A Hippie in the House of Mouse (Jim Henson at Disney, 1980)
- Thread starter Geekhis Khan
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I've just binged this whole thread, and I'm loving it!
Remind me to poke you when 1988 rolls around to remind you that (barring butterflies) Marvel's coming up for sale that year. There's already three timelines that are examining what if Jim Shooter (Who nearly managed it IOTL) bought it out at that point. It'd be interesting to see a timeline where Disney buys it earlier. The IP alone would be valuable - think of the rides they could build (you could see an anamatronic Spide-Man swinging over Disney parks decades sooner that he did IOTL if th level of Henson/Imagineer collaboration proceeds as well as it's already doing), the animated movies they could make...
Speaking of animated movies, will Disney not screw over Robin Williams in this timeline? So animated films won't be banking on big-name actors ITTL?
Remind me to poke you when 1988 rolls around to remind you that (barring butterflies) Marvel's coming up for sale that year. There's already three timelines that are examining what if Jim Shooter (Who nearly managed it IOTL) bought it out at that point. It'd be interesting to see a timeline where Disney buys it earlier. The IP alone would be valuable - think of the rides they could build (you could see an anamatronic Spide-Man swinging over Disney parks decades sooner that he did IOTL if th level of Henson/Imagineer collaboration proceeds as well as it's already doing), the animated movies they could make...
Speaking of animated movies, will Disney not screw over Robin Williams in this timeline? So animated films won't be banking on big-name actors ITTL?
Disney buying Marvel in 1984 instead of New World would be an interesting change - Marvel ‘84 is a different Corp to Marvel ‘87 when it was sold to Perelman’s Andrew & Forbes.
However a timeline where New World makes a go of owning Marvel rather than ditch it would be a refreshing change. How would New World develop Marvel Entertainment esp in competition with Disney and the like?
However a timeline where New World makes a go of owning Marvel rather than ditch it would be a refreshing change. How would New World develop Marvel Entertainment esp in competition with Disney and the like?
Welcome aboard, Yvonmukluk! And yes, I'll be addressing comics relatively soon. The Disney animation "renaissance" will be notably different here.
Something Wicked this way Comes
Something Wicked This Way Comes (1982)
Nostalgia was Way Better when I was a Kid Netsite, October 31st, 1998
Those of us who were kids in the 1980s knew terror, real terror, and not just because of the whole “nuclear war will exterminate the human race any day now” thing. We knew it through our movies. Seriously, children’s movies in the 1980s were truly fucked up. I’ve told you all before about how, back then, “PG” didn’t mean “Practically G-rated”, it meant “Pretty Gruesome”. This was before the T rating[1], and even today’s “Ts” are pretty “Tame” compared to PG back in the day. Back then, a PG feature could contain drug use, profanity, gory violence, or even nudity[2]! Oh, and terror – pure, fresh-squeezed, undiluted nightmare juice.
This was the era of The Dark Crystal, The Black Cauldron, and Return to Oz, and that’s just the Disney stuff! Never mind the melting Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark and the heart-devouring horror of Mask of the Monkey King. And a lesser-known squeeze of that early ‘80s Disney nightmare juice came just in time for Halloween of 1982[3]. This was Something Wicked This Way Comes, written by Ray Bradbury based upon his novella and directed by Jack Clayton. And that is today’s subject.
“Something Wicked” indeed! It was early ‘80s PG horror at its creepiest. The movie combined all the Henson “Creature Shop’s” most ingenious effects combined with pioneering computer effects, all of which would be nominated for a Best Effects Oscar only to lose out to E.T. The Extra Terrestrial (a terrifying movie in its own right!). One stand-out scene from Something Wicked was the creepy, empty circus train, which rolls into town and the menacing Evil Circus that slowly assembles itself from it, all done with what were at the time cutting edge computer effects[4]. And, of course, who can forget the scene of Mr. Dark’s giant hand crashing through the wall to grab our protagonist, a practical effect masterfully created by the Creature Shop[5]? I know I can’t. Just ask my therapist. I had many a sleepless night as a child certain that a giant, disembodied hand was going to crash through my bedroom wall like a demonic Kool Aid man!
