It: Chapter One (1990)

You know that feeling when you loved a movie from your childhood, only to grow up, watch it several years later, and realize that it wasn't all your little naive mind made it out to be? That perhaps the majority of critics were accurate in their assessment that it was just okay, or maybe even flat-out bad? For me, there are several horror films that fall into either of those unfortunate categories, and some sting sharper than others. Having lost my affection for the Wishmaster and Leprechaun franchises represent no great loss. But Rick Rosenthal's Halloween 2 is a whole other story. Once my favorite of the Halloween sequels growing up (that hospital setting and the quiet simplicity of the premise were the bomb!), the last time I watched it, which, in a way, was the first real time, it was nothing more than a boring slasher about uninteresting people running to and from hospital rooms, up and down the hallways, while Laurie Strode, once a resourceful, fiercely protective mama bear hell-bent on protecting her young babysitting charges from the wrath of Michael Myers, was reduced to a helpless damsel in distress, crawling from room to room before falling asleep yet again. Of all the horror films I grew up loving, that one stands as the most painful breakup. 

Then there's Tommy Lee Wallace's 1990 miniseries, It, the original adaptation of renowned horror author Stephen King's 1986 coming-of-age/sci-fi/psychological horror novel of the same name. Full disclosure, I had no idea growing up that his adaptation was a miniseries. I assumed they were two separate theatrical productions because both halves came together in one VHS package. Anyway, this was one of my absolute favorite horror movies during childhood. Whenever he would come over, my cousin and I would go down into my basement and watch It almost all the time. The first half, at least. I can't guarantee we would often watch the second because that's a unanimously inferior portion. At the time, I thought Tim Curry's rendition of Pennywise the Dancing Clown was one of the most nightmarishly horrifying creatures ever transmitted to celluloid. That evil laugh, the pedophiliac grin, the colorful costume, chalk-white face, big red nose, and bushy red hair. It was a creation ripped straight out of a nightmare, and what really immersed me in the story was the protagonists, a group of preadolescent outcasts who banned together and used the power of their unbreakable friendship to combat the relentless supernatural evil plaguing their small town. It was a horror tale both terrifying and emotionally resonant. Well, yesterday was my first "official" time watching the movie as a 26-year-old film critic, and viewed through that more mature, experienced lens, the results were far more pedestrian. One thing remains constant, however: the first half of It is a hell of a lot better and scarier than Andy Muschietti's inexplicably critically applauded 2017 big-screen remake. But that's a story for another review.

Before I dive into this review of the original 1990 classic, I want to make one thing clear: this will only pertain to the first half of Wallace's miniseries. While both halves comprise a single (excessively long) movie, I decided to watch and review each portion as distinct individuals. So my plan for next week is to watch (or shall I say endure) the second half on Monday afternoon and write the review on Tuesday. From here on out, I'm going to discuss the first half as one movie, because that's what it was for me as a child. Two VHS tapes, one for each half. Plus, if I had watched both halves in one sitting, that would have resulted in a three-hour experience. No, thank you! 

On a rainy afternoon, a little girl named Laurie Anne Winterbarger (Chelan Simmons) is riding her tricycle around the seemingly safe, quiet neighborhood of Derry, Maine, on her way home before the storm sets in. Her mother is taking in the laundry before it can get wet. As soon as Mom turns her back to carry a basket of clothes inside the house, Laurie Anne is ambushed and murdered in her backyard by a deceptively friendly man dressed in a clown costume (Tim Curry). As the police take away her body, Mike Hanlon (Tim Reid), a local librarian, discovers a missing child photo of a little boy named George Denbrough (Tony Dakota) placed suspiciously nearby. Realizing this is a warning, Mike makes a phone call to his six closest friends from childhood whom he hasn't seen or heard from in nearly 30 years, informing them that "It's back." Each of them knows exactly what that means, and all but one agree to temporarily put their lives on hold and travel back to their hometown to deliver on a promise they made to each other. 

