It: Chapter Two (1990)
Last week, I reviewed the first half of co-writer-director Tommy Lee Wallace's 1990 made-for-TV adaptation of Stephen King's 1986 psychological sci-fi horror novel, It. Even though both halves comprise a single movie, I decided to treat each one individually, as watching them in one sitting would have resulted in approximately a three-hour viewing. No, thanks. As relaxing and undemanding as the activity of watching a movie may be, there's still a limit as to how long I can sit on a couch and devote my full attention to the screen before me. An hour and a half is plenty long enough, especially when it pertains to a production as enjoyable but mediocre as Wallace's miniseries.
In the last sentence of my review for It: Chapter One, I expressed dread over this week's self-imposed assignment, that of viewing and reviewing the second episode. Growing up, the first episode was one of the scariest and most purely enjoyable creature features my young, easy-to-please eyes had ever feasted upon. A shape-shifting clown played by the perfectly cast, deceptively charming Tim Curry feeding on the fear (and flesh) of innocent children in the small fictitious town of Derry, Maine, only to be temporarily thwarted by the impenetrable bond and inner strength of a group of seven preadolescent outcasts who proudly call themselves "The Losers Club." At the time, it was the perfect mix of childhood nostalgia and nightmare-generating, bump-in-the-dark horror. Viewed through the lens of my 26-year-old film critic eyes, I've now come to realize Doug Walker may have been onto something in his contemporary takedown. Yes, it's still a reasonably fun, heartfelt, and scary horror film, exceptionally well made for a television production, with an iconic Tim Curry performance no one could deny the effectiveness of. But it still suffers greatly from its required adherence to ABC's restrictions on graphic violence, as well as a teleplay that leaves its terrifying monster to spew more threats than he's enabled to follow through on.
Naturally, the second chapter, which focuses on the lives of the Losers Club in their 40s, was bound to be much worse. I remember distinctly that, while I watched both tapes as a kid, I undeniably preferred the first, as it played on some of the most fundamental childhood fears -- being afraid to venture into your own dark basement, being manipulated by deceptively friendly strangers with the most malicious intentions in mind, your parents unable to see the horrors unfolding right in front of them, thereby leaving you all alone to deal with them on your own. By comparison, the second chapter was always bound to be anticlimactic. After all, if the kids are all grown up, those same fears simply can't pack the same punch. The atmosphere of summertime and the magic of childhood friendship are naturally out of the picture.
To my mild astonishment, It: Chapter Two is far from the insufferable snooze fest I was anticipating when I sat down to re-watch it yesterday afternoon for the first time in I don't know how many years. While it lacks the nightmarish, creepy-crawly frights of the opening hour and 34 minutes, the remaining hour and a half fills in the void with a well-acted, character-driven drama that takes far too long to get going, but manages to hold the attention with strong chemistry among the main cast and a scattering of inventive set pieces.
Following Mike Hanlon's (Tim Reid) phone call to all seven members of the Losers Club, informing them that Pennywise has resurfaced and urgently asking them to deliver on the promise they made in their childhood to return to their hometown of Derry, Maine to finish what they started, all but one hop on a plane, shaken but determined. That one is Stan Uris (Richard Masur), who, unable to bear the thought of confronting Pennywise after nearly losing his life to him 30 years prior in the sewer, has slit his wrists in the bathtub, leaving his wife a hysterical, traumatized wreck.
En route to the town they left behind long ago, with hopes of never having to return, the remaining five members -- former leader Bill Denbrough (Richard Thomas), now an accomplished horror novelist married to the beautiful actress, Audra (Olivia Hussey); remaining hypochondriac/mama's boy Eddie Kaspbrak (Dennis Christopher); formerly overweight Ben Hanscom (John Ritter); wannabe comedian Richie Tozier (Harry Anderson); and sole female Loser with unresolved Daddy issues, Beverly Marsh (Annette O'Toole) -- all experience frightening encounters with their worst nightmare from childhood, Pennywise the Dancing Clown (Tim Curry), threatening them to turn back while they still have the chance, assuring them that they're all too old to take him on again. Scared out of their wits yet admirably undeterred, the adult Losers carry on with their promise and meet up for the first time in 30 years, reminiscing about old times and gradually putting the pieces together of the trauma they had worked so hard to forget over the years. While staying together at a local motel, the remaining six rekindle their long-abandoned friendship and vacillate between plans to stick around and put an end to Pennywise once and for all, or get the hell out of dodge, especially after learning of Stan's not-completely-irrational choice of suicide.
