Dark. And for those of you who love continuity Mr. Dark is a Disney property as is Pirates of the Caribbean, where he plays Elizabeth Swan’s father.
Stephen: Oh,
Rhys: jeez. Huh. And Elizabeth [00:22:00] Swan’s father ends up sailing away on a boat.
Into the bizarre nether realm and then apparently he becomes mr. Dark
Stephen: fan fiction ready here
Rhys: There you go. He was born in the late 40s in wales. His wife is the actress kate fahey
Stephen: those people are
Rhys: Yeah, those welsh people
Stephen: Two
Rhys: of his children
Stephen: reese’s very welsh. Yeah. Yeah
Rhys: Just the spelling of my name alone and my son’s name is Price.
So
Stephen: yeah, you guys had interesting naming conventions for your yes.
Rhys: Two of his children have also been in films, Gabriel Price and Phoebe Price. He’s been in 135 films. He’s a huge theater guy. Love to be on an actual stage. He started on a show called Doomwatch in 1972. He was in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, which we just mentioned when we were doing the menu the inventions of Baron von [00:23:00] Munchausen Glenn, Gary, Glenn Ross.
Evita Stigmata, this wasn’t his first it probably was his first cause Stigmata came later, but Pirates of the Caribbean. He was in three of those GI Joe, the rise of the Cobra and retaliation. I think he was the president. In those game of thrones, one last dance, the two popes, the crown and the three body problem, which is, on Netflix presently, he’s got five upcoming projects slow horses, Wolf Hall.
The mirror and the light, the penguin lessons and Flavia, the Luce. I
Stephen: heard really of any of those coming up.
Rhys: No, I haven’t either. Mary Grace Canfield plays Mrs. Foley, the teacher. She was born in Rochester in 1920s. She died in nine, in 2014. She’s been in 50 pieces before something wicked this way comes.
She was probably best known for her long stint [00:24:00] on green acres,
Stephen: where she
Rhys: plays a boy.
Stephen: I can picture her now on there.
Rhys: Yep.
Stephen: Wow. Wow. Didn’t realize that.
Rhys: She’d also been in a few other series and films. The Night of Terror and the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. She ended her career in 1999 in a video game called M U G E N.
Mugen. I don’t
Stephen: remember that one. Ha.
Rhys: Yeah. Jason Roberts plays Charles Holloway, and this is the part that I’m talking about the paragraph on him’s long, and it’s not necessarily because of him, but the rest of his family. So he was born in 1922. He died in 2000. He was seriously a cornerstone of the Hollywood institution.
He was born in Chicago and raised in California because his father. Charles Holloway senior was an actor in his own right. He’s got 233 [00:25:00] entries in IMDb. He was acting way back when, and so this is what I’m talking about. You have this whole rabbit hole. You can fall down. He was married four times.
One wife, one wife was a producer. One had a part in a television show in the fifties and one was Lauren Bacall. Wow. Yeah. He has my research for kids. Three boys all who act and a daughter who is an editor.
Stephen: Wow. They all stayed in the business
Rhys: They did he served in the Navy aboard a vessel in the Pacific which was eventually sunk in a maritime battle with the Japanese he was not among those who died in the act But and he struggled at first acting on Broadway and he 37 years old Because he didn’t want to sell out like he thought his father had.
Stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: Yeah. He’s been in 133 pieces starting in 1950 with an [00:26:00] episode of the Magnavox theater, and then he just went on to like amazing stuff. He was in the Iceman Cometh, Tender is the Night, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre Once Upon a Time in the West Torah, Johnny Got His Gun, All the President’s Men, Julia, Legend of the Lone Ranger, Inherit the Wind, Parenthood, Philadelphia, Beloved.
In fact, all the president’s men, I believe he won an Oscar for. And then the next year, he won an Oscar for Julia too. Like back to back. And in both of those movies, he was portraying someone who was an actual person and who’s actually still alive. Which is just this weird kind of trivia about him.
Stephen: And you mentioned Johnny got his gun.
I remember that one mainly from the Metallica video.
Rhys: Yeah was known to say that he acted in films so that he could earn enough money to actually go act on stage. He enjoyed acting on stage far more than,
Stephen: He’s not the only one that’s ever said that.
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. Diane [00:27:00] Ladd played Mrs.
Nightshade. She was born in 1935 in Mississippi. And was married to Bruce Dern. They have a daughter named Laura Dern, who you might know, who was a mask and blue velvet in Jurassic Park. She was, oh, Bruce Dern was in 193 movies, including Clayton’s The Great Gatsby.
Stephen: We see that a lot. You get actors that work with directors like this often.
Rhys: Yeah. Diane Diane Ladd was in 143 different projects, and she showed up on pretty much every single television show of the 60s, and she had a long run on Alice in the 70s before moving on to the big screen with The Devil’s Daughter and Chinatown. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, A Kiss Before Dying, Charlie’s War, Grave Secrets.
She’s actually got a movie coming up called Blue Campaign.
Pam [00:28:00] Greer plays the Dust Witch. And I heard this interview where this guy was talking about Pam Greer and how striking and amazing she was. And he’s I have seen her walk into a room full of people who just stop and look at her and just seen like the most powerful men in the room, not even really able to talk to her.
