Stephen King’s It (1990) – The Test of Time

The Test of Time series looks back at the 1990 miniseries adaptation of Stephen King’s It, starring Tim Curry as Pennywise

While the cinematic and televised realms of Stephen King are both old hat and as constant and unchanging as death and taxes now, it wasn’t always this way. Sure, he had movies hitting the theater pretty consistently all through the late 70s through, well, still today, but TV was a different story altogether. Salem’s Lot came out in 1979, and it was a big hit in both viewership numbers and critical appraisal but that was it for a while. We would even get that strange and wonderful Larry Cohen sequel to Salem’s Lot before we would get another King TV series. Once IT hit screens over a weekend though, the flood gates would be opened with The Tommyknockers, The Stand, The Langoliers, and many other including actual TV shows. It would remain incredibly popular and fond in our memories but is IT any good 35 years later or is IT just the fear in our memories that keeps IT strong?

The Plot

After the success of King properties in the late 80s, particularly Stand by Me and Pet Sematary, studios on both the big and small screens were eager to greenlight more of his works. One of the biggest that the master of written horror had done in his career to date was IT from 1986. That book was over 1100 pages and pulled no punches while also giving us distinct characters and situations over a 30-year time period. What we almost got is nearly as interesting as the final product we are talking about today. George Romero was attached as early as 1989 when the project was originally going to be an 8-to-10-hour series that would run in two hour chunks. Then it changed to 6 hours. Finally, the producers decided on a two-night affair and that was when Romero decided to drop out as he felt that he would have less impact and not be able to craft the story he wanted over just two episodes and scheduling conflicts with the 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead got in the way.

Lawerence Cohen, different from genre legend Larry Cohen, had a first draft of a script when the series was its original length but after Romero left and the longer series became a very limited series, that first draft was the reason that Tommy Lee Wallace came on to both write and direct. Wallace is a John Carpenter disciple who did everything from appear as extras and small parts to editor to art director, and even second unit director. While he has a limited selection of titles as a director, Wallace gave us the wonderful Halloween III and the unexpectedly good Fright Night II as well as a few other smatterings of TV and film projects. The movie cost 12 million to make which might not sound huge but was a fairly large number in the TV realm and leagues above the budgets for things like Halloween or The Blair Witch Project to put things into perspective.

The cast was fairly large and eclectic too with child actors like the late Jonathan Brandis as young Bill and a young Seth Green as the 12 year old version of Richie Tozier. Who I didn’t recognize until my most recent viewing was Ginger Snaps Emily Perkins playing the young iteration of the Losers Clubs Beverly Marsh. The adult actors are the ones that really steal the show. Richard Masur, John Ritter, Harry Anderson, Dennis Christopher, and Annette O’Toole all shine in their roles, well, mostly, with Richard Thomas and Tim Reid also pulling their weight. All of the actors though young and old were absolutely outshined by Tim Curry’s masterful and terrifying portrayal of Pennywise the Clown which IT takes the shape of most in the series.

The movie follows a group of kids who battle a seemingly eternal evil who is killing children all throughout the town of Derry. The adults don’t know what is really happening and are seemingly incapable of understanding the true terror. The group is known as The Losers Club as they are mostly a band of outcasts that stick together and try to protect one another from bullies and the Eldritch horror that masquerade’s primarily as Pennywise the clown. They defend another new kid Mike from bullies who are racist bullies instead of just run of the mill bullies and the group finds out that Pennywise feasts every 30 years or so on the town. The kids hunt it to the sewers and navigate the bullies before putting an end to the monster threat….or so they thought. 30 years later the killings are happening again and Mike rally’s the troops as they promised to come back if IT ever did too.

The club mostly comes back except for Stanley who choses death over facing the creature and all their memories come flooding back. They fight the creature to its death but lose Eddie in the process and disband again to slowly forget what happened. Who needs 1138 pages when about 2 paragraphs will do? The Miniseries premiered on the weekend of November 18th-20th in 1990 and was a massive hit for both critics and viewership garnering nearly 30 million views on the weekend. It won an Emmy for its score and part one especially received high praise critically.