Flashing back 30 years to the summer of 1960, the first half of It follows the early lives and developing friendship of the lucky seven outcasts who live in Derry, Maine and are gradually brought together by their shared fears, inferior home lives, and desperate search for acceptance. Together, they call themselves "The Losers Club," a derogatory term coined by their sadistic older classmate, Henry Bowers (Jarred Blancard), which they quickly assume as a badge of honor. The leader, more or less, of the group is Bill Denbrough (Jonathan Brandis), who suffers from a persistent stutter. His best friend is Eddie Kaspbrak (Adam Faraizl), who lives with an overbearing, emotionally dependent mother and must have an inhaler at his disposal at all times. One day, while working on a dam together in the woods, Bill and Eddie become acquainted with Ben Hanscom (Brandon Crane), an overweight kid who has just arrived in town with his mom, the two living temporarily with his aunt and cousin since his father died in the war. Upon first laying eyes on her in class, Ben develops an instant crush on Beverly Marsh (Emily Perkins), who becomes the only girl to join the club, as her home life consists of being verbally, physically, and possibly sexually abused by her single father. Only issue for Ben is, Bev seems to have a stronger romantic attachment to Bill. Also part of the squad are Richie Tozier (Seth Green), an exuberant jokester who wears bifocals, and his buddy, Jewish Boy Scout Stan Uris (Ben Heller). Last to join is Mike Hanlon (Marlon Taylor), the only black student in their class who, like Ben, is also new to Derry, and is welcomed into the club after being persecuted by Henry and his two thuggish (yet not quite as psychotic) best friends, Belch Huggins (Chris Eastman) and Victor Criss (Gabe Khouth). 

While recovering in bed from a cold one (rainy, of course) afternoon, Bill sends his little brother, Georgie, outside in the rain to play with a paper boat he made for him. Running down the soaking street as his boat slides along a stream of rainwater, Georgie is devastated when it slides straight down a sewer drain. Much to his elation, it has been retrieved by a strange male clown who calls himself Pennywise and appears to live in the sewer. Knowing he shouldn't be talking to strangers, Georgie is unable to resist the temptation of retrieving his boat, and as he reaches for it, Pennywise sheds his gregarious exterior and bites the child's arm clean off. Grappling with the grief and guilt of having lost his brother, and feeling abandoned by his parents, Bill finds comfort in the friendships he forms with the other "losers," all of whom experience bizarre encounters with the same clown-like creature. Initially, they try to convince themselves it's all in their heads, and that expressing their experiences will make them sound insane. Once they realize they're all being targeted, and that Pennywise has been terrorizing their small town for the last countless centuries, they make a pact to stick together and face their greatest fear head on as a team.

An ambitious fusion of Stand by Me, another (albeit horror-free) adaptation of a coming-of-age drama based on a Stephen King work, and Wes Craven's supernatural slasher, A Nightmare on Elm Street, It lacks the unremitting terror and groundbreaking special effects of the latter and the gut-wrenching poignancy and precise capturing of the magic of childhood and friendship of the former. Nonetheless, it's a fun, heartfelt, and occasionally frightening supernatural horror film, exceptionally well made for a telemovie. It certainly displays its required made-for-TV limitations in its toothless approach to violence, but compensates with a gallery of game performances, an electrifying score, loads of suspenseful buildup, and above all, a devilishly delightful and charismatic villain in Pennywise the Dancing Clown, who, in appearance and personality, if not entirely in his actions, has earned a place in the Horror Hall of Fame alongside the likes of Freddy Krueger.

