Killer Clowns Are Fun: IT

I talked about unconventional fears and monsters with the vampires in The Lost Boys. I would like to talk about another type of monster that scares almost all adults and children... I'm talking of course about clowns. Clowns are all over the media and pop culture: Bozo the Clown, Krusty the Klown, Red Skelton, Ronald McDonald, Ashton Kutcher. Face it, clowns are everywhere! Whether it is the circus or your run of the mill street mime, you face one at some point in your life. I would say about 80% of people I talk to who are afraid of clowns mention It. In fact an interesting Article I read about celebrities’ favorite scary films mentions It twice. Out of the 12 celebrities questioned It is the only film mentioned twice. So what is so terrifying about this movie?

I get a lot of questions and comments about this one because my cousin is victim of Coulrophobia (Fear of Clowns). He is now an adult and still says it was all because of It. (reread that previous sentence, it sounds funny) After all this hype I had to get my hands on it and purchased the DVD awhile back. Whenever someone sees it/It on my shelf I either receive a comment on how terrifying the movie was or I simply get asked what it/It is.

It premiered in November of 1990 in a two part ABC special. An adaptation of a Stephen King novel gave it a lot of hype and I guess it won some Emmys too. The story jumps between 1960 and 30 years later present in 1990. When a girl is murdered mysteriously in the town of Derry in present time, a man calls on some old friends to return and investigate it. The adults one by one slowly reminisce about their childhood and their encounters with "It." Most of these memories include Pennywise the Dancing Clown terrorizing the children one by one individually. The only problem is, only the children appear to be able to see Pennywise and any other apparitions. This is a kid's worst nightmare. Kids are terrified of being alone and even worse having a killer clown harassing you. No adults believe the clown exists. Tim Curry's acting as Pennywise is comically horrifying. When you're an adult watching this film you laugh and anticipate when Curry comes out and starts making wisecracks towards the kids. However, when you're a kid, the idea of an evil clown stalking you horrifies you when you’re alone at night. The plot thickens, but is relatively straight forward. The adults come back 30 years later to battle "It" which proves to be more difficult than originally thought.

Stephen King did a good job with being able to make the movie's plot almost too complex for children to understand. Believing the only premise in the movie is that there is a clown running around killing children would have made even me afraid of Bozo. In fact, supposedly Pennywise was inspired by serial killer John Wayne Gacy who dressed as a clown. Scary! There are multiple "clown attack" scenes I guess you would call them. The more prominent one being Pennywise emerging in a sewer and killing the main character's brother by pulling him down. Another infamous scene is in a locker room shower where all the shower head turn on and come alive blocking the exit. Pennywise climbs out of the shower drain commanding a boy to come with him. Supernatural killer clowns don't exist in many other films I know of.

This movie definitely appears to be in the hearts of a lot of individuals, and especially anyone who is fearful of clowns. The ending is very corny and so is most of the movie. The truth of the matter is, this film was capable of giving children an irrational fear against something in real life. Not a whole lot of movies are able to do that. This film is very special and hopefully it's on TV again soon. If not, buy the DVD because it was only about five bucks at Wal-Mart two years ago. You'll find it a very unique item in your movie collection.