Capital Celluloid 2021 — Day 217: Tue Dec 21

Something Wicked This Way Comes (Clayton, 1983): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 8.40pm

This 35mm presentation, part of the Jack Clayton season at BFI Southbank, is also being shown on December12th. Full details here.

Time Out review:
No wonder Disney executives went wild when they saw what Clayton had done to Ray Bradbury's novel, turning the tone several shades blacker and dampening down the sentimentality. With the arrival of Dark's Pandemonium Carnival in a small midwestern town, all hell breaks loose. Soon the locals are queueing up outside the Temple of Temptation where, for a quick moral sacrifice, everything your heart desires pops up in glorious array; children start to despise their parents, who in turn hanker after their children's youth. Clayton takes a distinctly unwholesome relish in stirring up this puritan nightmare, piling a heap of torments on the heads of his two boy heroes, and finally restoring cosy order with thoroughly forced conviction.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

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