It is only an hour and 34 minutes long, the standard running time of a full movie, and yet it can't help feeling substantially longer, thanks largely to writers Tommy Lee Wallace and Lawrence D. Cohen's (the latter of whom wrote the screenplay for Brian De Palma's Carrie, a fellow supernatural horror adaptation of a Stephen King novel) repetitive structure. They begin by catching us up on the current adult lives of their seven protagonists. The details are a bit sketchy and hard to determine, but here's what I could infer. Bill is a writer (possibly a screenwriter, possibly an author like his creator) married to Audra (Olivia Hussey), an actress. They live in a beautiful home and are starring in a movie together, possibly one written by Bill himself. Audra is devastated when Bill reveals he has to return to Derry to meet up with his former friends, and therefore must be recast. Richie is either a standup comedian or the host of a late-night talk show. Either way, he's painfully unfunny, and his audience is generous enough to laugh along at his jokes anyway. Beverly is a clothing designer who runs her own fashion company, shared by her husband, a condescending abuser no different than her father. Mike is a librarian, the only member who has remained in Derry over the years and has been keeping tabs on the number of missing children. Eddie is a limousine driver who still lives at home with his possessive mother, just as suffocating and overprotective as ever. Stan is married to a woman he shares a home with, and... that's about all I could gather. Ben is showing early signs of alcoholism, but at least he's lost a lot of weight (still no Slim Jim), acquired wealth, found romance with a beautiful foreign woman (who may only like him because of his wealth), and appears to live in a high-rise apartment. 

After getting us up to speed on the personal and professional lives of their characters one by one, Wallace and Cohen flash back to pivotal moments from their childhood. It might have been a more effective and efficient approach had Wallace conveyed the current lives of the Losers at once, then flashed back permanently to their childhood, as opposed to cutting back and forth. Or better yet, reserve their adult lives entirely for the second half and focus exclusively on their childhood for the first. It became a little monotonous going from grownup version to child version. 

The opening scene is masterful at building a sensation of dread, even if it concludes on a shrugger in terms of payoff, as befits a TV production. The first noise that assaults our eardrums and brings us to the edge of our seat is the terrifying incidental score by Richard Bellis, played over a black screen with the two-lettered title displayed in blood-red and gargantuan font. Over a collection of 1960s photographs of our seven protagonists, Bellis combines the groaning, creepy-crawly electronic music reminiscent of The Twilight Zone with somber piano notes. Once the story commences, Wallace sets an ominous tone through his use of two of the most classic and endlessly effective horror mainstays: the pitter-patter of raindrops and intermittent cracks of thunder. These inherently unsettling sounds are contrasted by the innocent, carefree singing of "Itsy Bitsy Spider" by little Chelan Simmons (who would later go on to play Helen Shyres in David Carson's 2002 made-for-TV remake of Carrie. The connections never end) as she rides her tricycle home. Wallace and Cohen take a perverse glee in playing on the parental fear of something horrible happening to your child the second you turn your back on them. Laurie Anne is right in her backyard. Her mom just saw her a moment ago, urging her to come inside before it storms. Assuming her daughter is safe outside, seconds from coming in, she runs inside to drop off a basket of laundry. Surely there's no reason to fret over the safe suburban neighborhood in which they live. Less than a minute later, Mom will step back outside, and Laurie Anne won't be there. 

The way Wallace sets this moment up is pure genius, both nightmarish and grounded in real fears. As soon as Mom steps inside after issuing her warning, Laurie Anne picks a doll off the ground, soaked by the rain. As she stares at it, we hear a masculine laugh so terrifying it could give Krueger a nightmare of his own. The laugh is intermixed with the giggling of children, the perfect amalgamation of the sweetness and innocence of youth, perverted by the malice of an otherworldly being who preys on those very qualities. Laurie Anne looks up, and in front of her is nothing but white bed sheets hung on a clothesline, blowing in the wind. Editors David Blangsted and Robert F. Shugrue cut back and forth between Simmons' naively curious face and the blowing sheets, ratcheting suspense and apprehension as the face of Tim Curry miraculously emerges from behind, flashing a charming smile as he utters a friendly "Hi." Laurie Anne is part of the camp of children who finds amusement in clowns, and so she responds with a smile of her own. Curry disappears and reappears throughout this scene. The smile on Simmons' face begins to falter, gradually replaced by an expression of concern, and she's rooted to the spot. The sheets swing apart once more, and the grin on Curry's face is no more, superseded by a cross between a scowl and a look of a predator bracing himself for the kill. Cinematographer Richard Leiterman zooms his camera quickly on Simmons' increasingly petrified face, accompanied by a shrill sound effect, before the screen cuts to black. After such a tense, brilliantly exploitative buildup, the cutoff can't help feeling like a letdown. It's not that we need to witness the graphic murder of a child, just that this particular technique feels obligatory, announcing itself as the required (not artful) outcome for a kill scene in a made-for-TV production. 