As it turns out, Henry's involvement ultimately serves no narrative purpose. It's cursory at best. While catching up with this despicable human villain in his adult years is worthwhile in theory, and finding him imprisoned in a mental asylum definitely registers as a plausible outcome, in execution not much is done with this subplot. Pennywise helps Henry reconnect with the racist psychopath he was as a teenager, solidifying his decision by handing him his discarded trusty switchblade, and breaks him out of the asylum via mauling Koontz to death in the form of a pit bull, the assumption being that they represent the guard's greatest fear. Tracking down the Losers at their motel (the assumption being that Pennywise gave him the directions), Henry ambushes Mike when he's alone in his room and stabs him in the chest, albeit not with enough force to kill him. As Mike uses every ounce of strength remaining in his body to fend off his assailant, Ben and Eddie rush into his room just in time to pull Henry off. In the process, Mike manages to turn the switchblade on Henry and stab it into his chest, killing him. Oddly enough, after the friends take Mike to the hospital where he recovers, they make the somewhat baffling decision to leave Henry's corpse in Mike's room, reasoning that if they get the police involved, things will only get worse. Yeah, because when they find Bowers' body covered up in the motel, they totally won't pursue the Losers who left him there before hastily checking out the next morning.
One of the primary explanations for this second chapter's dip in quality could very well be tied to the absence of writer Lawrence D. Cohen. In the initial episode, Tommy Lee Wallace directed from a teleplay written by himself in partnership with Cohen, who had some prior experience adapting a Stephen King horror novel with his authoritative take on Carrie in 1976. For this second episode, Wallace remains the sole force in the director's chair, but has been left to his own devices on the writing front, and the added responsibility appears to have been a bit much for the guy. As a result, he lets his actors perform most of the heavy lifting. While the seven adult actors, and the obvious camaraderie they exude effortlessly onscreen, succeed in obtaining and sustaining our engagement, Wallace allows far too much time to pass without incident or scares. As the not-so-lucky seven make their way from their current locations to their haunted hometown, Wallace breaks up the monotony (or at least tries to) with ostentatious imagery of multiple colorful balloons and, at one point, the severed talking head of Stan in a refrigerator. First, let's talk about the balloons. I get it. Pennywise is a clown, or at least that's his preferred form, so therefore he carries around a never-ending supply of balloons to both highlight his misleading persona and contrast his inner darkness with outer cheerful colors. All fine and well. But here's the problem: Wallace fails to make these balloons anything more than, well, cheerful and colorful. They generate not a single chill or raise so much as one goosebump. As for Stan's head, there's some dark humor to be found in his pithy mocking of the group for their individual shortcomings and insecurities, such as Bill's sporadic stutter, Bev's taste in toxic men, Richie's secret nose job, Mike's refusal to leave town, and Eddie's questionable sexuality. But it's more silly than scary, and the seconds leading up to this "shock scare" foreshadow too easily that something other than beer is going to appear in that fridge once Mike opens the door. These images contain no real threat, just reiterate Pennywise's warning for the Losers to "turn back now!"
The adult actors assuming the roles of the six Losers in this second chapter (excluding Richard Masur on account of his character's stereotypically offensive fate in the final scene of the first) all submit strong performances and exhibit palpable chemistry with one another. Occasionally, some of them do veer into the unpleasant realm of melodrama, namely O'Toole in a scene where she laments her decision to become involved with a man who represents everything she hated about her absuvie father as well as the relentless evil of Pennywise ("Why does it hate so much? Why is it so mean?" she asks, a victim more of silly writing than campy acting) and Christopher, who, once he remembers Pennywise, crumbles into an eye-rollingly effeminate crybaby, sucking on his placebo inhaler as if it were a binky (and it might as well be). Nevertheless, each of them accomplish the most important goals: recapturing the ride-or-die bond between their younger counterparts, and embodying their personalities so accurately that we can imagine the cast from the first half having grown into the adults we meet up with here. These so-called losers may have grown into successful winners who have left the horrors of their childhood in the rear-view mirror, but once they're called upon to fulfill their promise and regroup to face off against this seemingly unstoppable foe, the frightened children they were from 30 years ago resurface in the click of a phone call. It's to the grown actors' credit that they're able to channel the essence of their characters' personalities as demonstrated by the younger cast, all of whom pop up from time to time in flashbacks.
