Stephen King's IT (1990) - Part 2

Welcome back to the review of Stephen King's IT, the 1990 TV movie adaptation that made every fan of the original King novel want to throw their TV into an active volcano. I covered the first part of this a few days ago, and now I'm back for the second part. Make sure to read the first part first!

Director: Tommy Lee Wallace

Starring: John Ritter, Tim Curry, Richard Thomas

IMDb

Co-written with Tony.

It does have to be said that the child actors in this movie are pretty damn good, especially considering it was a 1990s TV movie made from a horror novel. That doesn't usually lend itself to good child actors, but we did get some very decent scenes with those kids in the first part of this whole thing, especially when they had to interact with Tim Curry. Curry is also fantastic and looks like he was having a lot of fun. Or at least like he was on some good drugs before shooting this, which is how I would have gotten through it all, too.

Why am I going so easy on the movie now? Well, because this is the last of anything good I'll have to say about this piece of shit. After the first part, the director probably said, yeah, I've done enough of anything resembling quality from 20 yards away by a half blind guy. It's easy for me to believe that's what happens – that movie directors consciously decide to make bad movies. That sure does make reviewing easier than actually considering peoples' motivations and what they were trying to do with a piece of art!

So, basically, all the main “heroes” gather under one roof in their old hot spot Derry, Maine. Bill meets up with Mike Hanlon, and the two embark on what I can only describe as a rejected Full House opening credits scene when they find Bill's old bike. For some reason, Mike has kept that bike all these years – for 30 fucking years he kept a 12-year-old boy's bike.

Nothing weird about that!

But you have to admit. These scenes of them fixing Bill's bike and riding around on it set to puke-worthy pop rock garbage – they're pretty unbearable to watch. I feel like this is the kind of scene that a guy writes at the very end of his rope, after his bosses have shoved him down to the bottom of the barrel in terms of projects to work on. I can't imagine how many people you'd have had to piss off.

I'm trying to think of a nice way to say 'I want to stab this scene with a pair of rusty scissors and then bury it in the Mojave desert' but...nah, that works.

Meanwhile, Richie here hangs out at a library, fretting all the time about how he should just run for the hills and go home. This character in the book was quite well rounded and could be strong when he needed to be. So I guess that's why he's a total pussy bitch coward in this movie who can't go a scene without whining about everything.

Stop whining, your ancestors had WAY more blood on their faces than this and they were fine!

He's accosted for a looooong stretch of time by Tim Curry, who makes a bunch of balloons explode blood all over him and then Curry sits on a banister and screams nonsense for a while. It's extremely entertaining, at least until Richie starts screaming over HIM in a more annoying voice at the library attendant. It's less a scary scene and more of one that makes me feel bad for the poor girl playing the librarian. I hope someone gave her a shot of Jack Daniels after that idiot screamed in her face all day.

Just another day at the library...

Then they all meet up at a dinky looking Chinese restaurant and they all have the happiest reunion a shitty ass script like this one can produce. I love when one of them, Eddie I think, sees Mike and goes “is that you, Mike?” Yeah, Mike, at this reunion of all our childhood friends that I knew everyone who would be there, is that you, my one black friend? How many other black friends did I used to have, anyway? I just can't keep track.

The ensuing dinner table conversation that happens after this is frankly psychedelic in how bizarrely awful it is. First you get a long one-shot camera take where the camera just spins around them in circles as they talk. It's absolutely baffling as to how anyone thought that was a good idea. What, did you lose a bet? Did you make a dare that you could definitely work your patented “drunk on a merry go round” camerawork style into a movie somehow, and us, the viewers of Stephen King's IT, lost out big time on that?

Then if you can get past THAT and listen to what they're saying in this scene, it's even more batshit crazy. First they're all friendly and happy, just chatting about old times. Okay, fine. Then everyone starts panicking and shouting for no reason about how they're going to die, with seemingly no transition. Then, a beat later, they're all just hanging around drunk, talking about old times again. What the hell is wrong with you people? I can see why no one else wants to hang around these idiots – no one can keep up with their conversations. It's like a roller coaster when you're high.