And I was like that’s pretty cool. She played the dust witch. She was born in North Carolina in the 1940s and she did a hundred and eight movies Including tons of the blaxploitation films of the 70s She was in tons of those cool breeze coffee hitman scream blackula scream and foxy brown Corman was the one who wanted to put her into A lot of films, Roger Corman.
And she was in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. In fact, that was her first film. The Twilight People, Greased Lightning, Bill and Ted’s Bogus [00:29:00] Adventure, Escape from L. A., Jackie Brown, Ghosts of Mars, Bones and Pet cemetery bloodlines. So she’s been in a lot of stuff.
Stephen: I just saw bloodlines actually.
Rhys: Oh, did you the last guy we’re gonna mention? Before we go and then just do them as we go along is Angelo recedo Who was in freaks as the, I believe he was the knife throwing Dorf in freaks. And he is in this, he’s the one who smacks the tent and says, come back in 10 years, boys. And so the film itself, if you haven’t seen it, go watch it.
Cause we’re going to talk about it now.
Stephen: Part three, time to get a drink or
Rhys: whatever
Stephen: it is.
Rhys: So it starts off with this train scene and the music and the trains rushing through the dark. And again, it was supposed to have all these really cool computer, effects to it, but yeah, it would have been really cool, a nice thing to compare [00:30:00] to.
Future versions it has this narrator who is who introduces the film. His name was Arthur Hill. He was in 121 things. He’s probably best known for being in the Andromeda strain, but he narrates the thing, and it has this very idyllic opening. It’s very spooky with the train at first. And then when it cuts away, you have this, rolling hills.
Yeah. Autumn leaves, small, sleepy town. You have this guy walking through town, carrying a big bag. That’s the lightning rod man.
Stephen: Which is another thing that sets the piece. You don’t get wandering lightning rod salesmen anymore. No,
Rhys: no, it’s not. That’s not really something that happens anymore. That was played by Royal Dano.
Which I thought was a really cool name. He had been in 199 films. And that includes all the old Westerns and the original planet of the apes. And he was in the dark half. You remember saying that? Yeah. Yeah. I think [00:31:00] we saw it together in the theater if memory serves correctly.
Stephen: I think, maybe, but yeah.
Based
Rhys: on the King book novel.
Stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: Yeah.
Stephen: One of the few Christmas presents I ever got from my aunt. That was cool.
Rhys: Oh yeah. She got the book. And then we’re introduced into the town and it’s, we talk about like data dumps all the time and this really isn’t that, but it’s like a character dump.
It’s here are these secondary characters. And not only are we introduced to them, we’re shown the vices that will be their downfall just in the little things they say and do.
Stephen: Yeah. It’s a lot in this opening to get it over with.
Rhys: Yeah. You have Mr. Tetley. He’s the store owner played by Jake Dango.
And he’s all about money. Everything’s about money. You have Mr. Crozzetti, the barber who’s all about women loves him. Some women he was played by Richard Davalos. Who is in the cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
Stephen: Oh, wow. [00:32:00]
Rhys: And cool hand Luke. You had Ed, the barkeep who is all about his past when he was a whole man.
Ed is missing his. Right arm and right leg.
Stephen: No, I think it’s left arm and right leg.
Rhys: Okay. He was played by James Stacy who legitimately crashed his motorcycle and lost his left arm and his left leg.
Stephen: Wow.
Good thing they had this part ready for him.
Rhys: That’s right. He played he played in a Series called Lancer for a really long time.
He was like blue main character, but yeah you meet these three characters. You can see what their foibles are, where you have, you have guy and greed, you have this guy with lust and you have this guy with regret, who’s looking back at, meet mrs. Foley and Jim and will again, mrs.
Foley, she’s very stern. She’s very strict. She’s also pretty vain. She remembers when she used to be beautiful. Jim and Will are, like, being held after class in detention and Jim is drawing pictures of her and their time’s up so they get [00:33:00] to go and she looks at the picture wistfully. So again, here’s another character and here’s their downfall.
It’s not, that’s not a criticism either. I don’t take that as, I’m ripping on it because it’s very well done.
Stephen: Yes.
Rhys: It’s just very efficient.
Stephen: Yes, there you go. And again, you should read the book because it fits Bradbury style very well.
Rhys: Yeah, absolutely. I actually came across this review and a lot of the stuff I agreed with.
One of the things that I didn’t agree with was they were like the main stars of this are child actors and child actors always suck and I’m like,
I’m like, I don’t know that’s really a case. I don’t, I’m not taking that as a given. And I don’t think these guys did a bad job. There are some bad scenes. But all in all I got the feel that they were friends just running around having a good time.
Stephen: I agree especially for the 80s. It was a yeah good Fit,
Rhys: I think the worst [00:34:00] scene is when Jim tries to creep out at night And we’ll comes up and, you’re quitting me and you, that whole thing felt, okay, that feels like a Disney show.
Stephen: The exact same scene. I thought of when you just said that, but the
Rhys: rest of them all, I thought we’re, serviceable at least
Stephen: kids. Yeah.