However, it must be noted that Harry Anderson can be a little annoying in his attempts to emphasize Richie's lifelong jokester personality. Part of the charm of Richie Tozier is that he uses goofball comedy to suppress the terror and frustration he's genuinely feeling, but in one scene that takes place in the library where Mike works, Anderson takes it way too far, his incoherent, nonstop blabbering made all the more painful by the conspicuously forced, overly generous laughter of those in attendance.
The most affecting scenes between the cast are those that zero in on their group bonding once they're back together in Derry. From the second they see each other's faces in a reserved room in a Chinese restaurant for the first time in 30 years, they pick up right where they left off, like the best of childhood best friends. They're no longer an author, a fashion designer, a late-night talk show host, a librarian, a limo driver, or whatever Ben is. They are the Losers Club. Every time they engage in a group hug, it feels authentic and beautiful. When one is experiencing an instance of extreme distress (and let's be real, it's more often than not Eddie), the rest will come up to them and pat them consolingly on the back or shoulder. Most importantly, when the time comes for them to confront Pennywise in his chosen habitation, the sewer plant across the pond, the Losers always stick together, side by side, hand in hand, never giving into the common horror movie urge to inexplicably split up. And in the once instance when Bill impulsively runs from the group screaming for his wife, it actually makes sense on an emotional level.
Much like in the first episode, Wallace's adaptation of It belongs almost exclusively to the one and only Tim Curry, who brings that same hauntingly enchanting mixture of clownish flamboyance and gravelly-voiced, flesh-salivating malice to the role of Pennywise the Dancing Clown. However, this time around, Curry is tasked with doubling down on the comedic side of his character's personality, resulting in a tonally different chapter that seems to not even be trying to elicit horror so much as goofy chuckles. As disappointing as this change may be in comparison to Curry's opening act, he still proves irresistibly exuberant and thoroughly fun to watch, and it's evident that he's having a ball(oon) as he stalks his adult prey from afar and creeps his way into their psyches, defying them to come for him. More disappointing than Pennywise's turn to comic territory is the way in which Curry is underutilized by Wallace. Sure, Curry re-emerges from time to time, making the most of his every opportunity on camera, but throughout much of Chapter 2, Pennywise is reduced to hallucinatory figures. While a clown clearly isn't the "legitimate" form of this alien, it's far and away the scariest, thanks to one part inherent creepiness of clowns, one part Curry's go-for-broke portrayal of such. Therefore, it's disheartening to see Curry take a back seat to a slew of special effects and less memorable appearances such as a mummy (bandaged up and silent), a skeleton, a pit bull, an enlarged spider, and, for Henry's benefit, Belch.
Despite the thinness of the plot and excess of dead air, with much of the runtime devoted to the conflicted interactions between the adult Losers, Wallace does manage to write up and execute a handful of scary moments here and there. The most spine-tingling is easily Beverly's interaction with Mrs. Kersh (Florence Paterson), a seemingly gregarious old lady who lives in the home Bev grew up in and would send Ruth Gordon's Minnie Castevet from Rosemary's Baby running for the hills. The way Wallace builds up a sense of dread in this scene is as close as Part 2 comes to recapturing the nightmarish horror of Part 1, utilizing a close-up of Paterson's eerily smiling face to accentuate her black, rotting teeth, amplifying the unsettling slurp of her tea. Stopping at a gas station to ask for directions to Derry, Audra becomes hypnotized by Pennywise after he sheds the disguise of an attendant offering a balloon. While a pit bull is by far the most curious form for Pennywise to adopt, there's something chilling about the way Wallace directs Henry's escape from the asylum. As Koontz marches up to beat Henry, he's stopped in his tracks as he sees a puffy yellow pant leg emerge from behind Henry. Wallace displays the creation from bottom to top, starting with the leg, then moving up to a waving white-gloved hand, and finally the vicious, barking visage of a pit bull. Being a TV production, Wallace is forbidden from displaying the mauling, relying on the sounds of barking and Koontz's screaming, complemented by the latter's petrified, open-mouthed face.
