I thought it was a pretty good movie and Bradbury liked it OK from what I have seen him talk about (he typically cited this and Fahrenheit 451 as the two best adaptations of his work he was not personally involved with) Really the only flaw in it was how they kinda jazzed up the ending pointlessly and instead of killing the Autumn People with love and good vibes (which is kind of the point of the book), they had to have something a bit more visceral. Still pretty solid movie I thought.

What was wrong with Watcher in the Woods?

This wasn't a bad movie by any stretch, but you know how it is when a real-life movie with all sorts of real-world limitations just can't measure up to the movies in your head.

"The Watcher in the Woods" just seemed a little ragged and disjointed to me. I understand the film went through a few edits before it was released to theaters. Again, it's not such a bad movie, but if I had my 'druthers, I'd cheese to watch "Something Wicked This Way Comes."

Disney was still too Disneyfied back then to do a really good horror flick.

I have no idea how I ended up typing "cheese to watch" instead of "choose to watch."

My only excuse is I've got a mild cold, I'm taking medicine that makes me groggy and I've been at work all day.

I have the original Anchor Bay release (back when that company was basically the Criterion of b-movies) of Watcher and it has a lot of deleted footage and I *think* maybe a director's cut with added footage (which is terrible quality) and, yeah, basically the film was a lot darker before Disney thought it was maybe *too* dark. Yet, they were totally cool with stuff like Black Hole and really out there shit like Darby O'Gill so who knows.