25 Years Down the Drain

The following entries are intended to preserve the rich cultural legacy of the adapted works of author Stephen King by reexamining his forsaken yet invaluable contributions to the art of cinema. Fans looking for insight into King’s writing may look elsewhere but are invited to unearth these clouded gems of film making with us. We know our readers are eager to begin. We even share in some of that excitement.

To remove the dusty rubble, piled high and wide atop the legacy of King adaptations, we must first attempt to extract an essential stone. As of now, it looks like that’s the 1990 made-for-TV masterstroke, IT.

Some context: IT wasn’t the first Stephen King novel adapted for television. Salem’s Lot aired over two nights on CBS in 1979. The program was well-received but forgotten in the torrent of other miniseries, which was a very popular format at the time. No one seemed to notice that King’s rudimentary combination of character and supernatural mystery was a perfect fit for the small screen. Although short-term serials continued to air throughout the 80’s, they began to yield higher budgets and fewer viewers. In 1990, ABC adopted the slogan “America is Watching ABC,” which was true. “Roseanne” was the number one show, they cornered the market on Emmy nominations and “Twin Peaks” was perhaps the most critically acclaimed program of all time. On November 18 they would strike oil again with an experiment that lay inexplicably dormant for eleven years. Special event television would be revitalized for another decade.

As the 25th anniversary of IT approaches, re-watching this movie is as nostalgic as the story itself. We are transported to a time before the internet, when the average family’s single television set was the only source for visual entertainment in the home and entire households gathered to take part in an exciting national event.

The usual ABC Sunday Night Movie bumper was replaced by special titles during the telecast of IT

IT is primarily set in the fictional hamlet of Derry, Maine. Derry is King’s Lake Wobegon, his Yoknapatawpha County, his Middle Earth. It exists in more than twenty stories, but no King novel describes Derry with as much detail as “IT.” The movie was shot in Vancouver, which serves as an adequate representation of the imaginary town. Its quaint architecture and verdant woodlands give the movie a natural feel, which works in contrast with the unnatural occurrences of the story. Director Tommy Lee Wallace, who helmed the infamous (but worthy in its own right) Halloween III: Season of the Witch, was challenged with portraying a wide variety of visual elements from the 1100-page source material.

Even though some of the special effects in IT fall flat, the overall look is well-designed, almost beautiful. Perhaps the most distracting aesthetic element of the movie is its score. The jarring synths and circus music play just fine, but the main theme that makes up most of the soundtrack is this dream-like piano/clarinet tune, accompanied by a sweeping orchestral backdrop that is just too bloated for a horror movie. It’s reminiscent of the epic scores of past miniseries and feels more safe than brooding. Having expressed that opinion, it’s worth noting that composer Richard Bellis was the only person to actually win an Emmy for his work on IT.

Curry tries to relax on set

The story is about seven childhood friends who attempt to thwart a murderous entity that is terrorizing Derry. The entity usually takes the form of a clown named Pennywise, sublimely played by Tim Curry. Curry’s perverted combination of Borscht Belt sarcasm and seething rage is the backbone of IT. His portrayal of Pennywise ushered in a new era of coulrophobia and endures effortlessly, even if it doesn’t incite the crippling fear most returning viewers remember. Another testament to his ability to create such a memorable character is that he appears in the movie for a total of roughly five and a half minutes out of one hundred ninety-two.

Care was clearly taken in the casting of this movie. In addition to the very important role of Pennywise, there are seven protagonists who had to be portrayed as children as well as adults. There are many well-remembered actors in the cast and most of them succeed, despite being labored with a lot of exposition and mawkish dialogue.

The film is driven by narration provided by the character of Mike, the only member of his bunch to have stayed in Derry. He must convince his old friends to come home once again to confront Pennywise, whom they failed to destroy when they were children. One by one they return to face their inner and outer demons. There are peripheral characters along the way, all of whom neatly perpetuate the King worldview: A drunk and abusive father, an overbearing mother, a gang of bullies led by a teenage murderer, and a well-meaning but idiotic girlfriend. There is also a host of objects coming to life, sinister rhyming, and lots of balloons, which are used as a replacement for Curry’s on-screen presence. The balloons usually work. Sometimes they don’t.

Tommy Lee Wallace takes the balloon thing a bit too far

The past and present element of the story lends itself nicely to a two-part miniseries. Tommy Lee Wallace claims to have accepted the job because of the efficiency in which screenwriter Larry Cohen dealt with the colossal novel, particularly in the first installment. Wallace and King rewrote much of the second part, but most fans agreed that it was much weaker than night one.

That distinction leads us to many of the critiques this movie has had to endure for the last quarter-century. In the first installment, each character remembers their childhood encounters with Pennywise and in the second, as the adults return to Derry, the film attempts to mirror these encounters without the inevitable vulnerability of child actors. This often leads critics to deem part one “scarier.” Indeed, the second half doesn’t offer as much in the way of traditional horror. “Somewhat chilling” might be more appropriate. What returning viewers will find is that it deals with the darker realities of repressed trauma.

Recognizing this subtext is key to understanding a lot of the character development in IT. Although they’re the heroes of the story, the adults are broken, unreliable users who are drawn back by the need to confront the source of their pain, not by a promise. Their childhood agreement would be null and void if anyone of the characters had truly moved on from their past. To King, reliving a forgotten memory is just as terrifying as a clown in the sewer. Also, the scene in which Beverly revisits her father’s house is one of the most genuinely frightening in either episode.

Another devastating blow for part two is the climax. The “giant spider” in IT may be the most notoriously anti-climactic ending in horror. It’s a bit of a bait and switch, but critics often fail to remember that the movie itself does attempt to prepare the viewer for this development. In the opening scene of the film a young girl rides her tricycle home singing “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.” This is clearly foreshadowing and the lyrics reflect the cycle of the story. When the children first attempt to kill Pennywise, they see the underside of his monstrous form. Its scaley claws, which can be seen hanging crudely from the creature’s thorax before their final battle, then burst comically through the clown’s gloves just before he retreats into the sewer. The claws also reappear in part two when Eddie Kaspbrak returns to the drug store in Derry.

In the end however, these attempts proved too subtle for most viewers and the pallid emergence of this creature feature throwback left audiences confused and disappointed. Maybe if Tim Curry was somehow present or the practical effects were better people would have been more forgiving. Wallace has admitted that the puppet never looked good to him but time and money had run out. Ultimately, the success of a movie lies at the feet of the team that made it (and indecisive, under-budget supervision is the evil that truly haunts the town of Derry), but the final incarnation of the story’s villain is the brainchild of Stephen King. He always intended to pay homage to the old monster films he grew up on, like It Came from Outer Space, It Conquered The World and Them!, but viewers expected an explanation instead of a final form. Like a lot of King’s stories, the strength of IT comes out of the journey, not the destination. A passage from his book on writing, “On Writing,” may provide some perspective for those who get hung up on this detail. “Why worry about the ending anyway?” King asks. “Why be such a control freak? Sooner or later, every story comes out somewhere.” There’s your giant spider.