Oh, but they do get some fortune cookies with bugs and a human eye in them! Man, I love Chinese restaurants.

I do love different cultures!

Oh, and Bev also kisses like, half of the group on the mouths, just as a friendly introduction. But don't worry, they all really hang out with her for her personality and brains. Yeah. That's it...

Most of the rest of this is a seemingly endless slog, much of it taken up by the characters all competing for the dubious honor of most annoying in the entire film. Who do YOU think is more annoying? Richie, who constantly has a look on his face like he wants to take a shit, and who is always blathering on about how scared he is?

Or Eddie, whose voice gets higher and higher pitched as the film goes on, as if he is trying to turn into a human dog whistle?

There is a scene where the bully Henry Bowers breaks out from the mental asylum he was in all these years. He's helped out by IT, which takes the form of the security guard's worst fear...a bull dog in a clown outfit eating him alive. Hey now, don't make fun of him. That's an extremely common fear to have.

Seven of my friends are deathly afraid of this.

Then he goes and stabs Mike in the library. In the book this was a pretty suspenseful scene, but in the movie it's over in a few seconds and barely has any weight to it. I dunno, maybe the director was just running out of time and money by this point, but I've had more impactful moments in my life at the bank depositing a check.

So Mike's out, which leaves the others like retarded babes in the woods, all of them completely unsure of what to do. This leaves us much more time to develop the remaining characters, like Ben and Bev, who have an extremely contrived and cliche romance scene together. Their dialogue is so bad that even people who eat up airport romance novels would roll their eyes. This is just the worst kind of dated cheesy garbage. It's as painful a scene as any I've ever sat through on this blog. Just so fucking lame and trite.

Lifetime movies are like David Lynch compared to this.

After approximately seven more hours of bitching and whining about how they want to go home – and no, I'm definitely not exaggerating there about that length of time! – they finally decide to go back in the sewers and face IT once and for all! As they get to the place they need to go, Eddie stops them all to confess that he's been a virgin his whole life because he never loved anyone but them!

Awesome. So...he's three-fourths gay, then? Since, you know, three of the others he's in love with here are guys. Not that there's anything wrong with that, though.

But seriously, why the hell is he talking about this now? My guess is, probably because his therapist refused to see him anymore because he was that annoying. I guess IT agreed with me, because it kills him in the very next scene!

Actually, the acting is better than I gave it credit for, because no one would be able to easily pretend to be scared of that.

Oh yeah, and it's also a giant awful-looking spider thing now, which is apparently its final form in the movie. After a three hour movie, I too enjoy seeing that the big payoff is something I can kill in my kitchen by stepping on it. So this is satisfying to me.

Something really pisses everyone off, either Eddie dying or the fact that the spider looks so shitty. Either way, it was enough for them to now go gallivanting into the sewer, tip it over like a dumb old cow, and beat it to death with their bare hands, ripping its heart out. You know, they do say to handle things in the most mature way possible, so I'm cool with this.

Cool, they're like kids bored in a small town and wanting to go tip cows. Awesome.

Then we find out that Bill's wife, who had been kidnapped by IT, is now catatonic with fear. Then there's a scene where he puts her on a bike with him and rides her down a crowded street with no regard for traffic. It could have gotten them both killed and could have injured God knows how many other people, but somehow in the magically idiotic world of IT, this just wakes her up.

I know a lot of people talk about how scary this movie was when they were kids. I've had multiple friends tell me how scared they are of clowns because they watched this at age 7 or some other ridiculous age. But honestly, just try and watch this shit now, when you're older. It really is just so toothless, idiotic and silly, on every single front. While the kids are good actors and Tim Curry is a lot of fun as the clown, mostly everything else is just total shit. It's really, really not scary at all, with all the scares coming off as funny when they're not just sad.