Rhys: Yeah. So, we go to the library, we meet yet another character in town. Here we have Charles. He’s the librarian. This is Will’s dad. And his whole downfall is that he’s old.
He’s old and he feels old and he’s, he regrets the fact that he feels old. He has a specific regret, which we’ll get to in a second. And, but not to stop there again, brilliantly done. We also find out that Jim doesn’t have a father. So here’s another town character, except he’s far more prevalent than the rest of the town, who has a foible.
Can be usurped. In fact, the only person of all the people we’ve met so far who seems [00:35:00] like untouchable, it’s Will. Yeah. So yeah Jim keeps talking about his dad who’s on safari in Africa, and Will’s like, your dad’s not on safari, he’s just gone. He’s not coming back. Which I thought was, wow, it’s a friend keeping you honest,
There’s this kind of thing that Jason Rovars character does it and Charles and Jim does it.
And I think the barber does it, where they like, just stop and look there’s something on the wind. They can feel there’s some change coming. And I thought it was really interesting that those are the three who really are like. On Friends Joey Tribbiani says you just stop and act like you’re smelling a fart.
And that’s what it reminded me of. It’s huh?
Stephen: That, that’s actually the advice. Oh, and I’ll remember the movie later, but it was a kid. Oh, in, in the Clone Wars, Star Wars, when young Boba Fett answers the door and he’s supposed to make a face [00:36:00] because it’s the Jedi standing there. Ewan McGregor told him, just pretend you smell a fart.
And that’s what he did. He goes, so
Rhys: yeah, Tim Fury, Tom Fury, the lightning rod guy shows up at the boy’s houses. And he says that Jim’s house needs protection and it’s no mystery the fact that you have this wandering good guy who shows up in town just ahead of the wandering bad guys who are right on his heels,
Stephen: right?
And he says he can hear it. He didn’t smell it. It feels, yeah,
Rhys: it’s coming.
Stephen: You get that magical sense already.
Rhys: Yeah. Especially with this character.
Stephen: Right.
Rhys: Will gets called into his house by his mom. Jim goes in and steals some money from his mom’s stash, which is okay. Cause she’s not much of a mother.
She doesn’t get up. She’s Hey, your foods take something out of the fridge. You be whatever. I’m just so tired and it’s like this early depiction of like depression. Her [00:37:00] husband’s left her, right? She can’t even get out of bed anymore. He goes out and buys a lightning rod and he picks the scarab and Egypt, the pyramids from the pyramids of Egypt.
And Tom Fury is really just doing this as a charity. Cause the kid doesn’t have nearly enough money to buy it. He’s got like a crinkled up buck and like a nickel. And he’s no, you take this. You’re going to need this. Your house needs protection. And I was like, Oh, that’s cool. Charles leaves the library and he has one of those something’s on the wind moments.
And then he proceeds to reinforce everyone’s vices. He stops at the pharmacy. buys a cigar and Mr. Tetley is one of these days my ship’s going to come in. It’s going to be Cubans for everybody. And then Mr. Crescenti reinforces, Oh, the lovely ladies of the islands in the South. Uh, he’s Hey, I’ve got this stuff that’ll get that gray out of your hair.
And Charles is no, I’m old. That’s what it is. It’s going to [00:38:00] be. I’m fine with it.
Stephen: And that’s talking about him being old. You really get the feeling that him and his wife are quite a few years apart, 10 to 15 ish. Yeah. Yeah, you do. Much of a father to his son.
Rhys: Yeah. He goes into the bar and has a shot before going home.
And it reinforces Ed, Ed throws a football to him, he throws it back to Ed.
Stephen: A bartender that only talks about himself, doesn’t listen to other people.
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. And I was just like, okay, let’s look at this. Like from a Disney perspective, you have this father who like he’s smoking cigars right on the street.
He’s doing a shot before he goes home. You have a kid beheaded showing his head in a basket. That’s it. Which is something you don’t even see in like the original Friday the 13th, you don’t see the act and then the head that’s just not something that was done and this is a disney movie,
Stephen: right?
Rhys: Dark [00:39:00] indeed
Stephen: That’s why it was only on vhs for a very short time.
Rhys: Yeah jim’s putting up the lightning rod and A flyer flies up on the roof for Mr. Dark’s Pandemonium Circus.
Stephen: And you mentioned it, the scenes. This felt like a Disney movie scene. Yeah, Disney movie as a scene that just feels like this.
Suddenly the paper flutters right there where they need, it was just something about the angle and the lighting and everything that I would have said, Oh, this is a Disney film. If that’s all I saw.
Rhys: Yeah. And then of course. Three miles away in downtown, whatever the town is, Charles catches one of these flyers going through the air, too, and he crumples it up and puts it in his pocket, but he stops in front of the funeral parlor, and there’s a coffin there, and he’s, I don’t know that seemed a little heavy handed.
Yes. Okay. This guy’s thinking about his own mortality. But then the coffee turns the coffin turns into this woman with this red [00:40:00] ring encased in ice. Mhm. It’s what the hell was that? And then it’s a coffin again. That’s odd. He gets home and he’s talking to his wife and he’s talking to Will and Will sees that his dad has a flyer and he knows what the flyer is for and so he’s like kind of fishing for permission to go.
