Quoting Ray Bradbury and Shakespeare? Country music?
Tag: Something Wicked This Way Comes
Exaggerations of the Simple Stuff of Human Life
Act 4, Scene 1 of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, when the second witch says:
“By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.”
And Macbeth enters. What a marvelous scene. Witches, bloody ghosts and a demigod truly drained of his humanity. A horror story in a stage play. And then Ray Bradbury takes that line, “Something wicked this way comes” and makes it the title of his own American ghost story; the story of a haunted carnival. Now what does Macbeth have to do with Bradbury? Well, in both cases we have basically good people seduced by the devil. Whether it’s Shakespeare’s witches or Bradbury’s Mr. Dark it is the story of men succumbing to the devil’s promise for their heart’s desire in exchange for their souls.
Macbeth wants the Scottish crown. Bradbury’s Green Town denizens want various things. Tom Fury and Mr. Crosetti succumb to lust. Mr. Tetley wants money. Miss Foley and Charles Halloway want their youth back. Jim Nightshade wants to be older so he can indulge his various negative desires. And for these things they risk becoming permanent prisoners of Mr. Dark and Mr. Cooger’s haunted carnival travelling the American continent in search of more souls to consume.
What a marvelous conceit. An ancient locomotive from the Civil War era, arrives in small towns in the middle of the night and sniffs out the spiritually wounded inhabitants and lures them into the haunted attractions of the show. If they wander into the house of mirrors, they will see their heart’s desire or their greatest fear. Or they can follow the barker’s lure and enter the tent where the belly dancers expose their bodies for a silver dime. And those that disappear are no longer recognizable as themselves and so cannot be rescued by any police force.
And redemption can only be had in Bradbury’s story if the devil is laughed out of town. Laughter and happiness are the only cures for this evil. The secret is to realize that life is not a tragedy. Even at its worst, it is better than the alternative which is nothingness. Pain and sadness and even death are a human story and in fact the only certainty in this world. But it’s also still better than never existing. Because no matter how sad and awful our existence, it’s still ours. We get to feel it and react to it and maybe win a few rounds before we’re finally cornered and beaten by death.
So, the ride’s the thing. That’s the lesson that Charles Halloway learns by the end of the story. Even though he’s old and overwhelmed with trying to be the father of a young boy, that overwhelming challenge is his greatest opportunity to squeeze every bit of meaning and gusto out of what remains of his life. And the boys get to see that fears and desires are exaggerations of the simple stuff of human life. Lust and greed and fear are just the ingredients of life taken out of balance from their normal proportions and occasions.
I wonder who will take this theme up next? Maybe I will, someday.
14AUG2025 – Preview of Coming Attractions
As we head into fall I’m always reminded of the Autumn People
Oh thirty-five, a year when you could run up a flight of steps without panting for breath!
Horror Then and Now
My longtime readers know that I indulge myself in the run-up to Halloween with book and movie reviews that concur with my preferences for that holiday. A couple of years ago I wrote reviews for all the Universal Classic Monster movies of the 1930s and 1940s. I usually take the season as an excuse to reread Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes” and watch the movie for good measure.
But last year I reviewed Psycho and this year I intend to review the Thomas Harris novels that include the character Hannibal Lecter. Many years ago, a friend gave me his copy of Red Dragon and I found it to be one of the most unsettling things I had ever read. And although the violence and insanity were pretty extreme by the standards of that happier time, the thing about the book that truly frightened me was the plausibility of the killer’s method for stalking his victims and the impossibility of protecting your family from someone who was determined to kill in that fashion. I guess it was the fact that I had a young family at that time and the idea that I might be powerless to save them that horrified me. And that is when I first became aware that true horror always has a human face. It won’t be a normal human but it will look out of a face that is attached to a driver’s license and a cellphone and a bank account.
So, there is a difference between the good old days and the bad new days. We stopped trying to gently scare children and now we horrify adults by showing them what’s really out there. I’ll be the first to admit that watching Frankenstein or Dracula doesn’t actually involve any fear for anyone over the age of ten. It was natural that movie makers and writers would escalate the violence and cart out the gore to tempt adult thrill-seekers, mostly in their teenage years, to spend their entertainment dollars on the latest fright fest. Back in the 1970s Texas Chainsaw Massacre was the poster child for exploitation movies aimed at frightening audiences out of their seats. Since then every year has upped the ante until lately the content has gotten so bad that the real name for what this represents has been designated. These movies are portraying torture through grisly dismemberment.
I consider that a distinction can be made between these gore fests that are almost bereft of meaningful characters and plot and crime drama like “Silence of the Lambs” which while it does include the description of horrible violence and depravity is not focused on flinging gore across the screen to delight the demented. It tells the story of people. This includes the victims, the police and even the murderer. We supposedly learn a little about what drives some of these characters to become monsters.
I’m not a devotee of crime drama or fiction. As I said I was given the Red Dragon book long ago and because of it I went to see the Silence of the Lambs when it came out. Out of a sense of curiosity I read the rest of the Lecter books and saw the movies and tv series. I don’t think the later books were as good as the first two but I will review them all for general interest purposes.
But I have all the Universal Monster movies on DVD and I intend to watch them all with my younger grandsons as soon as the lockdown ends. They’re the correct age and they’ll get a kick out of them. And truth be told, so will I.
My Annual Halloween Celebration
Halloween was always one of my favorite holidays as a kid and in my heart of hearts I haven’t really progressed far from that. I guess I’m not a progressive. So here is the advantage to being in business for more than a year. The calendar allows you to recycle stuff you did last year. I did movie reviews of the Universal Classic Monster Movies and a few other related films last year and I’ll recycle them around for the Halloween season. And I’ll add some additional films to avoid the label of laziness. I’ll also try to find some other Halloween content. I guess Ray Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes” is sort of the quintessential American story for this time of year. But there are all kinds of other stuff out there from Poe to (yikes) Lovecraft to even that lefty doofus Stephen King. So stay tuned and I’ll start cycling those in.