The drama is so bad it makes me want to turn the movie off. The characters, who in the book were so great, have all been turned into awful, shitty whiners and cowards. Like they didn't just not capture the spirits of the novel's characters - they actively ruined them all. The story from the book isn't done justice here, mostly because it was so large and expansive in the book that condensing it down for a movie is very hard to do.

Maybe a remake would do it more justice. Maybe if made by someone who was genuinely interested in changing up the story to adapt it better to screen, rather than just trying to stick so faithfully to the book, IT would be a better film. Maybe this is just a sad relic from a time gone by, and we can ignore it now and focus on the great source material.

But frankly, it's more fun to just straight up bash a movie and not put any thought into a review. Fuck Stephen King's IT!

Images copyright of their original owners, we own none of them.

Stephen King's IT (1990) - Part 1

Hey, you! Stop right there! Don't click away from this page! Because this...this will be a review you want to read. A review fit for the kings and other important people. If you don't believe me, just keep reading. You won't be disappointed.

Stephen King's It was a 1990 TV movie that aired in two parts, mostly because the original novel it was based on was thick enough to break a person's leg if you dropped it on them. Which, I'm told, was the main reason so many known mafia associates were flocking to bookstores in the 80s – to get that fucking book and kill people with it. You might not find any sources for that, but I did say it, and I'm on the Internet. So it must be true.

Director: Tommy Lee Wallace

Starring: John Ritter, Tim Curry, Richard Thomas

IMDb

Co-written with Tony.

But now I'm just rambling – which is, strangely enough, exactly what the movie does. So really, it's okay if I just keep going on and on without ever actually telling a coherent story. I'm also going to split the review into two parts, just like the TV movie was split into two parts when it originally aired. Isn't that how these movie reviews have always worked? I write them solely based on what lazy jokes I can throw in just to parody the films in a weak manner. It's just my style, man.

Stephen King's IT was a movie I had not seen in full since I was 14. I'm in my 20s now, but this movie, I saw in middle school immediately after I had finished the book. In a way, I think this was the first major disappointment of my life in terms of movies. This was the threshold I crossed, guys. It was my coming of age.

We start this crap fest off with Bill Denbrough, a writer who has a very hot wife who keeps pressuring him to go places with her, but Bill is too busy writing in his bedroom. This scene is great because all it's missing is for Bill to muse to himself, “Man, I wish I was as good a writer as Stephen King.”

Then they have dinner and he says he doesn't want to go to London with her. This is immediately followed by him getting a call from his old friend Mike, who tells him in an ominous way that “it's happening again,” which prompts him to immediately start packing his bags to leave for his hometown, Derry.

"What do you mean you want donations because I went to college there?!"

OK, that was a lot of information. Let's recap exactly what just happened: Man tells his wife he doesn't want to spend time with her, sort of blowing her off in general. Then the next second, he gets a phone call from a man he admits he hasn't seen in 30 years, and he's rushing out the door.

I'm sorry, what's that sound? Yes, I do believe it's divorce papers shuffling about!

Then we get a long rambling flashback that shows Bill and his brother Georgie as little kids. Bill is sick in bed while Georgie is suiting up to go play outside with a paper boat. Oh the good old days when kids could go outside and do this. Nowadays, you get shot by the police if you do something like this.

Tsk tsk, what a young hoodlum.

Anyway, Georgie meets Pennywise the Clown, who hangs out in the sewer. If this is all sounding a little too much like Sesame Street on really bad acid, I'd forgive you. As Georgie is apparently a complete idiot, he stays there and talks to the clown for several minutes. Well, I'm sold: he deserves whatever happens to him now.

It's just one of those sewer clowns. You know, the ones that were popular in the 50s...

What follows are some truly strange scenes showing Bill going into his little brother's room and finding a bleeding book on the ground – I dunno, something about this scene just doesn't work when you set it in broad daylight with bright pastel colors. It just doesn't come off as scary.

Get that fucking ketchup off the book, you slobs.

His parents also scold him for coming in there and tell him angrily never to enter his brother's room again. Because, apparently, this is how people act in the bizarre, lopsided world of Stephen King's IT! Yes, how dare you mourn your brother? Only WE, the PARENTS, can have THAT privilege, silly knave boy!

