When I first read Stephen King’s 1138-page-long magnum opus of horror It in 1986, not only did I marvel at how complex, scary, and engrossing is this novel that blends the seamy side of small-town America, the sadness of childhoods with trauma, and even the mysteries that surround human memory and perceptions with good, old-fashioned Creature Features horror, but I also wondered, How on Earth is anyone going to make a movie or miniseries out of this huge novel?

Considering that almost every novel that gets adapted into either made-for-television movies or theatrical feature films somehow gets cut to its basic essentials of characters, settings, and themes, I always dismissed the notion that It, with its sprawling storyline that switches back and forth between 1958 and 1985, its violence – both realistic and fantastical – and even sexuality, would ever be on either the silver screen or the “boob tube.”

Leave it, though, to the American Broadcasting Company – which should label itself the Official Network of Stephen King – to prove me wrong…or at least, partly wrong.

Ideally, King’s novel should have been given the same treatment as the network later lavished on the latter miniseries The Stand, with a larger budget and at least a three-night slot in which to tell It’s horrifying and exciting story of seven Derry, Maine pre-teen children who face off against a creature they simply call It (an homage to the cheesy 1950s sci-fi and horror flicks Stephen King watched as a kid, which included It Came From Outer Space).

Instead, ABC aired It (also known as Stephen King’s IT) as a two-part “mini-miniseries,” which, in my view, works on some levels and doesn’t in others.

The basic plot of It revolves around seven misfit kids (Bill Denbrough, Mike Hanlon, Stan Uris, Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak, Ben Hanscom, and Beverly Marsh), who live in the small town of Derry, Maine, and eventually bond as friends even as bizarre events, including the death of Bill’s younger brother Georgie, push them into confrontations with both the local bully, Henry Bowers, and the more terrifying Pennywise the Clown, the manifestation of an evil creature that only kills the ones who believe he exists…kids.

Known simply as It, this creature appears in Derry in 30 year cycles, preys on its victims, and then vanishes temporarily, perhaps to hibernate.

This point – that It terrorizes kids because the power of children’s imagination is so strong – is one of the novel’s central themes, and it clearly is one of the TV movie’s stronger suits as well. It derives its murderous powers – limited as they are to manifestations of It-self as a murderous clown and a none-too-visually-convincing monster at the climactic rematch – from the fact that It is “everything you’re all afraid of!”

Maybe it was for convenience’s sake, or maybe it was to make the movie more linear, but the screenplay eschews the novel’s shuttling back and forth from the Losers’ Club childhood years to the present and clearly sets Part One and Two in two distinct eras – Part One telling the story of the kids in 1960, and Part Two taking up the narrative 30 years later.


To be fair, having read the novel three times over the past 20 years, I can understand what a challenge it must have been for Lawrence D. Cohen (Carrie, The Tommyknockers and co-writer/director Tommy Lee Wallace (Vampires: Los Muertos) to even attempt to tackle a sanitized and slimmed-down film of a novel which featured not only violent deaths of children, oodles of profanity, razor-toothed vampires, homophobic murderers, but also “guest appearances” by characters from Christine and The Shining.

The not-so-bad changes from page to screen started when Cohen and Wallace decided to change the chronology of It so that the part involving the seven kids from Derry (Bill, Mike, Stan, Richie, Eddie, Ben, and Beverly) and the evil It and its personification Pennywise the Clown) would take place in 1960 and the “present day” confrontation between It and the now adult “Losers’ Club” in 1990. It’s a puzzling change, but a trivial one, since it only alters the “reappearance of It cycles” from 27 years to an even 30.

Also necessary: a deletion of some very controversial sexuality and a toning down of the language used by the characters; it might sound prudish to non-American audiences, but I doubt that ABC’s Standards and Practices division, a.k.a. “the censors,” would have allowed a line such as "BATTERY ACID, F--KNUTS!" to be uttered by anyone on prime-time TV, much less by a juvenile actor such as Adam Fairazl, who plays young Eddie Kaspbrak.

The strongest bit of the “mini-mini” is the first half of It. The “how the Losers’ Club met” storyline has, of course, been much simplified for the film, but the interaction between the seven kid actors – Jonathan Brandis (Young Bill Denbrough), Brandon Crane (Young Ben Hanscom), Emily Perkins (Young Beverly Marsh), Seth Green (Young Richie Tozier), Faraizl, Ben Heller (Young Stan Uris), and Marlon Taylor (Young Mike Hanlon) – is believable and is reminiscent of Rob Reiner’s cast in Stand By Me. Even in its PG-13 sanitized form, the whole essence of the novel’s first confrontation between It and the kids is superbly retained.

The weakest part, oddly enough, is the second half, which is set in 1990 and has spread its now-adult Losers all over the country, with only librarian Mike Hanlon (Tim Reid) as a watchman of sorts remaining in the town of Derry. Bill is now a Stephen King-like horror novelist (one of his books, glimpsed in a scene here, is titled The Glowing); Ben is a renowned architect, Richie is a radio DJ, Bev is a fashion designer…and so on and so forth.

They also now have no memories of their 1960 stand against It, but this will change once something dreadful happens in Derry and Mike starts making phone calls to his fellow Losers. It, he tells them, has awoken….

The Losers as adults are all played by good, even great, TV and feature film actors – Richard Thomas, Harry Anderson, Annette O’Toole, Richard Masur, Reid (best known as Venus Flytrap in WKRP in Cincinnati), Dennis Christopher, and John Ritter, who, incidentally, was really appropriate to play Ben, because he minored in architecture as a student at the University of Southern California.

Yet, for reasons only known to them, Cohen and Wallace altered the Losers way too much, making Harry Anderson’s Richie Tozier a cowardly skeptic who is reluctant to accept the return of It and, thus seeks to avoid the confrontation. They also minimize or ignore much of the Losers’ back story and/or the people in their lives, including Eddie’s dominating mother and her spitting’ image, Eddie’s wife Myra.

The one character which efficiently bridges the two parts, of course, Pennywise the Clown, the scary-yet-familiar manifestation of It. Played to the hilt by Tim Curry, Pennywise is one of the creepiest, scariest villains/monsters ever to be depicted on any screen.

Though scary in parts, Part Two really suffers from its rather limited budget. Not only does the lack of money show onscreen during the should-have-been-great-but-isn’t final confrontation (with the “real” It showing the limitations of early CGI technology), but the novel’s truly epically-disastrous finale – which I badly wanted to see – is gone, a drastic change forced upon Wallace by the lack of money for the effects that were needed.

Nevertheless, despite these and other flaws, It is still worth renting (but not, alas, owning) and watching once, if only to tide the novel’s fans until the Sci-Fi Channel gets around to airing a promised remake, which is tentatively scheduled to start production in 2008.


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age