Tim Curry is one of my favorite actors and voice actors. The best roles for
him are the villains; his villains are usually either scary, funny or both,
sometimes even lovable. The villain that I enjoy him as the most is IT. IT is a
shape shifting monster that lives in the sewers of a town called Derry in Maine. IT mostly takes
the form of a clown named Pennywise. He also loves spreading fear into people, especially
kids before killing them. Tim Curry surprisingly scares me in this film and
also makes me laugh at certain points in the film. I didn't grow up watching
this film as a kid, but a lot of my friends who have seen this film as a kid
told me how scary it is. When I finally saw this film about a year ago I was
thinking "Come on, how can Tim Curry, The Sweet Transvestite from
"Rocky Horror"; the guy who does the voice of Nigel Thronberry SCARE
ME?”. Surprisingly, at the age of 17, a person who doesn't get scared of horror
movies so easily now has nightmares of IT. Since IT is basically one of the
main characters of the film, I'm just focusing on the monster, I'm not going to
tell you what I think of the special effects, acting from the other characters
etc etc, I'm going to save all that when I review the film.
WARNING: WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS
The films in flashbacks so I'm going to go in order.
HISTORY OF IT
IT has haunted the town of Derry for generations and appears to
terrorize the town every 30 years. The whole town knows about IT, not
just proven by the old man Mr.Ross, but also by the teacher, police officer and
many more of the people that live in the town. It's not just revealed by
the main characters, just look at the people who live in Derry,
you can tell they know something. IT has caused numerous murders
and disasters for ages in the town and no one can do
anything about it. The story that impresses me the most of IT's history
is IT ate 253 settlers in the older days and left no trace of them.
1960
When we first meet the monster (In that year), a kid named
Georgie loses his paper boat in the sewer and IT appears in the sewer as
Pennywise the dancing clown. At first he acts like a friendly clown; giving
Georgie his boat back; offers him a balloon and says that there's rides, candy
and games in the sewer (Which made me forget for 1 minute that he's a monster).
When the boy goes to grab his boat, the monster pulls him in and eats the boy
alive. When I first saw the clowns sharp teeth and bright yellow devilish
eyes, I was literally scared stiff. I guess my fear of clowns is still
somewhere inside me.
Mostly throughout the whole film, especially in this year,
IT likes to terrorize our main characters by making them go nuts before he
kills them later on, because towards the end of this part he says "You all
taste so much better when you're afraid.". IT frightens Billy by
making the picture of his brother Georgie come alive in an old photo album and
then make the album leak blood, which by the way he can only see the blood. IT
scares Ben by being the corpse of his father back from the dead. IT scares Beverly by making voices
down the drain of the bathroom sink of dead children screaming for
"Help", before ITs clown nose clogs the drain and bursts into blood,
which she can also only see the blood, to make her alcoholic father think she's
crazy. IT scares Richie (Young Seth Greene) by being a werewolf that Richie saw
in a movie (That didn't scare him) and then turning back into Pennywise showing
him his sharp teeth. He frightens Stan by luring him into an old house by calling
his name, locking the door, and walking down the stairs as a mummy, and how
Stan got away from IT was kind of stupid.
The scene that scares me the most is the scene when IT
scares Eddie. The scene starts out with Eddie taking a shower (Alone) in the
boy’s locker room, when all of a sudden all of the shower heads in the room
begin to stretch and blocks the boys exit. IT suddenly appears out of the drain
and shows his demon face. God, the horrors that Tim Curry has gave me! When the
new kid of the group Mike, shows them a book of old pictures of Derry, they
find out that IT has been around for ages and then suddenly one of the
pictures in the book comes to life and IT pops out scaring the children, and
tries to grab one of them.
The finale of the 60s flashback takes place in the
sewer when the kids try to kill IT, while Bullies led by a kid named Henry,
follows them into the sewer so he can kill them for standing up to him and
throwing rocks at him and his gang. However, two of gang members get eaten
by IT (Off-Screen) and spares Henry, but not after being touched by IT's dead
lights. Henry is a good villain too, but when we see him as an adult I
start losing interest in him, plus he's just an average bully and is not really
a real threat to the kids, except when he wants to kill them.
IT finally catches up with the
kids in the sewer and blinds them with smoke. The kids hold hands in a circle
so they can stay together, but IT tries to scare them and uses temptations so
they can break the circle. Finally when IT tries to eat one of
the kids, Eddie sprays battery acid at IT's face, which causes a part of his
face to melt and Beverly shoots sliver into IT's head with a slingshot and IT
escapes, but not after trying to take one of the kids with it. The kids think
IT's dead, but if IT's not they'll reunite together and finish IT off.
1990
This is how the film starts out. A storms coming to Derry and a little girl is out riding her tricycle
singing "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" (Foreshadowing what "IT" really
is). Her mother tells her to get inside, the little girl grabs a doll and
is about to go inside when suddenly, she hears children laughing. Behind the
sheets of hanged laundry, she sees a clown waving "Hi" to her. She
stops and smiles, but then IT starts growling and kills her (Off-Screen). A
grown up Mike who still lives in Derry finds
out that this is the sixth child being killed; he then finds a picture of
Billy's brother Georgie on the street. It's clear to him that IT is
back! So he calls the gang to tell them that IT is back and they must
return to Derry to finish the monster off. At
one point, IT frightens him while he's about to make a phone call. I think the
reason why IT didn't kill him is not just because it wants him to be
afraid of IT, IT also wants revenge on the gang that fought back at it, and to
do that IT needs Mike to bring them there.