However, Wallace has one trick left up his sleeve. When Mom resurfaces, Wallace cuts to a POV shot of Laurie Anne's tricycle, overturned on the patio, its wheels spinning in the wind. Mom instantly feels a sensation of terror, pleading with Laurie Anne not to scare her. She moves forward a little bit, then turns her head to the side, letting out a horrified double scream. Rather than showing us the gory remains of this cute little blonde girl, so full of life just seconds ago, Wallace cuts to a close-up of the wheels of the tricycle, spinning rapidly before suddenly stopping, much like Mrs. W's heart at this moment.

The performances are solid across the board, but unremarkable and lacking in any particular standouts. For a miniseries, Wallace has without doubt acquired a superior cast, energetic and game for anything and everything he has to throw at them, whether it be a mindboggling scare or a warm sentimental moment of camaraderie. However, most of the performances, both from the adult and child sets of actors, are characterized by anxious facial expressions that make it difficult to distinguish one from the other. It's not that anyone does a poor job, it's that they're all required to act in the same way, to the extent that the quality of their work blends together and becomes interchangeable. All having to react to a freaky encounter with Pennywise. The most annoying example is when a childhood flashback ends, and when Wallace dissolves back to the grownup version of the character, they have a look of terror frozen on their face, sometimes with a hand resting on their cheek, which lends It a melodramatic tone it could do without. Of course, to be fair, they're also marred by the clunky dialogue of the teleplay. More on that down the line. 

Richard Thomas, who plays the adult version of Bill, reverts capably from a confident, happy, successful writer to the petrified stutterer that characterized his younger self in the click of a phone call. As his supportive but concerned wife, Olivia Hussey expresses a realistic mix of the love and frustration of a woman who wants to support her husband, but is struggling to determine the psychological factors governing his suddenly erratic behavior. 

For the record, I love Seth Green. He is a phenomenally talented voice actor, and his vocal performance as Chris Griffin on Family Guy, my lifelong favorite show since childhood, makes him such a hilarious character. That whiny voice which occasionally drops into a deep, creepy, Buffalo Bill-esque huskiness. It's practically poetic that he got his start playing Richie in It. Someone who, on the page, is playful and nerdy, but also ballsy and unafraid to stand up to the bullies who terrorize him and his friends on a daily basis. While watching I Was a Teenage Werewolf at the Paramount Theatre, Eddie accidentally kicks over a bag of popcorn, and it lands atop the heads of, wouldn't you know it, Henry Bowers and his goons, who by the grace of Satan just happen to be watching this schlock fest directly below them. Rather than apologizing, begging for mercy, or hightailing it out of there, Richie decides to have fun with Eddie's mistake, yelling at the bullies, "If I were you guys, I wouldn't pay to watch a monster movie. I'd just look in the mirror," before spilling his cup of coke on their heads. When confronted in the school cafeteria by Henry, Belch, and Vic, Richie hesitates to own up to his action. However, after Henry smears Richie's mashed potatoes across both lenses of his bifocals, Richie smashes his food tray against Henry's chest and makes a run for it. As the trio gives chase, they slip on a piece of potato, earning the uproarious laughter of their classmates. "Way to go, banana heels," Richie taunts. In this way, Richie is the most fun character of the seven, the most fearless, one who makes lemonade out of all the lemons thrown at him. Unfortunately, Green's performance doesn't match the inventiveness of the character as written, his line deliveries sometimes coming across as flat and unconvincing, along with his expressions of terror, whether trying to convince himself the sight of a werewolf in the school's basement isn't real, or screaming for help when said werewolf grabs hold of him. 