Unfortunately, the silly encounters with Pennywise outweigh the legitimately freaky ones. The most memorable by far is Richie's in the library where he waits for Mike, who's just stepped out with Bill. As he sits anxiously sipping a cup of water handed to him by the nice librarian (in a weak attempt at a false scare), Pennywise appears on the top floor reading a newspaper. He unleashes an abundance of balloons, accompanied by playful carnival music, and just like when he was a kid, only Richie can see this. All the other patrons sits idly by, obliviously reading books. The balloons rest before them and explode blood onto their faces, which they can't see or feel. Only Richie can, and as he frantically urges the librarian to tell Mike he'll see him tonight, Pennywise sits cheerily on the upper railing, striving to drive Richie insane: distributing old puns ("Excuse me, sir, do you have Prince Albert in a can? You do? Well, you better let the poor guy out." "Excuse me, ma'am, is your refrigerator running? It is? Well, you better catch it before it runs away."), spinning a ratchet in his hand, and complimenting himself with a distinctively mind-frying laugh (wa-ha, wa-ha, wa-ha). Later, as the friends are finishing their Chinese food, their fortune cookies animate, with eyeballs popping out of the slit, crab claws clamping together, and a live chicken squealing on the table. Again, there's no sense of danger here because, as gross and disturbing as these hallucinations are, that's all they are: hallucinations, visuals, guaranteed to make anyone cringe, but not shiver or recoil in fright.
From a cinematographic perspective, It: Chapter Two truly comes alive in the production design of Pennywise's sewer plant. Expanding on the hauntingly stunning set where the climax of chapter one transpired, Richard Leiterman suffuses his monster's habitation with extra eye-catching colors of baby blue, lime green, and hellish red lighting throughout every section. Skulls are scattered around the floor and adorning the walls. A stream of water sits in the middle of the floor, carrying Georgie's paper sailboat from the opening scene of chapter one. A secret hatch leads to Pennywise's feeding ground, where numerous bodies are cocooned in cobwebs. It's only here where the Losers (and, by extension, we) may finally witness the true form of their lifelong nightmare, and all that waiting has not paid off in any particularly remarkable way. It's safe to assume at this point that most horror fans know what Pennywise looks like beneath the flamboyant Ronald McDonald facade, and just as safe to assume most prefer Curry's manifestation. Spoiler alert for any who don't yet know: it's a spider. An overgrown, cheap-looking alien spider with spindly arms and legs that's been long put to shame by the computer-generated aliens of modern horror films like Cloverfield and The Mist, the latter of which is likewise a Stephen King adaptation. Unlike when it's in clown form, this generic alien doesn't speak, it just crawls and stares at our heroes with a pair of wide, angry eyes. And it moves with the herky-jerky quality of a primitive contraption made of plastic.
In addition to learning about this monster's true form, Wallace also expands on an attribute alluded to in the climax of the first chapter: its so-called "deadlights." Basically, it's just a flash of blinding white light that shines through various areas of the creature's body. If you look into it, you'll be hypnotized permanently. Or just until the lights turn off. Or they won't affect you at all. It's honestly difficult to tell because Wallace's logic of the deadlights is so inconsistent. It impacts his characters differently based not on specific personality types but on however Wallace wants it to impact them. For example, when Audra looks into Pennywise's eyes while the lights shine from them and into hers, she's left nearly permanently catatonic, alive but unable to move, talk, or make any kind of responses. When Bill, Ben, and Richie stare into its deadlights, on the other hand (and they each do it one after the other so willingly it calls into question their mental capacity), they're freed from its spell the second the alien turns around and crawls away. As for Bev and Eddie, they're given the plot armor to look into the deadlights and simply not slip into catatonia. (Eddie holds a hand between his face and the deadlights. Apparently that's all it takes.)
If the climactic confrontation in the first episode came across as pat and contrived, this second one is even more logically impaired and too easily achieved. This time, when Bev slings her first two shots of the silver earrings (conveniently saved by Mike one day when he went strolling around the sewers as a kid on an aborted suicide mission) at the creature, they bounce off its plastic-looking head. After reclaiming them, she fires one into its torso, from where the deadlights are emanating, causing it to retreat as the light dies down. Defiant to the possibility of returning at the age of 70 for a third standoff, Richie, Ben, Bill, and Bev (Eddie is crushed to death in a bear hug by its limbs) pursue spider-Pennywise in his cave, push him over, beat him, and ultimately rip his heart out. Definitive a confrontation as this is, couldn't they have just done that the first time when they were kids? For an otherworldly creature who refers to itself as "eternal" and has been feeding on the town of Derry for centuries, is this really all anyone had to do to kill it?