The story follows young Will Halloway (Vidal Peterson) and his friend Jim Nightshade (Shawn Carson) as they hear about the arrival of a strange traveling circus, Mr. Dark's Pandemonium Carnival, and go to investigate. These audience surrogates then witness the demonic carnival assemble itself and meet the truly creepy Mr. Dark himself (Jonathan Pryce), who slowly takes over the town. And inevitably Will and Jim’s parents (Jason Robarts and Dianne Ladd, respectively) must help fend off the evil that is Mr. Dark, the Illustrated Man! This is pretty creepy stuff to watch today as an adult. It was horrendously terrifying when you were a kid. It makes you wonder if Disney at the time was secretly a subsidiary of the company that manufacturers Xanax.
And yet, it could have been even more terrifying! Jack Clayton’s original cut was reportedly even scarier. The Disney execs saw a screening over the summer and they were appalled. They wanted drastic cuts and even a new score[6]! They might have gotten it had their new Chief Creative Officer Jim Henson not stood his ground. Henson was of the opinion that children didn’t just want to be scared, they needed to be scared! Henson, and the films he produced at the time, may be largely responsible for your current state of psychological trauma. I recommend forwarding your therapy bills to him.
Anyway, Henson asked for the chance to take a chop at it before the studio started costly reshoots and changes. Henson worked with the editing team of Art Nelson and Barry Gordon and developed a faster paced cut that shortened the film down to 105 minutes and added a sense of urgency[7]. Frank Oz did a few reshoots to help smooth out some of the transitions and tamper down some of the more terrifying scenes that bothered the execs so much. The menacing score by Georges Delerue was retained, though some sound editing was used to soften the “Exorcist-like quality” of the original cut for the execs (Delerue would win the Saturn Award for best score, which made 3 Saturn wins for the film alongside Best Fantasy Film and Best Writing).
The results were still too scary for Disney, so they hid their participation behind the Fantasia Films label.
Anyway, the film that brought childhood terror to Middle America both on-screen and off premiered in October of ‘82, where it offered a more family-friendly (for the time!) alternative to sequels of Amityville Horror and Halloween. And SSRI manufacturers’ stock grew three sizes that day. The film was not a raging success at the time, roughly breaking even domestically against its $15 million budget[8]. Critics were divided. It was either “ethereal and menacing” or “erratic and confusing” depending on the reviewer. Audiences mostly liked it, though theater turnout was relatively low since it was generally too scary for kids and too tame for teenagers, who flocked instead to Amityville II. The studio wrote it off as a loss.
Something Wicked would be vindicated later, though. International sales were great, ultimately leading to the film turning a small profit. It would also see notable video sales and TV runs, and is now considered a cult classic. It also holds a special place in the collective memories and therapy sessions of those of us whom it traumatized back in the day.
Oh, and the film also provided Disney fans with a tantalizing piece of metacontext, for something “wicked” was indeed coming – to Disney itself!
End of Part II - Part 3 starts tomorrow!! Oh, and @Unknown your timing was perfect! - GK
[1] T for “Teen”, effectively this timeline’s PG-13.
[2] Seriously. My mom nearly had a heart attack when they took me to see The Beastmaster and two topless women emerged from a lake (Dad wanted to see Conan the Barbarian but heard it was inappropriate for kids, so this was, ironically, their “kid friendly” alternative). Disney’s own Never Cry Wolf even featured male frontal nudity.
[3] It was released in this timeline on October 8th, 1982, where it most directly competed with an anime version of The Wizard of Oz.
[4] This scene got drastically cut down in our timeline.