Without a shadow of a doubt, the actor this horror movie belongs to is the one whose character owns the title. In terms of appearance and costume alone, Pennywise is one of the genre's most legendary and terrifying antagonists, and that's saying a lot considering this is a TV movie we're talking about here. I'm a sucker for a great Halloween/villain costume, always have been since I became a horror fan around age three, and this clown is no joke. Technically, Pennywise isn't a clown at all. He isn't even a man. Rather, he's an alien (hence It falling more in line with the science fiction subgenre more so than the supernatural) who landed on earth long before the events depicted in the story. Every 30 years, he resurfaces to claim the lives (and flesh in particular) of children, assuming the form of their worst individual fears. His actual form won't be discussed until I review the second half (in which it's displayed in the climactic confrontation), so for now, the main appearance it takes on is that of a party clown, costumed in white facial makeup, a bulbous red nose, red-painted lips, bushy red hair protruding from either side of a bald head, white gloves, baggy yellow pants, and a multicolored silky suit with a row of orange pom-poms running down the front. The most striking and disarming feature of the costume is the vast array of bright colors, all the better to lure children into a false sense of security and offset the blackness lurking at the center where its heart should be.

What prevents Pennywise from matching the level where fellow talkative and charismatic child murderer Freddy Krueger resides has nothing to do with his costume or personality, both of which are demonically vibrant, but the inconsistency present in his characterization. To put it briefly, he kills some kids with little to no delay, while allowing others (namely the "lucky seven") to go free for no discernible reason. With Georgie, Pennywise makes work of him the second he's able to grab hold of his hand. Other kids in town who bear no consequence to the story, we're informed they've gone missing or been found dead. And yet, when he pays a visit to literally any of our protagonists, he just talks to them for a little bit, taunts them, promises he's "going" to kill them, and then disappears. What makes them so special? Why does he want to prolong their psychological suffering when he could satiate his insatiable appetite right then and there? Does he feel more satisfied when he kills the disposable or unseen children of Derry? It sort of removes the bark from Pennywise's bite when he restates the same threats over and over again ("You'll floooooat down here! We all floooooat down here! And when you're with us, you'll float too!" "I'll kill you all!") or bares his long, razor-sharp teeth at his terrified targets. There's not enough follow-through. Take the scene where he pays Eddie a visit in the shower. As Eddie cowers in a corner, holding a towel over his body and gasping for breath, Pennywise flashes his chompers in close-up before departing. Is that just his way of saying, "This is what I will do to you at some point in the near future"? Or is this just the subjective memory of Eddie in his adulthood? I guess it could go either way.

While Pennywise may not rack up enough of a body count to go toe to toe with his more business-meaning fellow horror icons, Tim Curry makes the character just as indelible. Even before his white face is glimpsed onscreen, Curry projects the unnerving predatory nature of Pennywise with his booming laugh. It's rare to find a horror villain with so much personality, one who may wear a costume but doesn't hide their identity behind a mask, who communicates verbally with their victims, taunting and terrorizing them mentally as opposed to just getting on with the kill. Like Freddy, Pennywise is a supernatural creature who revels in the suffering he inflicts upon his victims, both of the psychological and physical variety. Curry portrays this creature as the role of a lifetime, half man and half alien, capturing the flamboyance as well as the nightmare-fuel terror of Pennywise. He greets his young prey with a sadistic grin on his face, before opening his mouth to show off those unnatural, dirty fangs. That buffoonish smile is complemented by an equally sadistic laugh, which, at one point, he utters while pointing and waving mockingly at someone who truly believed he was staring at his deceased father. Curry's voice is so guttural and gravelly that he doesn't recite his lines so much as he growls them. 

