The year is 1990. NASA had launched the Hubble Space Telescope, the Undertaker made his national debut at the WWF Survivor Series, and one of Stephen King’s greatest (and most controversial) novels was adapted into a visual nightmare that premiered as a two-part miniseries on ABC on November 18th, 1990. And to put it mildly, kids of the ’90s were never the same after seeing Pennywise on their large, boxy floor television set.
I remember quite vividly as a kid, being hyped up for this television horror event, and while my peers were entangled with the brand-new series Beverly Hills, 90210, all I could think about was this upcoming Stephen King movie about a killer clown. Mind you before you come at me, at this age, I had yet to read the book nor know anything about the story other than what I had seen via TV previews, as afterword I was to discover that Pennywise was more than a clown, and as a young horror nerd, I liked what I saw. So my eyeballs were ready, and after the first night of Part 1, I was both traumatized by a clown with a million teeth and my prepubescent body was enchanted by a young Jonathon Brandis. It was quite a new experience for a movie to both disturb me and set my loins aflame. Rather impressive, actually.
Outta my way, Bev. My heart burns there too.
My pre-teen admiration aside, STEPHEN KING’S “IT”, at the same time set the world on fire and brought about a resurgence in Coulrophobia (fear of clowns) in both young and old; however, for kids my age it begat a fear we never thought we may have, or much thought about and because of Tim Curry’s masterful performance, it ignited a long-standing match against anyone with a painted face of nightmares. I mean, let’s talk turkey since it’s November: I don’t know if it’s the makeup hiding their real faces; if it’s the sense of enforced fun, this idea that you’ve got to be laughing; or maybe it’s just that we don’t like anything that tricks us repeatedly, and makes us keep coming back for more. Clowns are fools who enjoy making others look foolish, after all. Nothing more distrustful and downright disrespectful than that. It’s as if this fear was hidden in our subconscious and awakened by Stephen King himself. So if clowns didn’t bother you before the premiere of 1990’s IT, they most likely had some sort of uneasy impact on you. Those are just facts.
And if you read the book after watching the miniseries, as many of us did, that didn’t help the cause much.
As long as the miniseries was, clocking in a total of 3 hours and 12 minutes, the experience of watching it seemed like an eternity, but in the best of ways, as Pennywise torments the Losers’ Club through his favorite clown apparition, a werewolf, a sewer-dwelling slime monster, and shape-shifting into seemingly normal inhabitants of Derry. Even IT’s final boss image of what is closest to his true self, a giant spider, with those awful effects that were almost unforgivable even in 1990, all that was merely background noise to Curry’s Pennywise the Dancing Clown and to this day if I were to ask you to paint me a picture of a scary clown, chances are you’re going to show me a picture of Pennywise.
The miniseries itself wasn’t a massive hit at first, but at the time, after the television airing, it was a whisper between kids at the playground that in turn fed into curiosity and ultimately a discovery of one hell of a new fear of clowns. The IT miniseries, among many of Stephen King’s works of the 90s, being adapted into television events like THE STAND, THE LANGOLIERS, and THE SHINING, outclassed them all regarding cult horror classics and mainstay power, and that is largely due to Tim Curry’s Pennywise performance at the end of the day with becoming a larger than life icon in the horror genre. So much so that when the remake was announced back in 2016, the million-dollar question was, “Who exactly has the balls to fill Tim Curry’s clown shoes as Pennywise”? It was Curry’s role and both charming and utterly terrifying rendition that gave an entire generation of kids nightmares and a lifelong fear of clowns. Curry’s ability to articulate the absolute joy in scaring the crap out of the children; children (the Losers’ Club) whom many of us could relate with in one way or another, is to this day unmatched. No matter how much budget you out into a movie, and I’m in no way knocking Skargard’s rendition of IT, but you can’t deny Curry’s study of this otherworldly monster and the impact he had on an entire generation and beyond. He was perfect.
Be proud of that, Tim. Fuck those kids.
Stephen King himself acknowledged, “his novel ‘IT’ probably contributed to your lifelong fear of clowns”, via the Los Angeles Times, and follows it up with, in so many words, “calm your tits, folks”. Real easy coming from a guy who also wrote in an extremely graphic child orgy into said novel. I think it’s safe to assume not a lot of things bother that man. And the resurgence of clown scares before the release of IT (2017), only validate that the character of Pennywise itself, harbors a tremendous influential power over our own psyche. That, in itself, is terrifying enough. To boot, we all know to steer clear of storm drains. Just another added phobia of sewers that at least half of 90s kids have.
Thanks, Stephen King. No, I don’t want it.
Nightmare Nostalgia 