As if things couldn't get any sillier, just wait for the ending. Now that Pennywise is finally dead, only five Losers remain, and this time, they don't have to make a pact to return in another 30 years should it come back. Had Wallace left the story then and there, with his heroes emerging from the sewers as victorious, it would have been fine. A little anticlimactic, but fine. No, he drags on a bit more for an almost entirely ridiculous epilogue to outline his characters' fates. While recovering from his stab wound in the hospital, Mike reveals in a voiceover narration that, somehow, despite being in his forties, he's forgotten everything. Not just from his childhood. That I could understand. When you're young, not even a teenager, and you undergo a severely traumatic experience, I can believe your mind erasing parts of that trauma as you grow into adulthood. Although, Mike never forgot because he never left Derry. But now he forgets everything from his childhood to the events of the last couple days. He and Bill even have to remind each other of their own names. Say what? So, let me get this straight. They both have somehow forgotten each other over the years, yet they remember enough to visit each other? But they still forget their names? Are they both suffering from dementia, or did Pennywise put a curse on them before they ripped its heart out? This narrated exposition is intended to pack the same gut punch that makes the ending of Stand by Me so perfectly imperfect, but instead it just leaves you scratching your head.
Lastly, there's the final scene between Bill and Audra, and this is where Wallace's command of tone shows itself to be so wide of the mark you could fly a plane through it. In a last-ditch effort to break Audra out of her trance, Bill sits her on his lap while he rides his childhood bike recklessly down the street into a stream of traffic. Yes, you read that correctly. He nearly causes a pile-up. Several cars are forced to swerve out of the way and make a hard brake to avoid running into this narcissistic psycho. Drivers exit their cars and wonder what in the name of stupid writing is going on. But pay no mind. Bill's borderline murderous gesture to get his wife back actually works. Audra suddenly snaps out of her trance, stares at Bill, and asks what's going on. Overwhelmed with joy, Bill holds his wife tightly in his arms and makes out with her in the middle of the street, utterly blind to the horde of infuriated drivers honking their horns and probably struggling to catch their breaths. How romantic.
While we're on the topic of contrived scenes, take a look at the one where Ben, freshly arrived in town, leaves his cab to explore the barrens where he and his friends spent much of their time as kids. During this brief trip down memory lane, ever so conveniently, an overweight boy, much like Ben once was at his age, is being pursued by a gang of thin fat-shaming hoodlums. This sight cheaply evokes the haunting image of Ben as a child being chased into the woods by Henry, Belch, and Vic. The boys push this kid onto the ground, call him "porky" (reminiscent of Henry's nickname for Ben, "fat boy"), and walk off. Empathetic to this kid's plight, Ben consoles him and wraps a bandana (that he ever so conveniently just happened to have in his pocket) around his cut knee. On one level, this is a sweet little moment that demonstrates the empathy and compassion intrinsic to Ben's character. On another, it's a contrived reminder of the bullying he faced as a child, resulting in a trite "Hang in there, champ, you're gonna make it" message.
Almost as if Wallace is aware of the inferiority of his solo chapter, he inserts too many flashbacks of the characters' childhoods into the adult portion. Some of these are unnecessary recycled shots from the first half, like young Bill tearfully asking for help from his friends to kill Pennywise, some expand on scenes from the first, like Bev inviting her friends over to see the blood in her bathroom for themselves, and others are completely new. The most prominent of these is the scene where Stan is nearly killed by Pennywise in the form of a mummy. I'm of two minds about this sequence. From a directorial standpoint, this scene is drenched in suspense, attaining the feel of a nightmare through a plain domestic setting, the heavy thumping of footsteps, and layers of wrapping. From a logical one, it earns a place on a list of dumbest decisions made by a character in a horror movie. Ask yourself this: if you were by yourself outside, and heard a creepy voice growling your name from the inside of someone else's home nearby, would you actually walk into said haunted house and casually ask, "Yeah?" Me neither.
5.4/10
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