[5] In our timeline the effect was done in-house by Disney and was reportedly so bad that they had to reshoot it (it was replaced with the “swarm of spiders” scene), which, among other things, pushed the release back and significantly increased the budget. Practical, lifelike effects are the Creature Shop’s bread and butter, even back then, so it stands to reason that the effect will be much cooler with Faz and company behind it.
[6] This is what happened in our timeline. James Horner took over the score. Reshoots and reedits cost $5 million and delayed the release to spring of 1983.
[7] Henson was an early adopter (mid ‘60s) of the fast-cut technique later used extensively by New Hollywood in the ‘70s and ‘80s. You can see it in Timepiece and Youth ‘68.
[8] Compare to $8.5 million against a $19 million budget in our timeline; here costly reshoots were avoided, but total sales were unlikely to be too much better even with little direct competition (it was released here between E.T.’s first run and Christmas re-release). I based the gross off of the other horror films released at the time.
Nostalgia was Way Better when I was a Kid Netsite, October 31st, 1998
Those of us who were kids in the 1980s knew terror, real terror, and not just because of the whole “nuclear war will exterminate the human race any day now” thing. We knew it through our movies. Seriously, children’s movies in the 1980s were truly fucked up. I’ve told you all before about how, back then, “PG” didn’t mean “Practically G-rated”, it meant “Pretty Gruesome”. This was before the T rating[1], and even today’s “Ts” are pretty “Tame” compared to PG back in the day. Back then, a PG feature could contain drug use, profanity, gory violence, or even nudity[2]! Oh, and terror – pure, fresh-squeezed, undiluted nightmare juice.
This was the era of The Dark Crystal, The Black Cauldron, and Return to Oz, and that’s just the Disney stuff! Never mind the melting Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark and the heart-devouring horror of Mask of the Monkey King. And a lesser-known squeeze of that early ‘80s Disney nightmare juice came just in time for Halloween of 1982[3]. This was Something Wicked This Way Comes, written by Ray Bradbury based upon his novella and directed by Jack Clayton. And that is today’s subject.
“Something Wicked” indeed! It was early ‘80s PG horror at its creepiest. The movie combined all the Henson “Creature Shop’s” most ingenious effects combined with pioneering computer effects, all of which would be nominated for a Best Effects Oscar only to lose out to E.T. The Extra Terrestrial (a terrifying movie in its own right!). One stand-out scene from Something Wicked was the creepy, empty circus train, which rolls into town and the menacing Evil Circus that slowly assembles itself from it, all done with what were at the time cutting edge computer effects[4]. And, of course, who can forget the scene of Mr. Dark’s giant hand crashing through the wall to grab our protagonist, a practical effect masterfully created by the Creature Shop[5]? I know I can’t. Just ask my therapist. I had many a sleepless night as a child certain that a giant, disembodied hand was going to crash through my bedroom wall like a demonic Kool Aid man!
The story follows young Will Halloway (Vidal Peterson) and his friend Jim Nightshade (Shawn Carson) as they hear about the arrival of a strange traveling circus, Mr. Dark's Pandemonium Carnival, and go to investigate. These audience surrogates then witness the demonic carnival assemble itself and meet the truly creepy Mr. Dark himself (Jonathan Pryce), who slowly takes over the town. And inevitably Will and Jim’s parents (Jason Robarts and Dianne Ladd, respectively) must help fend off the evil that is Mr. Dark, the Illustrated Man! This is pretty creepy stuff to watch today as an adult. It was horrendously terrifying when you were a kid. It makes you wonder if Disney at the time was secretly a subsidiary of the company that manufacturers Xanax.
And yet, it could have been even more terrifying! Jack Clayton’s original cut was reportedly even scarier. The Disney execs saw a screening over the summer and they were appalled. They wanted drastic cuts and even a new score[6]! They might have gotten it had their new Chief Creative Officer Jim Henson not stood his ground. Henson was of the opinion that children didn’t just want to be scared, they needed to be scared! Henson, and the films he produced at the time, may be largely responsible for your current state of psychological trauma. I recommend forwarding your therapy bills to him.
