MY 18TH FAVORITE MOVIE VILLAIN

 IT (STEPHEN KING'S IT) PLAYED BY TIM CURRY

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