Signs of the Time

The conceit of the movie follows a group over 2 time periods. In the book it is 1957-1958 and 1984 to 1985 while the mini series takes a slightly bigger jump from 1960 to the then current year of 1990. The Miniseries does an admirable job replicating the 1960 era that of course bleeds into previous decade of the 50’s. This includes the monster movies of that time and how Pennywise interacts with them but also stuff like the racism that people dealt with and how every day life was in small town America. The jump to 1990, which at the time was the present, gives us a glimpse of what that era was. The interesting part of having the first year of a new decade is that it bleeds into the previous one. An example of this is disco feeling very much like a 70’s thing but it definitely seeped its way into the 80’s. some of the clothing choices, verbiage, and general goings on are from the 50’s from the 1960 portion and the 80’s for the 1990 time period.

This handles a few issues that movies and TV try to emulate like the ease of access of information on the internet as well as the group not having cell phones to call each other apart from overly large and expensive car phones. It gives a Scooby doo lets split up gang mentality where they cant warn each other of exactly what’s going on and made their scenes of reconnecting more real because they couldn’t just reach out and text to try and remember the events of 1960 or look up what the heck happened. The biggest gut punch as a consequence of this is when they have to head to a building to call and inquire about Stan. They are told he has taken his life after the call to come to Derry while they were expecting him to show the whole time.

What Holds Up?

While I will try not to make this the Tim Curry appreciation show, it’s hard not to associate the entire miniseries with his legendary performance. As we will see, this can be a blessing and a curse when talking about IT. Tim Curry’s performance was terrifying then and it’s terrifying now. The performance will be terrifying for years to come. It was almost someone else in the role with Malcolm McDowell, Roddy McDowell, and Alice Cooper all being considered but Curry was the preferred option from director Wallace. Not just with Pennywise but some of the makeup really holds up too from the blood splatters and mini effects like the ones in the Chinese restaurant scene to the battery acid scene and even Pennywise opening the school shower drain to come through. In another technical department, music plays a key role in setting the tone for the series and Richard Bellis actually won an Emmy for his work which was the first time a horror miniseries won the award in that category.

While Curry is rightfully praised for his legendary performance, the rest of the acting is pretty solid for the most part. The kid actors all do a great job both portraying the every day turmoil that kids go through but also the fear that is elicited not only from the very real terror presented by the space spider but also the less supernatural fears of overbearing or violent parents, the death of a sibling, and bullying. The adult actors are more accomplished and had a much larger pedigree and there are some reasons to love them. They play their adult characters set up by the kids really well with Dennis Christopher and John Ritter especially feeling like big kid versions of Eddie and Ben with Harry Anderson’s Ritchie exhibiting the humor and anger well and Richard Masur showing us the crippling fear Stan had from when he was a kid. IT has quite a lot going for it but also….

What doesn’t hold up?

There are some monumentally stupid lines and deliveries uttered by the adult cast specifically so there are problems with the script. These problems extend to the pacing too as the second part lags on a bit too much. What’s even sadder to think about is how lost to time this might be if someone else played the titular being. While that shouldn’t count here as it didn’t happen, you could also argue that the strongest parts of the movie are with Tim Curry on screen and the rest of the time we are all just waiting for his next appearance. The ending is certainly lame but that could be said about the entirety of It Chapter 2 and that also lends credence to the whole “King doesn’t know how to end his stories” joke. The ending being lame is certainly not aided by the terrible looking effects for the spider form of the main antagonist. I went into this viewing with rose tinted glasses and forced myself to be realistic with it.

Verdict

Does IT stand the Test of Time 35 years later? That’s a harder question to answer than I thought. While Tim Curry certainly does, is that enough for the movie as a whole? If you saw the new big screen versions first, would you even care about what this has to offer? IT follows enough of the story to be accessible without diving into certain turtle shaped confusing problems and whether it follows the book or not shouldn’t matter either. Ultimately, I think it is one of the landmark horror TV miniseries of all time and one of the better King properties of the 90s. It doesn’t need to be the only version of the story that is watched by any stretch of the imagination, but it deserves its time in the sun. It holds up in more ways than not and will be interesting to revisit in another 35 years.

A couple of the previous episodes of The Test of Time can be seen below. To see more, click over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!