Without mentioning the flyer and he’s what’s that in your hand? And he’s nothing. And he throws it in the fire and wills just depressed by that. He’s really excited by the idea of a carnival coming so late the season, but Charles is sitting there talking to his wife and he’s got regrets.
And he’s he’s just so restless, must be a storm coming. Sure enough. So he slips out at night and goes back to the library. Which is just weird to me.
Stephen: Yeah,
Rhys: I mean if I’m restless at night, I might slip out to the xbox But i’m sure as hell not going back to work.
Stephen: Yeah, I might go read but I wouldn’t go to the library
Rhys: Yeah Tom is crossing, old Tom Foley, the [00:41:00] lightning rod guy is crossing the town and he sees the funeral parlor and he sees the dust witch in ice.
So now we know it’s not just Charles who sees that, and he goes inside and the door closes behind him, and her eyes open up. And all of a sudden it cuts to the train coming. Yeah. The boys hear the train coming and they sneak out. They have to go through a cemetery to get there, which I thought, Oh, there’s a little symbolism for you.
And they’re watching the train arrive and it’s just empty cars. And then the scream of the brakes, like torture their ears and they’re holding their ears and the gravestones kind of crack and start to glow. And then one of the reviews I saw was saying the special effects. Are that kind of cheesy 70s 80s kind of special effects, but it’s like it works so well
Stephen: I was thinking the exact same thing when i’m watching it that don’t try and overdo it and make it something It’s [00:42:00] not and that’s where they you know, they use the here’s what we have Let’s do the best we can with it without make trying to do what other people can do with three times the budget or whatever You know, they really made it that good effect.
Rhys: Yeah, and it makes it feel artificial but like artificial like It’s artificial as in this is a supernatural thing. This is not a natural thing that’s happening. And so it makes all kinds of sense that like stones crack and these lights glow out and it’s harsh. And you’re like, That’s definitely not real, but it’s still creepy because it’s not real.
Stephen: Exactly. Yeah. And when the next part here where just suddenly everything’s set up and lit up and glowing, that’s creepy in itself and they were like real focused on it and then they pan back. That’s another, again, Pannings like that doesn’t really cost anything extra, but it was the overall creepy factor.
Rhys: Yeah, the kids go chasing after the train by the time they catch up to it, the whole thing’s all set up. [00:43:00] It’s all there.
Stephen: And Will is wait a minute. And Nightshade’s Oh, come on, let’s go.
Rhys: Will’s all like this. Something’s wrong here. And yeah, Jim’s let’s get in there. So they’re sneaking into places they shouldn’t be.
They don’t even notice that the Dust Witch is thawed out, she’s sitting in a corner just watching them petting this spider. And then they something happens, I think it might have been the spider, but they get scared, they get spooked and run home. Charles senses danger. Like that. Ooh, something’s amiss.
His spidey senses are up.
Stephen: Yeah, it’s a little whiff whap boom.
Rhys: Yeah, so he heads home. He looks in the funeral parlor and the coffin’s not there. The block of ice isn’t there. There’s just little shards of ice and this ring lying on the floor. So obviously she’s been let loose. Will is waiting for him when he gets home.
And they’re having this conversation and they’re talking about he’s we gotta talk about this thing. And Will’s like, Nope, we don’t have to talk about this. It’s late. [00:44:00] We’ll talk about it. Yeah. An incident by the river and Will, doesn’t want to talk about it, is gonna go to bed.
Stephen: And that scene was a little flat.
It, I, it was like, this is when you’re gonna talk about whatever it is. It just wasn’t the best way to hint at something from before. I didn’t think.
Rhys: I think that this is one of those cases where you would, and nothing against the actors, but you would actually need a really gifted child actor to have pulled that scene off.
Stephen: Probably.
Rhys: It’s he mentions it’s three o’clock, that’s what they call the soul’s midnight. Cause people die, old people. And Will’s like, don’t talk like that, dad, golly gee, and it’s if you would’ve had like a good kid actor there who like welled up or something like that.
It would have actually carried that scene, but with an average child actor, it was like, Oh, okay. It’s a Disney movie.
Stephen: Yeah. But the dialogue was hard. It was hard to listen to. It didn’t sound natural.
Rhys: Yeah.
Stephen: It just felt weird. The whole, this whole scene, [00:45:00]
Rhys: Jim and will the next day, bang, get up, head straight to the carnival.
And then they’re bummed. They’re like, it’s just a carnival and nothing fancy going on here. But it turns out there is, they’re just not seeing it.
Stephen: Ed
Rhys: goes over and does one of those hit the bell things rings the bell and he gets a free pass to the mirror maze from Mr. Cougar, who is paid by played by Bruce Fisher.
Who’s been in 63 things, including the outlaw, Josie Wales and escape from Alcatraz. The thing that Bruce Fisher, Mr. Cougar really struck me was how huge the guy must be. He’s standing next to Jonathan Price and like a whole head taller than him. Jonathan Price is six foot two. So Bruce Fisher had to be like, six, seven, six, eight.
