It (1990, Tim Curry, Richard Thomas, Annette O’Toole)
The Master of Horror unleashes everything you were ever afraid of …
Quick Plot: In Derry, Maine in 1960, group of adolescent misfits who call themselves the Lucky Seven first encounter It: a monster that lives in the town’s sewer system and kills children. Over the course of the year, It terrorizes each member of the group in the form of a demonic clown, scarring them all for life. Bill has the worst of it when It kills his little brother. Bill and the gang work together to confront It in the sewer and kill It, promising each other that if It ever comes back, so will they. Well, 30 years later, It’s back—news so terrifying that one member of the group kills himself—and the scattered, adult Lucky Seven-Minus-One must reunite in Derry to face not only the baddest clown in town, but their childhood demons, as well.
Scariest Scene: Any scene with Pennywise.
Final Say: For a TV movie, it’s really well done and really scary. People have a hard time walking over sewer grates to this day. Don’t believe me? Believe Tim Curry.
You’re right, the ending is a bit lame. But it has to be hard to end anything that has such a great buildup, note also King’s Dark Tower series. I will say that by the time I get to the end of IT, I’m usually so exhausted from reading the rest of the book that, as long as good defeats evil, I don’t care much how he does it.
The book is good (if very long), but I think King painted himself into a corner by building up “IT” as this ultimate symbol of everyone’s fears, and then found he had to present it in its true form at the book’s end. I think it ended up looking like a giant spider or something? Kind of disappointing. But yeah, the rest of the book is creepy, and it’s probably the last book of his I really got into.
IT is hands down the scariest book I’ve ever read. I’ve read it a couple of times and each time still scares the crap out of me. Either I have to get through it all in one sitting or take it one paragraph at a time because I cannot sleep in the middle of reading this book. Oh, the nightmares!