Anyway, Henson asked for the chance to take a chop at it before the studio started costly reshoots and changes. Henson worked with the editing team of Art Nelson and Barry Gordon and developed a faster paced cut that shortened the film down to 105 minutes and added a sense of urgency[7]. Frank Oz did a few reshoots to help smooth out some of the transitions and tamper down some of the more terrifying scenes that bothered the execs so much. The menacing score by Georges Delerue was retained, though some sound editing was used to soften the “Exorcist-like quality” of the original cut for the execs (Delerue would win the Saturn Award for best score, which made 3 Saturn wins for the film alongside Best Fantasy Film and Best Writing).
The results were still too scary for Disney, so they hid their participation behind the Fantasia Films label.
Anyway, the film that brought childhood terror to Middle America both on-screen and off premiered in October of ‘82, where it offered a more family-friendly (for the time!) alternative to sequels of Amityville Horror and Halloween. And SSRI manufacturers’ stock grew three sizes that day. The film was not a raging success at the time, roughly breaking even domestically against its $15 million budget[8]. Critics were divided. It was either “ethereal and menacing” or “erratic and confusing” depending on the reviewer. Audiences mostly liked it, though theater turnout was relatively low since it was generally too scary for kids and too tame for teenagers, who flocked instead to Amityville II. The studio wrote it off as a loss.
Something Wicked would be vindicated later, though. International sales were great, ultimately leading to the film turning a small profit. It would also see notable video sales and TV runs, and is now considered a cult classic. It also holds a special place in the collective memories and therapy sessions of those of us whom it traumatized back in the day.
Oh, and the film also provided Disney fans with a tantalizing piece of metacontext, for something “wicked” was indeed coming – to Disney itself!
- ∞ -
End of Part II - Part 3 starts tomorrow!! Oh, and @Unknown your timing was perfect! - GK
[1] T for “Teen”, effectively this timeline’s PG-13.
[2] Seriously. My mom nearly had a heart attack when they took me to see The Beastmaster and two topless women emerged from a lake (Dad wanted to see Conan the Barbarian but heard it was inappropriate for kids, so this was, ironically, their “kid friendly” alternative). Disney’s own Never Cry Wolf even featured male frontal nudity.
[3] It was released in this timeline on October 8th, 1982, where it most directly competed with an anime version of The Wizard of Oz.
[4] This scene got drastically cut down in our timeline.
[5] In our timeline the effect was done in-house by Disney and was reportedly so bad that they had to reshoot it (it was replaced with the “swarm of spiders” scene), which, among other things, pushed the release back and significantly increased the budget. Practical, lifelike effects are the Creature Shop’s bread and butter, even back then, so it stands to reason that the effect will be much cooler with Faz and company behind it.
[6] This is what happened in our timeline. James Horner took over the score. Reshoots and reedits cost $5 million and delayed the release to spring of 1983.
[7] Henson was an early adopter (mid ‘60s) of the fast-cut technique later used extensively by New Hollywood in the ‘70s and ‘80s. You can see it in Timepiece and Youth ‘68.
[8] Compare to $8.5 million against a $19 million budget in our timeline; here costly reshoots were avoided, but total sales were unlikely to be too much better even with little direct competition (it was released here between E.T.’s first run and Christmas re-release). I based the gross off of the other horror films released at the time.
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Never heard of this movie @Geekhis Khan -thanks for the education.
Sounds like a success in some ways for Henson and co even if not a blockbuster. Bet it has a decent ‘Rotten Tomatoes’ score.
Sounds like a success in some ways for Henson and co even if not a blockbuster. Bet it has a decent ‘Rotten Tomatoes’ score.
Not a problem. It's one of those forgotten films from the Ron Miller era.
"Movie Report Card" ITTL gives it a B+. This TL's equivalent of Rotten Tomatoes would give it the equivalent of a Fresh (but not "Certified Fresh") rating.
I forgot that it got sold in '84 first! That's definitely much closer to the 'present' of this timeline.
