Stephen King's IT!

I probably haven't said this before but you can probably guess from the kinds of movies that I review on here that I am not a big fan of horror films. As a kid I was afraid of the movie Hocus Pocus, that's the frame of reference that you might have. If you would have talked to me 10 years ago and said there's a new movie coming out that is a new interpretation of a Stephen King novel about an evil clown, I'd be like NOOOOOOOOPE!

But in recent years I think I've been more open to trying to watch more horror-like films. I still don't go out and check out the new Paranormal activity, but especially with story lines like the horror but mostly sci-fi elements of Stranger Things, I've become more interested in suspense thriller films as of late. I've always loved The Shining for it's phenomenal abeyance and great story, I think I'm looking for stuff like that

Then I saw the trailers for the new movie IT.

I don't know what it is about that trailer and the other ones that I have seen but there is just something really intriguing about this film that I have really gone down an IT rabbit hole in the past week or two. I got the audio book and have been blazing through that, I've continued to watch every trailer for this film trying to convince myself to go out and watch it.

And I think one of the ways I have been trying to get myself in the right mode where I'll be ready to see this movie is to watch the original miniseries from 1990.

In 1990, ABC released a miniseries based on the novel by Stephen King simply titled, IT. Based off the 1,138 page book, IT focuses around a group of friends who grow up in the cursed town of Derry, Maine. Not only is the town a little bit off, but all of them seem to be haunted by a mysterious entity they can only really call, It.

Most of the time, It takes the form of Pennywise the Dancing Clown (played by Tim Curry). But other times it takes different forms in it's attempts to capitalize on their worst fears.

The story mainly centers on these friends after they have grown up and moved away from Derry. One of them by the name of Mike Hanlon (played as an adult by Tim Reid, as a kid by Marlon Taylor), who still lives in Derry calls them all back one by one and they begin to have flashbacks of their childhood and the horrific events that occurred there when they were kids.

Each one of them recounts their experience of being apart of The Losers Club back in 1958. This movie came out four years after the success of Stand By Me, I think ABC was trying to recapture the atmosphere of that movie by showing kids back in the day when there weren't cell phones or a lot of TV and kids could just be kids. I mean they also ran away from bullies that were literally murderous... but it was the fifties, that happened everywhere! In Back to the Future they're into full on rape so it was the time?

Anyways, the Loser's Club consists of Bill Denbrough (played as an adult by Richard Thomas, as a kid by Jonathan Brandis), a kid who lost his younger brother Georgie to It when he was young and is still haunted by it; Ben Hanscom (played as an adult by John Ritter, as a kid by Brandon Crane), a kid who was fat when he was younger but became a successful architect; Beverly Marsh (played as an adult by Annette O'Toole, as a kid by Emily Perkins) the only girl of The Losers Club who it seems like all the boys have a crush on and she seems to oddly jump from one to the other; Richie Tozier (played as an adult by Harry Anderson, as a kid by Seth Green) the class clown of the group; Eddie Kaspbrak (played as an adult by Dennis Christopher, as a kid by Adam Faraizl) an asthmatic kid who is babied by his mother; Stanley Uris (played as an adult by Richard Mansur, as a kid by Ben Heller) a Jewish Boy scout who overall is very hesitant to go out and fight It, and of course Mike Hanlon, one of the only black kids in Derry who likes to look into the history of the town.

All together as adults, they start to remember the adventure and horrors they experienced as children and then come together thirty years later to fight It one last time.

Of course the one thing that people really remember about this miniseries was the killer clown, Pennywise, played by Tim Curry. This might have been the movie that started a lot of kids in the 90's fear of clowns.

I haven't gotten all the way through the book but I believe that It takes many forms and it's not always the form of Pennywise. However, I think partly because of this film, the focus of It has been centralized on Pennywise and probably for good reason. Any story good story needs to have a centralized theme or centralized monster and I think that Pennywise makes for a great, unique villain to the story.

The funny thing is, watching this movie in 2017... I can't help but be a little disappointed on how not scary this movie is. I never saw the movie when I was a kid. I had no interest in watching a killer clown for 3 hours. My sister watched it and was apparently scarred for life. I know at the very least, she had a hard time looking down drains for a while. And she's not the only one. I have a plot of people who remember this as an incredibly scary movie and the truth is, it's not.

