Film / It (1990)

"They float... and when you're down here with me... you'll float, too!"

It is a 1990 supernatural horror TV miniseries adapted from the horror novel of the same name by American author Stephen King. While not the first miniseries adaptation of one of King's works or even the first TV adaptation (with both distinctions going to 'Salem's Lot in 1979), it is easily the most popular and enduring of the bunch, and is known for having scared a generation of kids (and adults) when it came out.

Relatively faithful to the book within the confines of broadcast television standards, the story revolves around an inter-dimensional predatory shapeshifter which has the ability to transform itself into its prey's worst fears, allowing it to exploit the phobias of its victims. It mostly takes the form of a sadistic, wisecracking clown called Pennywise. The protagonists are The Losers Club, a group of outcast kids who discover Pennywise and vow to destroy him by any means necessary. The series takes place over two different time periods, the first when the Losers first discover Pennywise as children, and the second when they're called back as adults to defeat Pennywise, who has resurfaced.

• Tim Curry as IT / Pennywise The Dancing Clown / Bob Gray (in a career-defining role)
• Jonathan Brandis & Richard Thomas as William "Bill" Denbrough
• Brandon Crane & John Ritter as Ben Hanscom
• Emily Perkins & Annette O'Toole as Beverly Marsh
• Seth Green & Harry Anderson as Richie Tozier
• Ben Heller & Creator/Richard Masur as Stanley Uris
• Marlon Taylor & Tim Reid as Mike Hanlon
• Adam Faraizl & Dennis Christopher as Eddie Kaspbrak
• Jarred Blanchard & Michael Cole as Henry Bowers

For the 2010s retelling of the story, see It (2017) and It: Chapter Two.

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It provides examples of the following tropes:

• Accidental Hero: Beverly recalls being cornered and harassed by the Bowers gang one time, but they ran scared when her father suddenly walked up. She refers to it as the only time she can remember being glad to see her abusive father.
• Adapted Out:
  • Patrick Hockstetter, Adrian Mellon, Butch Bowers, The Ritual of Chud and even The Turtle are just some of the very important elements that were removed from the miniseries, likely due to the time and budget constraints involved in adapting such an incredibly long and detailed work.
  • Eddie's wife Myra is left out of the film and he's unmarried. He also admits that he's a virgin, which wasn't the case in the book since he, along with the other boys, rather notoriously had sex with Bev.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Ben is blonde in the books, but his adult self in the film is brunette. Beverly and Audra are redheads in the books (and it's implied that Bill married her because she resembles Beverly), while both are brunettes in the film. Bill is also stated to be a redhead in the novel, but played by the dirty-blonde Jonathan Brandis as a kid and brunette Richard Thomas as an adult.
• Adaptation Explanation Extrication:
  • In the novel, Henry's way of making Ben remember not to mess with him is to carve his name onto his stomach (he gets as a far as "H" before Ben kicks him and escapes). He does this in the miniseries as well, except that he never explicitly says that he's going to carve his name, and it's not clear unless you've read the book that's what he intends to do.
  • It's never explained in the film why Pennywise appears as a dog to security guard Koontz, and can be a bit jarring through it's lack of context. In the novel, it's explained that Doberman Pinschers are the only animals he's afraid of.
• Adaptation Name Change: Odd example. In the book, Richie nicknames Eddie 'Eds'. The film has him nicknaming him 'Eddie Spaghetti' or 'Spaghetti Man'.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: Ben's younger self is much cuter than he's described in the books. He's Hollywood Pudgy at best, hardly comparable to Giant Haystacks.
• Adaptational Nationality: In the book, Audra is an American actress who moved to the UK and has a hybrid of an English and American accent. In the film, she appears to be purely British.
• Adaptational Sympathy: Downplayed. Beverly's father isn't implied to be sexually abusing her as he was in the source material, though he's still presented as overly-strict, and it's shown that he uses physical force to discipline his daughter, threatening to whip her for unknowingly courting a secret admirer in a manner that reeks of slut shaming. Unlike the book and the 2017 remake, there's no indication that he's jealous of said admirer.
• Adults Are Useless: Due to the influence of IT, most of the adults in Derry (including the chief of police, who rebuffs the adult Mike's attempts to help) prefer to hide their heads in the sand and pretend that nothing is amiss when local children are found dead or go missing.
• Age Lift: In the movie, the gap between the events is made into 30 years instead of the book's 27. This means that the Losers are in their late thirties in the book, and early forties in the film.
• All Webbed Up: Some of IT's victims are webbed up for later consumptioin, after their brains are broken by the Deadlights.
• And Starring: Tim Curry receives a "Special Appearance" credit.
• Badass Boast: Pennywise, when Bill shouts at Bev to "kill it":
  Pennywise: Kill? ME? Oh, you are priceless, brat! I am ETERNAL, child. I am the EATER OF WORLDS, and of children!, and you... are next.
• Balloon of Doom: Pennywise is frequently seen holding balloons of various colors, capable of bursting with blood and emerging en masse from small containers.
• Basement-Dweller: Unlike his book counterpart, as an adult, Eddie is still living with his mother, though their house is not the same and his mom somehow looks younger.
• Bloodless Carnage: Since this version was made for television, most of the actual death isn't shown in very graphic detail. Most instances in which the filmmakers were allowed to include blood take place during IT's illusions, where it bursts from balloons, erupts from a sink, and spills from containers, but never leaves a human body or is referred to as such. The idea that it even is blood is up to the audience's assumption, with the exception being before the flashback of the Losers cleaning up Beverly's bathroom, where she refers to it as blood.
  • The most notorious subversion of the trope is when Stan's dead body is shown post-suicide, there is blood all around the bathtub, his body, and the wall, including a bloody "IT" written on it.
• Cassandra Truth: After seeing Pennywise manifest himself as Tony Rivers' wolf form in the cellar, runs upstairs to the cafeteria and tells everyone that he just saw a werewolf. Naturally, almost all the kids laugh their butts off, while Stan, still intensely skeptical of everything that's going on, shakes his head, probably thinking that Richie is making an ass of himself. The rest of the Losers, however, just sit in silence as the only people who believe him.
• Compressed Adaptation: It's pretty hard to stuff over a thousand pages of story into a movie. Most agree that Tim Curry was memorable as Pennywise, however.
• Creepy Circus Music: Pennywise's theme is more Soundtrack Dissonance, but even a happy carnival tune just feels creepy because of that association.
• Deadly Euphemism: During his childhood, Ben's encounter with IT has it masquerading as his late father, standing in the middle of a swamp, directly on top of the water, in front of the sewer entrance, claiming that said sewers are his new home. IT gradually transforms himself into Pennywise as he invites him to come with him to the sewers, where he'll "never have to grow up".
• Demoted to Extra:
  • Tom Rogan has a larger role in the book. After Beverly leaves him, he attacks her friend Kay to get her whereabouts. When he arrives in Derry, he's possessed by IT and kidnaps Audra to the sewers. That's left out here, since Tom disappears from the story once Beverly walks out on him.
  • Lesser than most examples, but Stan's wife Patty gets an entire chapter from her POV, detailing some of her backstory and how she met Stan. Here, she only appears in Stan's introductory segments.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: IT lures Georgie closer to the dark sewers with the promise of cotton candy, balloons, carnival rides, prizes, and his toy boat. Very similar to how a pedophile would lure their victim into their trap with the promises of candy.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • After getting Mike's call, Ben remarks to his current girlfriend that killing himself might be preferable to going back to Derry. Little does he know, Stan felt similarly and would act on it.
  • After Pennywise fills her bathroom sink with blood, Beverly panics and tells her father. When she realizes that he can't see the blood, Beverly claims she just got scared by a big spider. Technically, she was right.