Stephen: Broad shouldered, not just tall and skinny, like Yao or whoever that basketball player [00:46:00] is.
Rhys: Yao Ming.
Stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: Ed heads over to his free trip into the mirror maze and he looks in this mirror and all of a sudden he’s got both legs and both arms. And he like smiles and he heads on in and knowing that the actor actually only had one arm and one leg It’s like that’s a pretty impressive effect for 1983.
Stephen: Yeah, it really was especially For the time period like you said,
Rhys: yeah
Stephen: He wasn’t wearing he wasn’t wearing the blue screen sleeves, right? They had to add something afterwards Yeah
Rhys: Mrs. Foley comes out from the other end and she’s all dazed and confused and she’s like it’s so bright and beautiful outside You And her nephew is coming.
So she needs to head home. And the boys are like, are you feeling okay?
The dust, which is in a tent reading Mr. Corsetti’s palm. And he’s like starting to sweat. She’s Oh, the beautiful ladies. Playing his to his lust. And she’s call to them. We go from there, Mr. Cougar’s doing a drawing and [00:47:00] Mr. Tently wins a thousand dollars, a cigar and a free pass on the Ferris wheel.
As he goes up to sit in the Ferris wheel, he’s sharing a cart with none other than the dust, which dressed up like a normal person and he’s Oh, what a great day for me. I got this nice cigar. I just won a thousand dollars bet on too. And I’m sharing a car with this. Lovely lady. And the Ferris wheel starts Jim and will Jim finds a hole in the exotic dancer tent and he’s standing there looking and Mr.
Crescenti is inside. Mr. Crescenti is not just inside. He gets called up on stage by the dancing ladies and they’re dancing around him. And he’s just laughing and having a great time. And Jim looks back in and now Mr. Crescenti is naked. Like he’s not wearing clothes as they’re dancing around him. And Angelo.
Smacks the tent with his staff has come back in 10 years. Boys too young. Then the Ferris wheel comes to a stop and the dust, which is [00:48:00] in the car all by herself,
Stephen: except for a cigar,
Rhys: Mr. Cougar, it helps her out of the Ferris wheel, picks up the lit cigar on the seat next to her and start smoking it. The boys find the carousel and it is closed.
They creep in to see it. And it’s a very nice looking carousel, but they run into Mr. Jim. Seize him. And he’s you’re the guy who owns this thing. And he has to this day, if you could do this with a tattoo, I would get one, but he pulls up his sleeve and he’s got this ornate pattern on his forearm.
And as he wiggles his hand. It all kaleidoscopes on his arm and I’m like, that is the coolest thing ever.
Stephen: Yeah. And a good effect for the time period again.
Rhys: Oh yeah. Yeah. He gives them free passes to come back later. Come back later boys. Jim takes both of them and they take off. Jim knows something’s up, but he’s curious about it.
He wants to see what it is. Will on the other hand knows something’s up [00:49:00] and wants nothing to do with any of this shit.
They come back and they’re watching Mr. Cougar gets on the carousel. And the carousel starts to go backwards. And as it goes backwards, like they’re doing this whole thing with streaming and like speeding the film up and slowing it down, Mr. Kruger gets younger and turns into a kid and runs off. And that’s another example of the effects just being like, that’s not a fancy, crazy effect.
Stephen: Right.
Rhys: But it definitely is. Ethereal or otherworldly as you’re watching it.
Stephen: Yes. Now the one part I didn’t understand is why Suddenly his henchmen in the circus. They made him young at this point and what I did it didn’t wasn’t clear in the movie why he was this first one that they made young
Rhys: He’s going back to this is foley’s house Mrs.
Foley did my take. Mrs. Foley does not have a nephew. He’s, and if she does, he’s not coming in that night. [00:50:00] She goes through the mirror maze and they convince her that he is. And so this guy is going into town as her nephew in an effort to finish the enchantment. To capture her soul. The boys see him and they chase after him and it’s really funny because is like, there’s this kid, there’s this little kid.
He was a big guy, but he’s just a little kid now. Will is that is a thing. That thing used to be a man. Now it looks like a child, but it’s just a thing again, wanting nothing to do with it. The boys chase after him into town. Everything’s abandoned out, sick or closed. Everything’s closed up.
Stephen: They went to the carnival,
Rhys: right? They head into Mrs Foley’s house. She introduces him to her nephew, Robert, and it’s the young Cougar. And Will’s gonna warn her about it, but Jim just hustles them outside, so he can’t. Cougar comes [00:51:00] outside, and they’re kinda, there’s this tense moment, he picks up this rock, and you can tell Will’s like ready to flinch or whatever.
The kid brilliantly puts it through a window and takes off. And she blames them. So they take off too. The only difference is, they got caught. The other guy didn’t but Will gets caught by his father at his house. And his father’s not happy that he’s coming home so late. What are you doing out all these hours?
Jim’s mom, however, is in their living room just dancing with some guy. And she looks a little guilty about that. A little bit. Yeah, she’s dancing with this strange man. We’d cut back to will and Charles and they’re finally having the river discussion. We find out what it is will fell into a river and Charles can’t swim.
