Graeme’s Retro Classics! ‘It’ (1990)

Once again it’s the scariest month of the year and I thought I’d share my favourite ‘all time scary movies’ with you. At least that’s what I thought to start off with… In the end what I’ve decided to do is share my favourite ‘they’re not actually that scary but they’re still fun to watch’ movies with you lucky people. And what better place to start than with Stephen King’s ‘It’…
New Stephen King movies aren’t doing too badly these days (‘The Green Mile’ for one) and there was a time long ago when they were just as good (‘The Shining’). It’s a real shame that there was a long ‘middle period’ where movie adaptations of King’s work were ‘straight to TV’ travesties of the novels. For every ‘Green Mile’ there was a ‘Tommyknockers’ or ‘The Stand’. ‘It’ falls into this ‘best forgotten’ period but two redeeming features lift it out of mediocrity and give it ‘classic’ status in my book. More on that in a bit though…
You know the story so I’m not going to go into it at great length. Evil clown killing kids, kids hurt evil clown bad, kids grow up and have to return to hometown to face evil clown again (now that’s paraphrasing!). It’s a film of two parts where the main characters are shown as children and adults. It’s the children’s scenes that make the show worth watching; clown aside, some of the stuff that they have to deal with really makes you feel for them and remember what it was like to be a child yourself (and the sadness of leaving childhood behind). The scenes with the adults only really serve as introductory pieces to the ‘childhood’ scenes and the overall ending seems rushed and tacked on. Before it sounds like I’m doing this film down, it does have bits that will make you jump and moments where the crossover between weird horror and regular suburbia is genuinely unsettling (clown’s head down a drain anyone?)
Despite all this, it doesn’t seem like there’s much to separate this film from any other ‘TV horror’, or is there? I give you five words; Tim Curry, Pennywise the Clown. Redeeming Feature number one. Tim doesn’t care that this is a TV movie and he certainly doesn’t care that TV movies generally signal a downturn in your acting career. Hell no! Tim Curry is Pennywise the Clown and he is going to be the best damn clown you ever saw… Right from the start, he hams it up like nothing I’ve ever seen before and switches between comedy and horror with the greatest of ease. Tim makes the character his very own and I’m pretty sure at least half of what his acting must be improvised. He’s very much like his character Frank N. Furter (‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’) but with a bright red wig and balloons with messages for every occasion… Tim was never going to win any Oscars for this performance but it is the reason why this film gets ‘cult classic’ status in my book.
Redeeming Number Two? Oh yes… This won’t apply to you (I’d be surprised if it did!) but it does to me. I was watching this film in my room, at college, and a friend of a friend came in and watched it with me. Not long after that we got together and (quite a while after that!) we eventually got married. I reckon I must be the only person I know who found his future wife through a ‘shared appreciation’ of Pennywise the Clown! Now if only I could get her to like ‘Labyrinth’ or ‘The Dark Crystal’…