This Cult Disney Horror Movie Is Finally Coming To Streaming Just In Time For Halloween

By the pricking of my thumbs ... but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Disney and horror aren't exactly synonymous, but that almost changed in the early 1980s. Hoping to emulate some obscure '70s movie about space wizards ("Zardoz," I think it was called?), the Mouse House decided to try making films that skewed a little older and more mature. Bear in mind, the studio had been struggling creatively and financially since Walt Disney died in 1966, so a change of pace was fitting. And as has historically been the case when Disney's suffering as a company, this era would soon give rise to some of the most artistically innovative and otherwise interesting movies ever produced by The House That Mickey Built.

Perhaps most notably, this was when Disney developed a pair of honest-to-goodness horror movies in the forms of 1980's "The Watcher in the Woods" and 1983's "Something Wicked This Way Comes." Both films also endured strenuous shoots as various parties jostled to shape them creatively, only to ultimately see disappointing critical and financial returns in theaters. Nevertheless, they've since become cult favorites, with "The Watcher in the Woods" even directly inspiring Mike Flanagan's good-but-badly-titled "Ouija: Origin of Evil." Now, thankfully, a fresh generation of viewers can be startled silly by "Something Wicked This Way Comes" specifically, as the movie will finally stream on Disney+ starting October 3, 2025.

Directed by Jack Clayton, who gave us one of the scariest black-and-white horror films ever with "The Innocents," Disney's movie adapts Ray Bradbury's novel of the same name, which itself originated as a film treatment. However, while Bradbury also wrote the script for "Something Wicked This Way Comes," his draft was reworked by "The Innocents" co-writer John Mortimer at Clayton's behest without his consent — only for Bradbury to take creative control after Disney elected to revamp the movie following poor test screenings (sidelining Clayton in the process).

Reshoots and rewrites be damned, "Something Wicked This Way Comes" manages to remain faithful to the broader strokes of Bradbury's novel. Its story centers on two small-town boys doing battle with the not-so-subtly named Mr. Dark (Jonathan Pryce in top form), an insidious traveling circus boss who makes Faustian bargains with the locals to fulfill their greatest desires. Of course, the real heart of the film is Jason Robards as the protagonist/narrator's father, a good-natured librarian who fears he's too old to be the sprightly dad that his son deserves. Indeed, the moment where Mr. Dark taunts Robards' character about his age while simultaneously — and violently — attempting to goad him into a monkey's paw deal of his own is both poignant and upsetting.

This scene is also worth highlighting since it seemingly speaks to Clayton's initial version of the movie, which was apparently quieter, darker, and more melancholic — something that's further evident in Georges Delerue's original, unused soundtrack, which is available to listen to on YouTube. The theatrical cut, on the other hand, is more like a circus ride itself, with a James Horner score that alternates between alarming and fanciful, as well as a number of memorably creepy visuals and jump-worthy frights. (Arachnophobes, well ... let's just say you've been warned.) Fortunately, it still retains enough of the rich thematic substance from Bradbury's book to avoid feeling like an empty-calorie meal, including its touching father-son storyline and the underlying moral that one's life is what they make of it, and not what they wish it was.

In short? If you've never seen "Something Wicked This Way Comes," there's no better time to change that than the spooky season. Now put "The Watcher in the Woods" on Disney+ as well, Disney.