So he couldn’t dive in and rescue him. He would have done so, but there was this drunk hobo there who dove in and rescued. It turns out that hobo was Harry nightshade. Jim’s father just before he disappeared. And [00:52:00] Charles has been haunted by this forever. It’s it’s not what you’ve done that you regret.
It’s what you don’t do. And Will doesn’t have an issue with this.
Stephen: Right.
Rhys: Will knew that it’s something his dad didn’t like, so he didn’t want to talk about it. But it’s not something that’s haunted Will. Will’s like, I just wish you could be happy.
Stephen: It was, he, I think he brought that on himself.
Robar. Yeah. That, he felt like the other guy almost did it despite him. Oh, you’re not a real man. So I’ll do it type thing, but it wasn’t that at all. So that’s his downfall. His kind of his pride, his ego false false Whatever the expectations of himself.
Rhys: Jim is talking to his mom and she says he has warm blood.
That was your father’s problem. And then you’re just a little too rambunctious. Now we see Mrs. Foley and everything’s really starting to gel. We were getting a little kind of creepy stuff before, but Mrs. Foley is there. She takes off her glasses, looks into the mirror and she’s [00:53:00] young and beautiful again and life’s great.
And she’s young and beautiful. And now she’s blind and Cougar’s watching. The whole thing happens
to you, Rick and Morty.
Stephen: I’ve seen a few, some, yeah.
Rhys: Have you seen the one with the devil opening the Needful Things shop in town?
Stephen: No, but Brian told me a bit about it.
Rhys: Yeah, it, once you see that, it takes the edge off all this stuff. You’re like, okay, yeah. Is it some kind of ironic punishment? Okay, fine.
But again, back in 1983, this was the coolest.
Stephen: Yeah, especially when you were 10.
Rhys: Yes. Yeah. Jim takes off all on his own. Will tackles him. He’s you’re just trying to run off on me. You want to go back and use that carousel so you can be older. And then you don’t have to, you can, then you can ditch me for real and just be a man.
And again, the acting here is a little thin, but really,
Stephen: the dialogue they had to work with a little bit.
Rhys: [00:54:00] Yeah. There go back to the carnival and they can hear Cougar talking about them. Dark has Tom Fury strapped to this chair demanding to know when the storm will hit. So apparently there’s a storm coming.
Tom is just utterly jabbering. So if you thought he was one of those kind of manly archangel with Gabriel kind of things. Now he just seems like a very shrunken old man strapped in a chair right now. Rosetti and mr. Rosetti, Mr. Tetley are both there in stasis. Rosetti is now a bearded woman.
And Tetley is now an Indian, like the wooden Indian that you’d see outside of the general store. The dust, which is there in white, trying to convince Tom to talk. And Dark’s insisting when is the storm coming and he won’t tell him, so he just starts electrocuting him.
Stephen: Yeah in a kid’s movie.
Rhys: Yeah.
Torture. Will yells at him to stop. And then the Dust Witch like That quick cut looking at [00:55:00] you and the boys like and they take off
Stephen: They have a bad habit of drawing attention to themselves at the wrong time
Rhys: Yeah they take off and this is where like they run past There’s a guillotine and there’s a body of the guillotine and the blade comes down and you look in the basket there’s Will’s head severed and both of the boys see it, it’s obviously some kind of illusion, but freaks them out and they keep running.
Stephen: Yeah. Freaks them out.
Rhys: Yeah. And Mr. Dark is like hunt them down and bring them back to me. And so you have this green fog that goes out and again, it was supposed to be hands, disembodied hands. And then they’re in their house and they’re like hiding in their beds and the fog smoke comes up and you can see like the fog like hits the lightning rod and it get zapped by it a couple to a couple times.
But then the boys are in there. Will is in kind of trouble. He warns his. Oh, wait, the tarantulas show up. This is the tarantula scene where the boys are [00:56:00] noticeably older. And they are, there’s like tarantulas everywhere. Will has run over to Jim’s room. He’s in Jim’s room. There are tarantulas under the blankets.
They’re on the doors, on the floors. Lightning hits the lightning rod. Everything’s gone. Both boys are in their own beds, wake up screaming. So it’s a big nightmare.
Will is in trouble because he’s been out so late and his mom’s it’s that gym night chain boy. But he warns his father to be careful. He knows that, stuff is happening. They go to church the next day and they’re singing a hymn and I didn’t look up the hymn. I was like, eh, that’s a hymn. While they are in church, Mr.
Dark has brought the circus and is on parade and he’s throwing flyers all over the place and you get to see the blind girl being led by the little boy and it’s Mrs. Foley and Cougar and you can see the bearded lady, Mr. Crozzetti and Mr. Tetley as the Indian the boys come out and they’re like, Oh no, we know what this is.
Stephen: It’s a very somber and odd parade. It’s not [00:57:00] joyous at all. It’s less joyous than a New Orleans funeral parade.
Rhys: They’re actually carrying two kid sized coffins.
Stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: In the parade, which is not That’s never a joyous occasion.
Stephen: No, I
Rhys: mean, coffins are one thing, but like children’s coffins are,
Stephen: yeah.
