This piece will be a little different from my usual fare (consisting mainly of newly released independent horror film reviews). But I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself. Of particular interest was a discussion of a scene during which the forces of evil converge on the protagonists in the form of a cluster of tarantulas and the difficulties of using so many real spiders vs.

One of the things I most vividly recall is a “behind the scenes” special they did, The Making of Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983). Toad (1949) “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” treatment and a showcase of spooky cartoons and family movies from the previous decades, from The Skeleton Dance (1929) to Blackbeard’s Ghost (1968), not to mention the terrifying demon from the “Night on Bald Mountain” segment of Fantasia (1940). After all, if wholesome Disney was willing to bookend its constant family programming on The Disney Channel with horror titles, could the genre really be all that evil?ĭisney even went so far as to broadcast Halloween specials during the fall months, including their classic The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr.

That’s why I secretly did the dance of joy when Disney decided to throw their hats in the horror ring with Watcher in the Woods (1980) and Something Wicked This Way Comes (filmed in 1982, released in ‘83). A failure upon release, Ray Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes” is a timeless treasure that has cemented its place in genre history.Īs a child of the ‘80s, it was a constant struggle for me to reconcile my love of horror with my parents’ Puritanical suspicion of anything dark or gothic in the age of the Satanic Panic.

Something wicked this way comes 1962