As each member of the gang returns to Derry,
each of the members run into IT in its Clown form and are being terrorized by
IT, not only to scare them, but to make them believe that IT's back. Billy is
at the cemetery looking at his brother’s grave when suddenly IT scares Billy by
showing him open graves to choose from, and shows his ugly teeth. When
Richie goes to The Library to wait for Mike to show up, IT is at the Library
screaming, making noises, telling old jokes, and having dozens of Balloons
popping blood into people’s faces, which by the way they don't see or hear IT,
or even see the blood. Ben sees IT as the corpse of his father again, while
he's looking at the creek where he used to hang, and even sees IT as a clown
holding balloons on his way to town. One Balloon appears in the cab saying
"TURN BACK NOW"! Eddie goes to the
old pharmacy store to get a refill for his Inhaler when he bumps into an old
man, who was a doctor he knew growing up in Derry.
The doctor grabs Eddie with his hand turning into claws and speaks in IT's
voice telling him to leave Derry. This scene
always confuses me because I'm not sure if it really is IT as the old man. I
think it's the old man being taken over by IT because, the guy at the
counter of the store seems to know him well and right after he frightens
Eddie he doesn't disappear, he goes back to being the confused old man.
Out of all the revisits when the adults encounter IT, my
favorite scare is Beverly's
visit. Beverly
sees the old apartment she grew up in as a little girl, and notices there's a
sign that says her last name. When she rings the bell for her apartment room,
it appears an old lady named Kresh is now living in her apartment and that her
father's been dead for 5 years. She offers Beverly a cup of tea and lets her freshin’ up
in the bathroom. Beverly clogs
the drain and lets the faucet drip water, she closes her eyes for a
few seconds and when she opens them, the sink is full of water. As she sits
down for tea, Ms Kresh is drinking the tea in a weird way. When Beverly looks at what’s
in the tea cup, it's full of blood. She drops the tea cup and while Kresh is
picking it up, she turns into a zombie corpse of her father. As Beverly runs out, IT
turns into Pennywise laughing and walking into the house. Beverly almost gets hit by an oncoming truck,
but as she looks at her apartment again it's a wreck and is shutdown, looking
nothing like it was when she first saw it. The last thing she sees is a yellow
Balloon floating down the street, while hearing the laugh of IT. That scene
still shocks me and I was frightened, while at the same time amazed with the
writing for this scene.
When the gang finally gets together except for Stan because he committed
suicide, IT scares them again by making bugs and monsters pop out of
their fortune cookies as they eat dinner; causes chaos in the Library; and even
shows up as Stan's head talking to them and insulting them. The gang is
not afraid of IT by not believing him and standing together as one. That
doesn't stop the monster though. IT convinces Henry to help him kill the gang
as the face of the moon and as the corpse of his friend Belch and helps him
escape from the mental hospital. While
Henry goes after the gang and only manages to wound Mike, IT kidnaps Billy's
wife as a man working at a gas station and kisses Ben as Beverly. Alright the scene when IT kisses Ben
is similar to the scene when Jack meets the lady in 237 in Kubricks “The
Shining”. While funny, was it necessary to even put that scene in, it was funny,
but very awkward. Is IT a "Sweet Transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania?” fortunately NO!
At the climax of the film, the gang goes into the sewers once again to
finish IT off once and for all. IT turns into Bills brother Georgie, making him
believe it's really him, a scene I almost believed it was really Georgie's
ghost. IT then tells them that they can only see what their minds let them see
IT as. IT shows up as its true form which is a GIANT SPIDER. IT as the giant
spider almost kills the main characters with his dead lights which are found in
the spider’s stomach; kills one of the gang with its sharp teeth; and seems to
be invincible. Another cleverly written idea in my opinion because there are
lots of people who are afraid of spiders, what do I think of the special
effects of the spider? I'll tell you that on my review on the film. Do the kids
live, do they succeed in killing IT, that's one thing I don't want to spoil.
All I'll say is the last thing we hear is IT's laugh.
IT is different and unusual to other monsters I seen in film and TV. I
know a lot of monsters can change their form but for me IT is my favorite. IT
contains two of many people’s fears and that's clowns and Spiders. As a
matter of fact, the actors found Tim Curry so scary that they avoided him on
set. The fact that the story is written by my favorite author Stephen King
makes it another huge reason why I love IT. Tim Curry was also going
to be the voice of the Joker for "Batman: The Animated Series", but
they found him too scary to play the role. If Tim Curry was going to do the
voice of the Joker my guess is it would be something like this
villain. I've been afraid of clowns from "Are You Afraid Of The
Dark?" Episodes, "Pee Wees Big Adventure" and "Brave Little
Toaster", but Tim Curry takes the cake. If Tim Curry can scare me at
the age of 17, when I’ve gotten over my fears of the clowns that I was afraid
of, then IT defiantly earns a place as a one of my favorite Villains.
"I'll kill you all! Ha Ha! I'll drive you crazy and I'll kill you all! I'm every nightmare you've ever had! I am your worst dream come true! I'M EVERYTHING YOU EVER WERE AFRAID OF!"-IT