• Driven to Suicide: Stan decides to kill himself rather than face IT as an adult, slitting his wrists in the bathtub and writing the word "IT" with his own blood.
• Epic Fail: Eddie, during the final showdown: "This is battery acid, and now you disappear!" It doesn't work this time, and he's brutally killed for trying to stop IT with an inhaler.
• Evil Is Hammy: Pennywise has his/its moments in the novel, but Tim Curry really goes to town (while still being quite horrifying).
• Fold-Spindle Mutilation: The unfortunate fate of Belch, at the hands of IT.
• Foreshadowing:
  • During the scene where Bill first pleads for help, and later, when the Losers make their promise, Eddie and Stan are the last to agree on both occasions, hinting at their eventual demises.
  • Bill's "magic stones" story that he tells the Losers in the Barrens is eerily similar to how the climax plays out.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Georgie doesn't find a clown living in the sewers who knows his name suspicious at all. Justified since he's only six years old.
• Laughing at Your Own Jokes: "Excuse me, sir! Do you have Prince Albert in a can? You do? Well, you better let the poor guy out! WUHAH! WUHAH! WUHAH!"
• Leeroy Jenkins: When Bill discovers Audra’s purse in the sewer, he goes storming in after her without thinking.
• Lighter and Softer: Because the film initially aired on network television, some of the nastier elements of the book were either downplayed or implied. Beverly's fight with Tom is far more graphic in the book, where she ends up dropping an entire mirror on him (here, he goes down when she hits him with a jar).
• Light Is Not Good: Pennywise's outfit is much more colorful than described in the book.
• Like Parent, Like Spouse: Deconstructed. Beverly grew up with an abusive father who smacked and whipped her if she got out of line. Years later, she's married to Tom, a man who takes advantage of her emotional vulnerability and slaps her when he suspects she's visiting a lover. Beverly even sadly admits to Ben how she ended up marrying someone who was just like her father.
• Mood Whiplash: When Pennywise trolls Richie in the library, he alternates between screaming death threats at the guy and cracking jokes: "Is your refrigerator running? It IS? Well you'd better catch it before it runs away! WUHAH! WUHAH! WUHAH! WUHAH! WUHAH!"
  • Later, during the Losers' reunion in the library, Richie is cracking jokes while Mike tries to call Stan, only to be interrupted by the news of Stan's suicide.
• Misplaced Wildlife: When Stan goes bird watching at the park, the bird he sees at the bath is a red-crested cardinal, which is native to South America and has been introduced to Hawaii and southern California. It definitely doesn't belong in Maine (the setting of the novel) or British Columbia (where the movie was filmed).
• My God, What Have I Done?: Ben has this reaction when his love note leads to Beverly's father yelling at her and sending her running from the house crying.
• Officer O'Hara: Officer Nell, the Irish policeman who finds the Losers in the barrens, warning them that there was another death and reminding them of the curfew.
• One-Book Author: Ben Heller, who plays the young Stan, only did this one film.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: While Tim Curry does a pretty solid job retaining Pennywise's gruff Brooklyn accent, his natural British accent does occasionally slip in, most noticeably during the clown's final scene ("Go! Now... for if you stay, you'll lose your little mind in my deadlights, like all the others... like all the others...")
  • This was probably an intentional choice. At that point, IT was dropping the clown act and preparing to reveal it's "true" spider form, so it may not have been Tim Curry’s accent slipping, but IT's human facade.
  • The accent slips before then in the library when IT yells "TRY A BUNCH!"
• Pragmatic Adaptation: For obvious reasons, (in that they're all around eleven years old), the scene where the six male members of the Losers' Club have sex with Beverly in succession (It Makes Sense in Context) is omitted.
• Promoted to Love Interest: While they were already love interests in the book, things end on a Maybe Ever After for Ben and Beverly. Here, it ends with them marrying and having a baby.
• Race Lift: Minor case. In the book, Bill's wife Audra is a Caucasian American living in the UK. Here, she seems to be British, and she's also played by Argentinian actress Olivia Hussey.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The Losers consists of a stuttering storyteller, an asthmatic Momma's Boy, a bespectacled Class Clown, a chubby poet, a skeptical Jewish Boy Scout, a token girl, and a token minority.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Officer Nell. He isn't thrilled about the Losers' dam project in the Barrens, but instead focuses on a more pressing issue: the deaths and disappearances of the children of Derry, warning the kids to never set out alone. He seems to be one of the few adults in Derry who actually acknowledges that something is wrong and tries to help.
• Replacement Goldfish: In the epilogue, we find out that Richie started a comedy duo with a man whose appearance and personality matches Eddie's.
• Run or Die: When the Losers return to Derry as adults, Pennywise appears before each of them, warning them to get out while they can. The clown even explicitly states to Richie that he and the rest of the Losers are too old to stop it now. When they enter the sewers at the film's climax, IT again warns them again to leave by threatening to drive them all insane.
• Shout-Out:
  • Tim Curry seems to have based Pennywise's voice and New York accent on that of vaudeville comedian Jimmy Durante.
  • The Losers are seen watching I Was a Teenage Werewolf at the Paramount Theater, with Pennywise taking on Tony's wolf form to scare and nearly kill Richie.
  • As an adult, Stan is first seen watching Perfect Strangers at home with Patty.
• Spared by the Adaptation:
  • Tom Rogan, Beverly's abusive boyfriend. In the book, he travels to Derry looking for her, and gets possessed and later killed by IT. This is left out, so he's presumably still alive.
  • Eddie's mother has been dead for some time in the present, and Eddie is married to a woman who acts just like her. In this version, however, she's still alive and Eddie is still living with her as a grown man.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: During their first encounter, Pennywise takes the form of Ben's dead father, immediately after the boy had a fight with his cousin, no less. Ben is overjoyed to see his dad again, before realizing that something's wrong.
• You Cannot Grasp the True Form: Pennywise says this about itself.
• Younger Than They Look: Henry Bowers is only in his forties in the 1990s, but has aged badly due to the trauma of seeing IT's true form as it killed his friends.

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