Capturing the childhood fascination with the dark uncanny of carnival midways, Ray Bradbury’s 1962 novel Something Wicked This Way Comes tells the story of a small Midwestern town challenged by the arrival of a mysterious travelling circus. Two boys notice that their neighbors are changed after visiting the strange carnival and its sinister ringmaster who promises to fulfill any heart’s desire. Bradbury collaborated with Clayton – whom he’d met when both worked on John Huston’s Moby Dick – on the screenplay, and together they create one of the darkest films ever released by the Walt Disney Studios.

An adaptation of Gogol’s “The Overcoat,” this short is Clayton’s debut as a fiction filmmaker, and it immediately demonstrates his ability to combine incisive character study with the supernatural. It also launched his career, winning an Academy Award and a prize at the Venice film festival.