STACK #155 Sep 2017

CINEMA FEATURE

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Twenty-seven years after the Emmy-winningTV mini- series IT realised our irrational fear of clowns, director Andy Muschietti ushers in a new vision of Stephen King's best-seller to haunt our nightmares. Words: Gill Pringle

I f Tim Curry immortalised Pennywise, a clown whose scary mask hides a heart of pure evil, then today Bill Skarsgård accepts the mantle – scaring himself in the process during the three-month shoot in Toronto. “I’d rented a house and had two friends staying with me, although for the final week I was by myself. One morning I got up to go to work and on the concrete wall opposite,

someone had sprayed in red an upside-down Satanist cross but with a dot over it. I was thinking it was weird, but then I’m like: Holy sh-t, it spells ‘it’ – literally across from my house. Does some crazy fan know where I’m living?” At 6’ 3”, Skarsgård, 26, doesn’t scare easily. “But because I was by myself, naturally you start thinking, ‘Is this how it ends? I get killed?’

With the first of the two-part IT feature film adaptation floating into cinemas this month, what better time to look back at the 1990 mini-series version of Stephen King’s small town tale of terror. D irected by sometime John Carpenter associate Tommy

27 years later IT returns, and the seven friends must now honour their pledge to return to Derry for the ultimate showdown.     IT  predominantly draws on King’s signature Stand By Me  obsessions with the bonds of friendship, innocence lost and small town ambience (since appropriated by Stranger Things ), but this time throws the ultimate evil into the mix in the form of Pennywise the clown (Tim Curry).

For its first half, the mini-series sticks closely to King's novel, but sadly its climactic trump card turns out to be a joker instead of an ace. Dispensing with the mind-bending metaphysics and cosmic relevance of the book’s climax for a more literal manifestation of the titular evil,  IT ’s monster payoff resembles a cheesy looking refugee from a cheap Roger Corman flick.  The second IT film isn't likely to make the same mistake. SH

Lee Wallace (production designer and editor on Halloween  and  The Fog ),  IT  follows the exploits of a bunch of young outcasts; the self-proclaimed “Loser’s Club” (including SeaQuest ’s Jonathan Brandis and Buffy ’s Seth Green), who united in the '60s to defeat an unspeakable evil lurking beneath the town of Derry, Maine. But did they end IT’s reign of terror? Nope.

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SEPTEMBER 2017

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