Stephen King’s It

If you know the novel on which this two-part made-for-tv film is based, you’ll know it’s impossible to transfer the story from one medium to another. I guess we should give Warner Bros. kudos for even trying. The result, though, is neither scary nor compelling. I imagine that if this were the first horror movie you ever saw when you were a teenager it might have been quite creepy – and you’ll be traumatized for life by that clown. “They all float down here!” The story follows a group of kids, “The Loser Club” (later re-baptized as “Lucky Seven”) during a life-changing summer in 1960 – and their reunion thirty years later. In that fateful summer in some New England smallville, all of them have frightful encounters with their worst nightmare in the form of shape-shifting Pennywise the Dancing Clown, who also appears as a werewolf, a mummy, and whatnot. Children disappear in sleepy little town of Derry, Maine, but no one seems to care or do much about it. Grownups apparently don’t notice what is going on in their town every thirty odd years. The losers’ leader, Bill is determined to avenge the death of his younger brother Georgie. When they all have shared their encounters with “It” they agree to help him. Obviously they have no idea how to go about, but the bonding experience is the heart and soul of the story.

Unable to kill the monster, they vow they will one day return to finish “It” off should it ever come back. And coming back it does, as children sing “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and disappear again thirty years later. Mike Hanlon is the only one of the Lucky Seven who remains in Derry and contacts the others; Bill Denbrough (doubtless modeled after Stephen King himself) still tells scary stories; Richie Tozier now makes a living cracking jokes as he always did; that little fat kid, Ben Hanscom, who used to build dams so well, is now a slim, successful architect; hypochondriac Eddie Kaspbrak still lives with his overbearing mother; the only girl among the Losers, Beverly Marsh, has found a man to replace her abusive father; Stan Uris, once the goody-two-shoes boy scout and now a successful businessman, rather commits suicide than face “It” again. There’s no explanation why they are still able to see that freaky Pennywise the Clown now that they’re adults, and there certainly aren’t words to explain the dramatically poor ending. Somehow the clown’s true earthly shape is that of a giant spider that feeds on humans. Mike and Eddie die, while Beverley slings silver slugs at the monster, while Bill, Richie and Ben disembowel “It” and rip it’s heart out. What a letdown. After sitting through three hours of build up, this crock o’ shyte is a real anti-climax.

There are some obvious staples of Stephen King’s usual fair in the film: the everyman smallville setting in Maine, the coming-of-age of a group of misfit adolescents over a summer in the 60s, the inexplicable terror, and so on. The scenes with the teenagers are perhaps the most interesting, while the adult actors remain stiff and unconvincing. Watching it now, the movie also suffers from its painfully out-dated effects. But what bothers your Cricket most are the blatant rip offs from J. R. R. Tolkien and H. P. Lovecraft. The giant spider in the subterranean cave, feeding on humans paralyzed in cobweb cocoons, clearly derives – however unconsciously – from The Lord of the Rings’ Cirith Ungol’s Shelob. (And if you’ve seen both movies, you’ll probably agree that Peter Jackson stole it back for his version.) The cosmological back-story about the ancient extra-terrestrial monster terrorizing New England, hunting small towns for prey, taking shapes and forms that will terrify anyone who dares looking straight into the “deadlight” of its very being so much their stupefying madness will kill them, certainly comes directly from the Cthulu Cycle, which itself in a way was inspired by Arthur Machen. Moreover, there’s no subtext, no deeper meaning, beyond the great adventure that bound the Losers’ Club in their quest to fight Evil incarnate. And we already knew that clowns are Satan’s spawn. No cheeping chirps for this one.