Rhys: Everybody is there in their new forms, completely ignoring their old lives.
Mr. Corsetti goes right past the barber’s pole. Doesn’t even turn, doesn’t even acknowledge it. The boys are expert hiders. They’re doing a very good job of hiding. Adorf speaks to Jim’s mom and hands her a piece of paper. And she walks off, people are starting to notice that the bar is empty. Hey, where’s Ed?
And the kids are down in the drain underneath on the street. They’re
Stephen: looking for Pennywise.
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. If only they’d known.
Stephen: Yeah. You say they’re expert hiders. It’s like they’re a foot below everybody in plain view.
Rhys: Yeah. Charles and the [00:58:00] doc go into the bar and they’re like, what’s up with Ed? And then Dart comes in asking about the boys.
They’ve won prizes at the carnival, he claims. And Charles knows, Oh no, this is something else. This is not cool. Dark also knows that something’s up. He’s Oh, this Charles guy knows something. And so he does this cool thing where boom tattoos on his hands. You’ve got a picture of will and a picture of Jim on the other one.
And Charles lies about who they are. And dark calls them out. He’s look, I’m powerful as shit. You’re nothing. And, they’re like standing there outside talking about this and like he’s squeezing his hands so hard that like blood is starting to trickle out of his fingers, which could be yes, he’s very tense and he’s like clutching, breaking his own skin or that’s what he hopes to do to the boys because he’s got the boys faces on his hands.
Stephen: I also took this scene as this was. His redemption for not saving his son before and that’s why they couldn’t [00:59:00] turn him later why they couldn’t control him Because he
Rhys: could be
Stephen: Yeah,
Rhys: because they make a really bad decision,
Which is about to come up because at one point Charles being all sassy to Mr.
Dark is you should stop by the library sometime and check out what, real humans are like and then Dark’s maybe I will. And he walks back and the parade starts back up and then he sees Ed. He sees Will. He sees Ed walking along and he’s Oh, something’s definitely up.
And then he sees the boys down there. So he bends down to tie his shoes and he’s talking to him. He’s come to the library tonight. He just told dark to go to the library. Why the hell would you bring the kids there?
Stephen: Because they’re so good at hiding and keeping their mouth shut.
Rhys: That’s true.
That’s true. The boys do show up and Charles. Shows them he’s got this book that goes back to 1891 when his grandfather was a preacher and the carnival came to town then and Lame the lame were healed but went mad [01:00:00] As has been the way of the devil They refer to them as the traveling people and each time the visit ends with a storm
Yeah, dark shows up and the boys scatter to hide And the scene between Price and Robards is amazing that first he starts by the pricking of my thumb, something wicked this way comes that’s the witches from Shakespeare, Macbeth dark answers back. They’re doing this whole kind of verbal fencing thing.
So darks, like he does, the boys are there. He tries to tempt Jim, just like calling out, Hey, Jim nightshade. I’ll make you a man. We’ll make it dark at night. Shades, pandemonium circus. And it does
Stephen: yeah, it’d be a good name.
Rhys: Yeah. Charles like out and out names him. You are the autumn people.
And he starts to tempt Charles with his youth. And it is like a [01:01:00] very seriously intense scene where he’s ripping pages out 35 gone. What a waste. And then like Charles reaches for him. Cause every time he pulls it out, it’s he’s getting older and he collapses and he reaches for him and darker grabs his hand and crushes it so much that the skin splits and now he’s broken his hand again.
A Disney film?
Stephen: They did shoot old yeller, so
Rhys: that’s true. Dark just leaves him lay there and walks around, goes on tempting Jim, starts lying about Will’s mother. Oh, we’ve got your mother in the chair. And the boys are just hiding like in the top shelf of some book stack somewhere. He just walks around and then he’s you got them both.
And he’s like the dust, which is your mother now. And she’s take their tongues and she goes like this and the boys can’t speak anymore. She’s just taking their speech and then he tells her to give Charles a taste of death. [01:02:00] And she basically like stops his heart. You can see his heart pulsing in her ring and it’s slowing down and slowing down.
Jim’s mother’s getting all dolled up. She’s gonna head out. She’s got a big hookup waiting for her at the fair Dark is bringing the boys along and he’s taunting them. He’s like Jim I’m gonna make you a partner and we’ll be our plaything Revert him back to a baby and you can do whatever you like with him
Charles awakens from his touch his brush with death Not only does he awaken, he must feel pretty good because he runs all the way through the cemetery, all the way to the circus.
Stephen: Yeah, those, back in those days, just rub some dirt on it, walk it off.
Rhys: That’s right. Heart attack. Yeah. He sees Jim’s mom and she’s I’m supposed to meet Jim’s father.
And he’s he’s not showing up. This is a trick. Get out of town. So she runs. That here is there’s not much in here plot wise to pick apart,
Stephen: right?
Rhys: But here is probably the [01:03:00] biggest hole He walks into the mirror maze and starts seeing regrets sees all of these regrets. He dreams He sees everybody in town and what they fell for You get to see, here’s lust and here’s pride and here’s, vanity and all these things.
