Stephen King on the big screen has been almost always awful. Is the small screen better? A decided no has to be said. King’s IT is arguably his Magnus opus. The adaptation not surprisingly can’t match the sheer bigness (it’s about 1,100 pages!) or even allusiveness in the book – King slyly name checks himself using a Christine-like a 1958 Red Plymouth Fury and young Dick Hallorann. And, admittedly, it could have butchered King even worse but, as it stands (no pun), this adaptation is too unremarkable to merit praise.
In many ays the book is a severe indictment o the 1950’s and lashes out at the Puritanical repression during that time. The film misses that but it does capture some of the alleged innocence during the time. Directed by Tommy Lee Wallace, IT originally aired on ABC Network television and TV censorship really neuters a potentially great movie. Not much explicit material is needed here but the direction is too tame by half. Easily, the best highlights are when the music comes on.
Like the book, the story is told in nonlinear as the camera move back and forth beteen 1957 and 1984. The cast includes Stuttering Bill Dengbrough, Eddie Kasprak, Ben Hanscom, Richie Tozier, Stan Uris, Beverly Marsh, and Mike Hanlon in their younger and older selves growing up in Derry, Maine. Almost no one remembers or cares to but the Losers’ Club as they dub themselves comes across a ferocious monster called IT, killing the local children and absorbing them. It calls itself Pennywise, the Dancing Clown but Pennywise is just an alias (the book has it take on several names).
Tim Curry as Pennywise is electrifying – though perhaps derivative in taking a lot of cues from Freddy especially. Though much of the terror comes from Curry’s sharp accent. He sounds scary telling the children: “Oh you are priceless Brat! I am eternal, child. I am the eater of worlds.” But, again, the adaptation is only a minor slice of the book.
In the novel, It, cleverly, mutates into many old monsters – many from 1950s monster movies. The book has IT become the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Frankenstein, a mummy, and even hobo with leprosy and leeches. The movie sadly features only some of these mutations but, at least, those it does has are incredible. Easily the most terrifying scene in IT has Richie encounter It wearing a Letterman-like high school jacket and imitating the werewolf in I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957). Characters in a movie like this are going to be constrained so that can’t be the main problem the adaptation doesn’t cohere.
Three major dilemmas come up that the poor direction doesn’t help. One is the sheer production value. Although money is well spent in many places in many other places the film just looks bad and cheap. Another is there is no sense of genuine building of terror. Only a handful of scenes are genuinely scarily – like the mid-point journey to the sewers. Another is the sheer unstable focus. At times, it looks like It is the major villain but, at others, the local bullies, the Bowers gang (Henry Bowers and “Belch” Huggins) takeover.
This is more a rent-it than see-it film with a standout role by Annette O’Toole as Beverly as an adult. John Ritter also does a capable job. But, alas, the film merely floats (no pun intended) and only rarely hooks onto the rich material King has provided.
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