Being a miniseries, as I've indicated above, the kills in It are one of its most underwhelming elements, and necessarily so. Pennywise has murdered and devoured countless children over the centuries, but only a few are demonstrated in the present film. And when they are, the execution is markedly tame. Some transpire off-camera, as when a detective confronts the Losers at their dam to inform them that the body of Thelma Daniels, one of Bev's classmates, has been found. For Georgie's infamous sewer kill, Pennywise grabs his hand and opens his mouth, Leiterman zooming his camera in for a stationary close-up of his sharp teeth, enhanced by the piercing scream of Dakota, before the screen dissolves to Georgie's funeral. One of the few corrections the remake took was showing Pennywise's teeth clamping down on Georgie's arm, packing more of a (yes, I'm going for it) bite. The cutoff here signals to everyone watching this is not a big-screen adaptation. That the choice to cut away from the money shot was motivated by ABC's restrictions on graphic brutality than an artistic choice on the filmmakers' parts. The most haunting visual is the slaying of Belch, who's elevated into the air amid a blinding white light in the sewer and sucked slowly into a pipe, his face devoid of expression, body devoid of movement. It's not bloody, but it sure as hell is unlike anything else you'll see in It. Wallace uses a POV shot to execute Vic's kill, the camera rising from the floor and rushing in on him as he backs away and collapses on some steps. Leiterman does a fast zoom on Vic's screaming face, rendered white by the light that represents Pennywise's current, unseen form. Meh. If you're going to kill off a bully in a horror film, it's more crucial than ever to give the audience what you know they're craving.

Where Wallace and Cohen's script really comes alive is in their thematic exploration of facing your worst fears through the power of impenetrable friendship. Each one of the seven Losers is living in their own isolated existence. Bill can't stop thinking about Georgie and how his last interaction with him concluded with him sending his little brother out into the rain by himself. His relationship with his parents is practically nonexistent, as they're dealing with the grief themselves. At home, Bev is harassed by her father, who refuses to let her engage in any kind of a social life, especially if it involves young men. At school, she's teased by other girls for having a father who dares to work for her school as a janitor. When the kids are confronted with this monster, they have to fight to convince themselves it isn't real because their parents are incapable of seeing it. Only when they get together and reveal they've been suffering from similar experiences with this same one clown do they come to realize they're not crazy, this monster has been in existence far longer than they or their parents have, and that together, they're capable of vanquishing it from existence, or so they'll try. Individually, they're as petrified as any kid would be, but as a cohesive unit, the Losers unlock the strength and courage they never knew was lying within. And it's this newfound fortitude that leads Bill to believe Pennywise is as capable of experiencing fear as he is creating it. 

Wallace and Cohen blend the supernatural horror of Pennywise's eternal reign with the real-world horrors of bullying, child abuse, and unresolved grief, although the concoction is only sporadically successful. For one, the bonding scenes between the Losers Club is for the most part sweet but at times a little corny and artificial. My favorite of these, which, no joke, sent a chill up my spine and nearly a tear to the eye, occurs when Ben comes out of hiding in the woods after Bowers and his gang end their search. He introduces himself to Bill and Eddie, who have just had their own encounter with the wannabe thugs, and as Bill leaves to get asthma medication for Eddie, Ben stays by the latter's side to comfort him. When Bill returns, the three agree to meet back up tomorrow at the same spot and work on their dam. This meeting carries the ring of warmth and authenticity. On the minus side, when the club, which has expanded to include Bev, Richie, and Stan, completes their project, Bill exclaims "We!", as in "We did this together!" and they proceed to splash around in the dam. Talk about a "director says" moment. While I'm all for a group hug, maybe in a group of three (any more and it feels so impersonal and cold), these kids partake in a few too many for my taste. En route to Eddie's house, they all run and spontaneously fall on the lawn, laughing. I suppose this is meant to depict the lighthearted bliss and goofiness of childhood friendship, but in moments like this it feels forced and directed. Then there's the group picture, taken by Mike after he's invited to become the seventh Loser. Without even knowing if he has anything in common with these guys (apart from being persecuted by the Bowers gang), Mike spontaneously gets out his camera to mark this oh-so-special occasion, and without a moment's hesitation, the other six scatter to prepare for their pose. Excuse my eyes as they roll to the back of my head.

