Stephen King's It
My favourite book of all time is 'It' by Stephen King. I first read it in 2004, and have since read it a further two times. If you think you can commit to the 1000+ pages, I highly recommend you read this story. And I’m not alone in that suggestion. It is still on the Top 100 List of Best Selling Books in most parts of the world, and is recommended by many critics as a novel you must read in your life. The scope, imagination and creativity on display in this mammoth book are just astounding. I believe it is Stephen King’s finest work, even though I haven’t read all his stuff. But before I read the book, I saw the TV movie that was made in the early 90’s and scared the crap out of a lot of people for one main reason – that bloody clown!
Film adaptations of Stephen King’s novels have been a mix of hit and miss over the years. It seems that his short stories or “novellas” tend to make the best films, i.e. The Shawshank Redemption and Stand by Me (book title “The Body”) being among the best. As his novels are so long, detailed and heavy on plot, the movie versions can be difficult to adapt. And f you’ve read a Stephen King book, you will know that his horror tales are better reads than viewing experiences. This is because we all interpret words differently, and as I was reading It, I pictured some terrifying and disturbing things. Saying that though, the adaptation of It on display here is not a bad film, but it's not a great one. It sits somewhere in between. Sure the acting is a bit shoddy throughout, from the children and adult cast, but there are some effective scenes that still produce a scare. Mainly the scenes where the clown shows up to frighten the kids.
Released in 1990, It starred a cast of television well known’s. The filmmakers condensed the book into a 3 hour film and split it into two parts. It follows the story of seven adults who are called on to reunite in the town they grew up in as kids. They are asked to return on the strength of a promise to deal with It, if It ever came back. It being the monster that occupies the sewers and drains of a small Maine town called Derry. This monster can take on any form, tapping into the fear of its prey to assimilate what scares them most. However, It usually showed up in the guise of a dancing clown, called Pennywise.
As the adults receive the call that beckons them to face their past, they start to remember their childhood; how they all met, outrunning local bully Henry Bowers who terrorized them all, and of course… how they first encountered It. The children form a club – The Loser’s Club - made up of seven outcasts. Together, they battle It to prevent It from killing any more kids in the town. They believe they have It beaten, but swear to come back to Derry if It did return. Thirty years later, the monster does come back and these seven adults who would rather forget their childhood, must confront their past once more and tap into that power and magic they discovered in their youth, to stop It once and for all.
The portrayal of It in the form of Pennywise the Clown by Tim Curry is what made this film what it was. It was scary, funny, demented and conniving. I believe many people developed a fear of clowns after seeing this film… that’s how effective Tim Curry’s performance was.
I’m guessing most people have seen It at some point, probably when it first came on television in the early 90’s. If you’re about my age, you would have watched it as a child, even when your parents told you not to. If you’ve only viewed it once, that’s enough to remember the images of that clown with the red, fuzzy hair and ghostly-pale face, peering up from a storm drain offering a balloon to a young boy in yellow rain coat… and as the boy reaches down to grab it, the clown utters those fateful words before grabbing his arm and pulling him into the dark depths of the sewer, “We all float down here… and you’ll float too”. Scary stuff.
No comments:
Post a Comment