Stephen King's It [1990] - DVD (Harry Anderson, Dennis Christopher, Tim Curry, Olivia Hussey, Richard Masur - Dir: Tommy Lee Wallace)

Is there anything scarier than clowns? Of course not. And who knows scary better than Stephen King? You see where we're going. It puts a malevolent clown (given demented life by a powdered, red-nosed Tim Curry) front and center, as King's fat novel gets the TV-movie treatment. Even at three hours plus, the action is condensed, but an engaging Stand by Me vibe prevails for much of the running time. The seven main characters, as adolescents, conquered a force of pure evil in their Maine hometown. Now, the cackling Pennywise is back, and they must come home to fight him--or, should we say, It--again. Admitting the TV-movie trappings and sometimes hysterical performances, this is a genuinely gripping thriller. As so often with King, the basic idea (the bond formed during a childhood trauma) is clean and powerful, a lifeline anchored in reality that leads us to the supernatural. --Robert Horton

Customer Reviews of Stephen King's It [1990]

El Tino
Herts
8th December 2008

Anticlimax!
This is such a long film that you have to flip the disc over like a record half way through as it would'nt all fit on one side!
It is really tense and gets more so as it chugs along then right at the grand finale, after about four hours of clutching your cushion it all ends in about 5 seconds in the worst ending I have ever seen!
It is like they either ran out of time, ideas or budget or probably all 3 by the looks of it. It is beyond anticlimatick.

Sav
uk
26th October 2008

IT doesn't stand up to some of kings other great titles!
This film is about seven old school friends who were stalked by an evil clown when they were kids. But thirty something years later the defeated monster comes back from god knows where to seek revenge. ThIs is where the story begins and the film becomes repetitive. You watch the crazy clown make seven personal and anti-social visits to each one of the characters, struck with terror each one of the seven characters thinks back thirty years to when they first saw the clown and how it could come back after so long, unfortunately the film takes you back with them to bore you with their boy scout childhoods. At this point it felt like i was watching a childrens adventure like the goonies not a horror film. And if that wasn't enough, you then get the joy of watching each character trying to get in contact with one another after thirty odd years. Now where did i put that dusty old phone book. Not very scary! If you suffer from insomnia then this film might just help you. Compared to some of kings other films such as misery and the shining, this film doesn't match up!

Langdon Ulder
England
22nd September 2008

Good film but its far too long
IT is a good film but at over 3 hours long, it makes it difficult to watch in one sitting. I believe they could of knocked half an hour off the running time and no-one would notice. For the film itself, 4 stars but because of its running time, 3.5 stars.

The Burrito Person

31st August 2008

Good Film-If Scared By Clowns
I think that this film is scary only if you are scared of clowns but otherwise you will find it difficult to watch a "horror" film about a character that you had at your last birthday party.
Still give it a try.

Azlak
Scotland
22nd June 2008

Not perfect, but still enjoyable
I'm in pretty much the same position as everyone else-I loved the first part of this film but the second part I find much less engaging. I loved the book, but that was similar. The first part was excellent, but the adulthood section of the book was a lot weaker and a bit disappointing.

The plot briefly is this. Children in the town of Derry are being murdered by an entity whose primary form is a clown, played brilliantly by Tim Curry. If this film didn't give you a clown phobia as a child then nothing will have. A group of 7 kids meet each other one summer and confide in what forms of IT they have come across. The adults don't see IT as they don't believe these ghouls will exist. It's different for 11 year old kids though, to them IT is very real. They decide to fight IT in the hope that they can stop it's terrorising of the children of Derry.

The child actors do reasonably well in their parts. Keep an eye out for a very young Seth Green as Ritchie Tozier. Also starring is the late Jonathan Brandis as the young Bill Denbrough. Their stories are broken up and told in a scattered, very well written way, which mirrors King's notion that the adults have only broken memories of their childhood which return to them as they return to Derry.

The second part of the film is where it goes downhill. The adult actors are uninteresting and don't have any where near the chemistry their young counterparts have. This is also where the plot and writing loses some of it's flow and you have some pointless scenes (take the 20 or so minutes of montage of them having a chinese meal as an example). To be fair to the writers though, King's book does go downhill at this stage also. The true form of IT was also extremely disappointing, but again, this mirrors the book.

Tim Curry is by far the stand out in this film, for all the variety of his lines. He looks like he's absolutely relishing playing such an unpleasant (yet curiously funny) character. Make up wise, he's everything an evil clown would look like and after one of my friends watched this movie as a kid has a fear of clowns even to this day.

The movie misses out a massive amount of information and character development present the book.

I guess in summary what I liked about this film was that the first part captuered the essence of childhood. It captured being an outcast in some form, being a victim of bullying, finding those in a similar situation and finding strength through each other. It's really a pity that IT couldn't have been ended with the kids and more time spent on building their story. The adult part of the film was a let down. Despite this, it's still one of my favourite films.