I forget who it was that once the purchase was finalised, announced 'we just bought Superman!'
I didn't know that thing about PG containing all of that. The "old lion" complaining about Disney making PG movies makes so much sense now! I just thought he had drank Disney's own kool-aid that every movie they made during Walt's time was 100% kid-friendly in every way 
I didn't know that thing about PG containing all of that. The "old lion" complaining about Disney making PG movies makes so much sense now! I just thought he had drank Disney's own kool-aid that every movie they made during Walt's time was 100% kid-friendly in every way
Yea, seriously be careful with the kids with anything "PG" rated from the '70s or early '80s. Many of them would be a hard "R" today. It's almost shocking how gory Raiders and Temple of Doom are, and both were "PG". Not all, mind you. Star Wars (i.e. "A New Hope") was PG and hardly much worse than today's PGs.
Not just for the gore, either. It's shocking to our sensibilities today just how cavalier PG-rated films were about nudity prior to the mid-1980s.
I honestly think that we wouldn't have this trouble if the film industry had a rating system similar to the ESRB. eC all the way to Ao. Anywho, I suppose that TTL's Disney Renaissance will be starting in the mid-80s. This could get interesting to say the least, especially if, somehow Black Cauldron is a runaway hit. At which point, we can expect Disney to FINALLY get into home media.
Exactly. As a 6/7 year old seeing bewbs on Beastmaster was hilarious to me. For my mom, not so much. And let's just say that the nudity was wholly gratuitous, no reason for it at all other than "beeewwwwbbbssss," as the Epic Voice Guy on Honest Trailers would say. The nudity in Never Cry Wolf was quite tasteful however, and fit well with the themes of nature and wildness.
Late to the party, but oh my goodness. I just read the first two posts aloud to my wife, who is a big Henson fan. This is absolutely brilliant stuff, and I'll probably make this a daily reading experience until we catch up, whereupon it'll be a... weekly (hopefully?) reading experience.
Thank you so much. This is why I come to AH.com.
Wow. Something serendipitous this way came.😲
And yea, no one in their right mind is going to go head to head with RotJ.
You're welcome, thank you, and welcome aboard to you and your wife. New posts are on th "T's" and "S's" (Tue, Thur, Sat, Sun).
Great chapter! Nice one
Heck, when I was a kid I remember watching James Bond movies on VHS - they were all PG-rated, except for License to Kill and Goldeneye. They did used to be so damn cavalier about what kids watched.
Though mind you, I think it's hilarious that anyone could think Disney - or any animation studio from back in the day - was always 100% kid-friendly. This only slightly hyperbolic quote sums it up:
And the fact is...a lot of the time, kids like dark.
I didn't know that thing about PG containing all of that. The "old lion" complaining about Disney making PG movies makes so much sense now! I just thought he had drank Disney's own kool-aid that every movie they made during Walt's time was 100% kid-friendly in every way
Heck, when I was a kid I remember watching James Bond movies on VHS - they were all PG-rated, except for License to Kill and Goldeneye. They did used to be so damn cavalier about what kids watched.
Though mind you, I think it's hilarious that anyone could think Disney - or any animation studio from back in the day - was always 100% kid-friendly. This only slightly hyperbolic quote sums it up:
And the fact is...a lot of the time, kids like dark.
Plus, a lot of so-called safe morality tale kid's stuff are ironically just as if not dark then the so called dark stuff. Drug and Delinquent PSAs come to mind.Great chapter! Nice one
Heck, when I was a kid I remember watching James Bond movies on VHS - they were all PG-rated, except for License to Kill and Goldeneye. They did used to be so damn cavalier about what kids watched.
Though mind you, I think it's hilarious that anyone could think Disney - or any animation studio from back in the day - was always 100% kid-friendly.
And the fact is...a lot of the time, kids like dark.
PG just mean parental guidance, maybe parents were better at parenting them so kids were give more range as they knew what was fantasy and what reality
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