Synopsis
In 1960, seven outcast kids known as “The Loser Club” fight an evil demon who poses as a child-killing clown. Thirty years later, they reunite to stop the demon once and for all when it returns to their hometown. (via IMDB)
I remember when this series was on in 1990, but I didn’t think much of it because I wasn’t into the horror genre. Having been emotionally scarred from my brothers forcing me to watch The Howling while my parents were away in the 80s, I never thought of a single reason why I should revisit terror in my spare time. So, I never watched IT, but I appreciated the hell out of Tim Curry for leaving such a mark on a Stephen King classic tale. Curry deserved praise and still does after all these years.
Anyway, you didn’t come here for stories of childhood trauma or drooling over one of the best actors to play any part. You came for the IT review on Blu-ray. And I’m going to give it to you like X is going to give it to you, but not in the same way.
The television mini-series IT is a masterpiece solely for the efforts of Curry playing the lead antagonist. His terrifying portrayal of an evil demon that constantly taunts and murders kids, while haunting adults in the worst of ways is the main reason people still cringe at the thought of this television production. Pennywise will forever be Curry’s character, even thought the current film is trying to remind us he can get scarier. I’m not sure that’s possible because Curry is not that character. People may disagree with this assessment, and this is a review after all (an opinion of one), but it’s the truth. Without Curry the 90s version of IT becomes an over-acted, under-written production that falls flat on its face. IT has the time to faithfully reproduce the novel from Stephen King, thanks to a mini-series format, but falls short for a lot of reasons. The main reasons probably surround sticky censorship restrictions (can you imagine this on Netflix or Hulu?) and the severe lack of a healthy budget. That said, outside of Tim Curry, John Ritter and Harry Anderson, there wasn’t much a of a superstar cast leading the way on this one (although, Seth Green makes a wonderful appearance in it — I didn’t know he was that old) to help make it right. Regardless of who you have acting out the production, if you don’t have a well-written script or a director that knows how to push their actors, then your production is going to come out wrong.
The main issue with the writing comes from trying to turn a novel into a screenplay. While a novel gets to put in details of surroundings, atmosphere and descriptors to help bring the reader in, the screenplay only gets to do such things through actual dialogue dependent on the actors to push the rest. When the dialogue is hokey or bad, again probably restricted by censors, it’s pretty evident immediately. The hokey dialogue in the first half of the series with the kids is forgivable, especially with a 60s backdrop. When it carries over to the second half when they are adults, that’s just bad writing.
And that’s also another issue with IT, as it’s the tale of two halves.
The first half to he mini-series starts off strong, mostly spending time in the 60s with the protagonist as kids, setting up the story of their traumatic ordeal as the “loser club”, where they’re forced to solve the murder of a member’s little brother. The first half of the film does a great job with the kids, providing a real sense of togetherness through banding together after getting bullied at school and facing their ultimate fear of Pennywise the clown as a group. It puts together a great and horrifying story, where the viewer doesn’t honestly know how they’re going to overcome Pennywise or where Pennywise is going to show up next to terrorize them. You get a lot of good mystery and terror out of the setup, but then it slowly goes away when the adults takeover the second half of the series.
The second half of the series has the group coming back together to take down Pennywise (again), who has returned to their childhood town to commit murders. The terror, which is still very embedded in the story, gets a bit goofy with uncomfortable lines and uncomfortable acting. The sense of ‘group’ is still there, as are goofy moments of remembering their childhood, but for the most part it’s not nearly as terrifying or entertaining as the setup. The writing probably accounts for about 60% of the issue, but the other 40% can be put on the director, as well as the actors. I don’t want to give too much away, so I’ll stop there.
Now, it might seem like I’m bashing IT for being what a 1990 mini-series typically was nearly 30 years ago, but I’m honestly not. It simply didn’t withstand the test of time, much like many television series from this time period not called Twin Peaks. As I stated above, the longevity of this series rests solely on the talent of Tim Curry and his ability to bring Pennywise to life. When people discuss the series, he is the first thing mentioned and that stands out the most, well him and the first half of the series with the kids. There isn’t anything wrong with that, but looking from a far away view of the series, it’s the only reason to go revisit it.
Overall, I don’t dislike IT, but outside of Tim Curry’s performance as Pennywise, there’s not much to crow about. It is impressive that this mini-series was produced, especially considering the content, but it needed a better set of actors, better writing and a bigger budget to properly pull Stephen King’s story off perfectly. IT is what it is, so there’s no changing that, but it could have been so much better. With that said, I don’t have a helluva lot faith in a two-hour film pulling this story off properly. I hope I’m wrong, but it’s tough to top what 1990s IT did with the timeframe it was given.
On the Blu-ray side of things, the series was transferred beautifully to HD. Warner Home Video in typical fashion does a great job with making older films and series better through whatever process they use.
In terms of special features, here’s what you’re getting:
– Commentary from directory Tommy Lee Wallace, Dennis Christopher, Tim Reid, John Ritter and Richard Thomas
Old commentary on a Blu-ray is fine. It’s always good to hear John Ritter, as he was a fun actor to watch. Anyway, not much in the scheme of things, but a special edition, at least according to Amazon, is coming October 4th. That should have some good stuff with it. Until then, onto the summary.