And now he sees the scene by the river and will is drowning. Then out of nowhere, will is in the hall of mirrors. Last we saw, Dark had him in his clutches, but now he’s in the Hall of Mirrors.
Stephen: That’s the scenes that Disney cut.
Rhys: Probably. Now you talk about it. Because the kid can talk now all of a sudden, too.
Dad, I love you!
And, the love between the two of them shatter all the mirrors, and everything’s great. The lightning, you have lightning striking all around. Tom! grabs a [01:04:00] lightning rod, got himself free of whatever chair he was strapped in. Again, we don’t know how that happens. Grabs a lightning rod and throws it impaling the witch, killing her Disney film.
Stephen: They were magical,
Rhys: yeah. Dark is trying to get Jim onto the carousel. Jim pulls him off the ride just as lightning hits it, sending it out of control going forward and dark is stuck with his shoe on it as it goes forward. He gets older and older, but it seems like Jim’s dead. And Charles is don’t be sad.
That’s what they like. Rejoice, laugh. Ha. It’s a good time. And sure enough, that’s enough to wake Jim up. By the time the carousel stops, dark is just a withered corpse. And they cut tons of that out too, because apparently the effects guy did such a great job building that they thought it was too disturbing.
So they took a bunch of those scenes out, but then Angelo comes out, [01:05:00] we’ve got another twisted magical circus. I’m going to pick this guy up and take him to the next one, fix up the body. And off he walks and the carnival swept up like tornado Scott style into the sky. And when you think about it, like that was practical effects.
That was really good because it looked legit. That could have been like some. Some TikTok video of an actual tornado hitting a fair somewhere. It really looked like all these buildings just
Stephen: I wonder if the upcoming Twisters sequel is real, practical, that they got real tornadoes. No!
Cut! Wait! Tornado, go back! Let’s do this again!
Rhys: What do I Is Anya Taylor Joy in that? I think she’s in that movie.
Stephen: Maybe, might’ve been, might be.
Rhys: The storm is over. It’s the next day. Charles and Will are running back into town. Everything’s great. Roll credits.
Stephen: [01:06:00] Yeah. That final scene. I don’t know that didn’t, I’m sure Disney added that in.
It’s, it felt.
Rhys: The funny thing is, as far as Disney goes, like, All those people in town, they don’t come back.
Stephen: No, the town’s decimated.
Rhys: Yeah. There’s no general store owner. There is no barkeep. There is no teacher and there is no barber. Those people, those characters that you met and you’re like, Oh, I the bartender gone.
I
Stephen: really think it should have ended with it fading out as you hear a train whistle.
Rhys: That would be good.
Stephen: Yeah. Yeah.
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah, all that stuff swept up here at train whistle and off it goes.
Yeah.
Yeah, that would have been pretty cool. But yeah this Especially back in 1983 going to the theater to see this super creepy super spooky movie Amazing to this day, still a very good film.
And when you consider a, that [01:07:00] it was a Disney film in general, that’s pretty amazing B how much Disney screwed with it. That’s pretty amazing that it came out as well as it did. One of the things that I heard. And I don’t know that it’s necessarily the case because I watched it again for review purposes, but one of the reviewers was saying, I saw this in the theater when it came out and it hits one way as a kid, but now I’m in my fifties, it hits a completely different way.
And I’m like, I can see that because as you’re watching it, you are will, or you are Jim as a kid watching it. You’re like, yeah, you’re that rambunctious scamp. I’m going to stand up for the lightning rod guy. Hey, don’t you do that to him. Yeah. But, now you’re at this age where you’re like, Oh, no, I’m Jason Robards character.
Dark is just throwing the years in front of me. Oh, you want to be 37? Oh no. Oh, sorry. Gone. 38.
Stephen: Yeah. Definitely a good one to go check out the book. If you know anyone listening hasn’t.
Rhys: Oh yeah, for sure. [01:08:00] Yeah, absolutely. Hey, Bradbury in general. I always enjoyed his, and even his show when you could catch it, it was pretty good too.
Yeah. Yeah,
Stephen: I think I saw it streaming somewhere probably
Rhys: wouldn’t surprise me in this day and age.
Stephen: Yeah, that’s to be or something
Rhys: Like in a kind of like a Twilight Zone kind of thing.
Stephen: Yep, definitely.
Rhys: Yeah,
Stephen: so there’s something wicked this way comes good.
Rhys: Correct.
Stephen: Good fun one.
Rhys: Jack Clayton. Our next film is Christopher Smith.
Who did triangle. We’ll be watching the banishing.
Stephen: And this was a rough one because it was only on shutter. It’s a shutter original.
Rhys: Oh, is it?
Stephen: That’s why it was hard to find.
Rhys: Okay. 2020. A more recent film. It looks like a period piece This is one of those cases where I said at the start there’s gonna be some of these movies I haven’t seen and this is one of them.
So I can’t lead you any way one way or the other because I have no [01:09:00] idea
Stephen: Good it’ll make for a different experience for both of us then.
Rhys: There you go.
Stephen: All right, man There’s something that we get this way comes we’ll talk. All right,
Rhys: take it easy