Secondly, the bullies are generic caricatures, which saps this everyday issue of a lot of its urgency and potency. Henry Bowers is the archetypal gang leader cut from the same cloth as the Jets from West Side Story. Played by a physically well cast Jarred Blancard, Bowers is tall, lean, and unrelentingly mean, sporting a white T-shirt beneath a brown leather jacket, complemented by short, jet-black, slicked-back hair. Lacking any trace of a backstory or quick glimpse into his likely troubled home life, Henry is a completely one-dimensional villain colored with the same broad strokes given to all of Stephen King's bully characters. Blancard inhabits the role quite thoroughly with an almost permanently fixed scowl on his miserable face, except for when he breaks into a contemptuous smile when laughing at Ben's excess body fat. He carries around a switchblade at all times, his signature gesture holding the weapon in front of a target's face and springing the blade upward. Much like how the violence is sanitized per ABC's requirements, so too is Henry's dialogue, which consists of hackneyed tough-guy threats. None of the words that exit from Henry's mouth are kind, but very few are actually credible for a sociopathic, undisciplined hood. While Henry prepares to carve his name into Ben's stomach, Ben kicks him in the groin and escapes into the woods. As Henry and his goons run after him, Henry screams, "You're gonna die, fat boy! No one kicks me!" Really? The only line that sounds authentic is his casual use of the N-word when harassing Mike. (Fun fact: Blancard felt so guilty calling Taylor that word while filming, he kept apologizing after every use. Following filming, the two remained good friends.)

If you think Henry is a walking, "tough" talking cliche, wait until you meet his delinquent cronies. Belch is referred to by that (hopeful) nickname because he constantly... well, I'll assume you can figure that one out for yourself. Then there's Victor, who isn't given even that much of a defining personality trait. He's just... there too.

Circling back to my criticism of Cohen and Wallace's dialogue, yeah, it kind of sucks. Not throughout the entirety, but a good portion of it is so stilted that it mars the performances of the people reading them. One of the greatest traits of Stand by Me, a similarly themed coming-of-age odyssey created by King, is how even though the story is set in 1959 (approximately the same time period as It), the dialogue still remains witty, warm, and credible from the mouths of 12-year-old boys. That's a talent that Bruce A. Evans and Raynold Gideon were clearly unable to transfer to Wallace and Cohen, who fall back on that stereotypical "gee willikers" dialogue associated with young 1950s/60s speech. For instance, there's Stan, the most offensively drawn character in the club, who says, more than once, "That's just not empirically possible" when his friends begin expressing concerns over a supernatural creature invading their lives. After seeing said creature for himself, along with his other six comrades, Stan closes his eyes and repeatedly cries, "No" while the rest retort, "Yes." "You saw it," someone shouts. "But I didn't want to." Who would say stuff like that in a situation this overtly supernatural and in your face? The dialogue gets worse when the writers use it as a shorthand for character introductions. "Stan's a Jew, so he says 'Oy' a lot," says Richie when first introducing Stan to his friends. "Richie has a high metabolism, which makes him hyperactive," Stan volunteers. 

Some of this dialogue can't be blamed entirely on the writers. After all, theirs is an adapted script, not an original, and it's adapted from Stephen King, who may not have had the most enlightened perspective on Jewish people. As a result, Stan Uris is an even more offensive stereotype than Bowers. In addition to being loudly announced as Jewish, Stan is also shown to be a Boy Scout. As a Jewish guy myself, I don't know if there's a correlation between Judaism and Boy Scouts, but it just figures Heller would be introduced in a ridiculous, nerdy outfit. What I take the most offense to is Stan's cowardice throughout the story. And I mean all the way throughout. To an extent, I can understand and empathize with his paralyzing fear of Pennywise. After all, he's this young kid living in a once-peaceful little town, probably comes from a nice, educated family, and lives a simple, pleasant life. And here comes this demonic clown hell-bent on haunting and ultimately devouring him and every other child living in Derry. But here's the thing: Stan refuses to believe what's directly in front of his own two eyes. I mean, for Heaven's sake, Pennywise literally comes to life in the page of a history book, speaks directly to the Losers, and reaches his hand through the page. And Stan still tries to convince himself and his friends that it isn't real. If that were how Stan's personality began, I could forgive the stereotyping. Maybe. But during and after the climactic confrontation with Pennywise in the sewer, Stan's personality remains the same. He's no stronger coming out of the sewer than when he went in. He's the epitome of a static character, undergoing zero development. While his outcome in the present, unveiled in the disturbingly executed final scene, is intended to be tragic, it mostly registers as, "Yeah, we all saw that coming."