Yeah, it's got some creepy moments and yeah Tim Curry is gonna be Tim Curry and be a weirdo. But overall, it's pretty tame. I mean it was a TV movie so you can't expect a lot, but aside from some creepy imagery, some creepy atmosphere, and Tim Curry just being Tim Curry, it's actually a little bit laughable, and a lot of that has to do with the acting.

The cast of children aren't horrible and those were actually the parts that I was the most interested in. In fact that's what intrigues me about this new movie. Apparently there is going to be the first part of the book told from the perspective of the Losers Club when they are children and the sequels will focus on them when they are adults. But in this film, they do a weird mixture of adults having flashbacks to when they were kids. To be fair that is what happened in the book, but in this movie where the acting is pretty terrible all around, the kid actors and their story was a lot more interesting than the adults.

It also doesn't help that the only actor in the adult cast that is really well known is the late John Ritter...

Everyone else just kind of melodramatically slops their way through this film and you don't really have a particular character that you particularly like. I actually liked Tim Reid's character probably above anybody else in this cast but he has a little bit smaller of a role because it's more focused on the weird love triangle between John Ritter, Annette O'Toole, and Richard Thomas's characters.

And again, they're all reacting to a silly looking Tim Curry and balloons. And that is something that even the new remake will have to work it's way through. For some reason this movie tried really hard to make silly things like balloons scary.

Also, on an unrelated note, why does everyone in the picture above look like they're posing for a season of Law and Order where they go and prosecute clowns?

One thing I did appreciate about this film was the strange emphasis on the bonds of friendship and the 80's style kid adventures this movie was trying to recreate from influences like Stand By Me.

I'll be honest, part of the reason I got so into IT in the past few weeks has been for the fact that I'm revving up for Stranger Things Season 2, but in a weird twist, part of the reason I loved Stranger Things so much was because of the 80's adventure storytelling that it pulled from properties like IT.

While this miniseries has a lot of poor acting and it is by no means the caliber of storytelling and execution of that story as I think Stand By Me gave us, even when the Losers are grown up, there's still that sense of adventure that makes a group of people, mainly kids, but in this case kids and adults want to go and take out an evil by themselves and with the power of friendship. It's a trend that I don't think has been as prevalent in movies and TV shows as of late and I hope I explained it well enough. But you definitely saw that sense of adventure in IT.

I never went into this movie trying to judge it as a horror film. If I had done that I would have no interest in watching it.

I started this IT bender because I know that the true nature of Stephen King's story is not meant to just scare people but it is meant to tell an adventure. There is a lot of tragedy and death in this story, whether it's in movie, miniseries, or book form, but there is also a lot of intrigue.

The Losers aren't your generic characters in a horror film that aren't developed that well because you know they're going to be picked off one by one by an evil clown, they are really well developed characters who have their own struggles and demons to cross. If you know anything about the kinds of stories that Stephen King writes, you'll know that that is more the focus of his stories.

Now is it done well in the miniseries? Not particularly.

This is mainly due to the performances and the script provided. These kids are not particularly written well and without the budget of a feature film and the effects of... well not the early 90s, this adaptation just comes off as boring at times and silly at times when it's supposed to frighten you.

I think this is why I am so interested in the new remake. I'm a little worried that the film will be more focused on the scares than the characters and the supernatural elements of the story, but I don't know. The embargo on critical reviews was lifted either today or yesterday and the early reviews I've heard say that the movie is pretty damn good.

I'm thinking I will probably have to just grow a pair and watch a scary movie for once. I've done so much preparation so far that it doesn't make a lot of sense for me to not just take that plunge and check out the film in two weeks. I'm hoping that the early reviews are right and the film is entertaining and not just jump scares.

But for now, the miniseries is a pretty funny attempt at telling the story back in the 90s. If you watched this movie as a kid and were scared of it, I truly recommend getting some alcohol and friends together and just popping this one in. There are a couple moments where if I was with friends, we'd be roasting the hell out of this movie that people once considered to be one of the scariest movies of their childhood. There are a couple of good things about the film but overall it's a TV movie mess with poor effects, a PG rating, and Tim Curry just being Tim Curry (Come to think of it, that last one isn't an all bad element of the story).

But what about you? Have you watched the miniseries recently in preparation for the new movie? Are you looking forward to the new movie? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

I'll leave you with this. For a full fledged review that is much more in depth than this one, I highly suggest checking out Doug Walker's review of IT. It's a pretty hilarious review. In the mean time though, there was a Virtual Reality trailer that came out and here is someone who hates getting scared's reaction to it. Enjoy!