While there are perhaps too many bonding scenes and off-screen deaths to make for a consistently terrifying horror film, It still boasts its share of scary sequences. The interaction between Georgie and Pennywise is an early highlight, as the image of a clown popping up from beneath a sewer drain is automatically horrifying, and the way he manipulates Georgie into trusting him with promises of cotton candy and balloons expertly preys on a parent's worst nightmare of their child talking to a predatory stranger. Then there's the suspenseful scene where Richie goes down into the school basement to get Mr. Marsh for a cleanup in the cafeteria, and sees glimpses of what turns out to be Pennywise in the form of a werewolf. (The glimpses end up being much more dread-inducing than the eventual up-close reveal of a cheap-looking Halloween mask.) While Beverly is in her bathroom, the voices of several dead children begin speaking to her through the sink drain, asking for help. A red balloon emerges from the sink and pops, exploding blood all over Bev's face and the walls. As Bill stares mournfully at a picture of Georgie in a family album, Georgie gives a wink, terrifying Bill into throwing the album across the room. Suddenly, the book opens on its own and flips through pages until landing back on Georgie's picture, around which a pool of blood circulates. When Bill alerts his parents, neither is able to see the blood on the floor or on Georgie's photo, not even when it gets on Mrs. Denbrough's hands. Similarly, when Mr. Marsh runs into his bathroom and looks into the sink, gripping both sides with his hands, he too is unable to see the blood. A clever metaphor for the ways in which children are more susceptible to experiencing supernatural phenomena while their parents are too "mature" or out of touch to believe in such things. The most innovative set piece, from both a conceptual and technical standpoint, occurs when the lucky seven are gathered together looking through Mike's history book. As more and more drawings of Pennywise appear, the pages begin to flip again on their own, landing on a picture of circus figures. Suddenly, cheerful circus music audibly plays, and the characters in the book animate. This is where Curry really gets to show off his playful physicality, doing backflips and cartwheels before spotting the onlookers, to whom he runs up and threatens from inside the book.

Since this covers only half the story, it's not entirely surprising that the climax is so perfunctory. The Losers Club gathers at the sewer which Pennywise has claimed as his home, the production design of which is splendidly forbidding. In terms of setting, there couldn't have been a better place in which to set the confrontation between the kids and the clown. Cobwebs adorn the walls. Long pipes evoke the boiler room where Freddy Krueger took his children in his human life, and illuminate with blinding white light to signify Pennywise's presence. The halls are filled with an all-encompassing blue fog, threatening to disorient and separate the friends unless they stick together, hand in hand. Wallace conjures a brilliant atmosphere of nerve-racking anticipation, only to fizzle out once Pennywise makes his appearance. The ways in which he's incapacitated and temporarily defeated (at least for the next 30 years) cease to make much sense. Eddie sprays his inhaler on Pennywise's face, falsely insisting it's battery acid, and somehow that lie comes with the physical effect of melting half of the creature's face off. The effect is nonetheless visually gruesome, Curry's hand glued to his cheek like pulling stringy mozzarella cheese off a slice of pizza. Beverly slings a silver earring at the top of Pennywise's head, causing a beam of light to shoot out. Why does silver have any damaging effect on this monster? After all, he's an alien, not a werewolf. Is it just because they saw that werewolf movie and "believe" Pennywise can be defeated in the same way? Apparently, some fake battery acid and a shot of silver to the cranium is all it takes, as Pennywise backflips into the air and is sucked down into a drain, Curry obviously replaced at this point by a deteriorating puppet. As he goes down, Bill makes a deeply questionable decision, grabbing onto Pennywise's outstretched hand. Does some paranormal force compel this thought-to-be-smart kid to do that, or is he trying to stop it from disappearing so he can ensure it's really dead? Your guess is as good as mine. 

Either way, while the kids may be unsure, we know Pennywise is not dead. That resolution won't occur until the second half, when the kids are grown up and regroup to face their monster one last time. I shudder to think that definitive showdown is ahead of me for next week. And not in the good way.

5.8/10