Then we flash back to present day Bill, who looks dazed, like someone just spiked his orange juice. What's that? You forgot we were even in a fucking flashback? Me too, don't worry. The way this first part of the movie is told is just so bad, pacing-wise. You get a few minutes of the characters in their adult lives, then a 15-minute flashback of them as kids. I get what they were going for here, for clarity and conciseness sake, but it's sloppy as fuck and doesn't end up very engaging when that formula is repeated five times in a row.

One of the others is Ben Hanscom, played here by the late John Ritter. Well, he wasn't the late John Ritter when he was making this movie. I mean, it's not like they took his corpse and just painted open eyes over his closed ones and used a shitty voice-over or something. That's crazy that you would think that's what I meant.

I just had to clarify that.

Anyway, Ben is an insane man who tells his dates how fat he used to be as a kid, which I guess is a real aphrodisiac for some of these women. I wonder if he seeks them out based on the "I used to be a fat kid" fetish? It's also especially weird because it isn't like he's that skinny now. He just has money, and used that as a way to not feel fat anymore.

In his flashback, we find out that he was immediately targeted as a kid by the 17-year-old bullies who have been held back apparently most of their whole lives in the same sixth-grade class. They're super realistic bullies who like to do normal bully things, like holding knives to kids' stomachs and literally threatening to cut them wide open.

Oh, kids will be kids.

In the book, this was a legit plot thread and came off as scary. Here it comes off as hacky and goofy, without any kind of sense to it. But don't worry, there's all kinds of other terrible things going on, too!

Like, really, do we need a subplot about the woman in the group, Bev, dealing with an abusive husband? It's as contrived and shitty as any abusive spouse plot from this time period. I know it's a realistic thing that happens to people, but the way it's done here is so bad. Most old movies like this never really had nuance or subtlety to these plots, and didn't present them as a way to get to know a character. Instead, most of them are just really hacky ways to give women something to do. “Yeah, being abused is a problem women can have.” Go fuck yourself, movie.

But don't worry, this movie doesn't let you forget that above all else, it's a cartoon made for children who ride the short bus. Like look at how she “escapes” him finally: she throws a makeup container at his head, he falls on his ass and she runs out the door. He just screams at her to come back, because yeah, I'm sure she's gonna do that now.

"I'm really commanding a lot of respect right now!"

Then we get a flashback sequence, where her father smacks her around a bit, too. She runs away from him as well, and he shouts at her to come back, too, and doesn't ever actually chase her. Are all the men in this chick's life just vampires who can't venture outside or else they'll burst into flames? Jesus Christ. I don't know why she even puts up with the abuse. If she steps outside the door for a second, they won't be able to follow – it's foolproof. These guys aren't anything to be afraid of, they're total wimps.

So I know everyone who saw this movie when they were younger than 10 is officially Afraid of Clowns (TM) for life. But honestly, there's nothing to be afraid of, and I'll prove that to you. I guess we'll start at the beginning, in which the movie decided it really had to show us the essential “little boy in the showers alone” scene. Yes, I can see why this had to be in the fucking movie...

It's for artistic integrity, we swear! Then again, it's not the worst child sex-related thing related to Stephen King's IT...

Then the shower heads start moving around following him, but that frankly isn't that weird. This will be in our Jetsons-style future in a few years, anyway. But then the clown shows up, and while Tim Curry IS having a lot of fun here as the clown, it just isn't that scary. He pops up out of a Bugs Bunny-style hole in the ground and just kind of hams it up. It's literally like a cartoon. There's no way an adult could find this nonsense scary.

Those are actually Tim Curry's real teeth, by the way.

BUT... I guess it could be scary if you want to imagine that it's actually Jared Fogle dressed up in clown makeup. There you go. I made IT scary again for you. I am a fucking genius.

Just in case you forgot what he looked like.

But the characters never thought it was passe or old hat. Take a look at Stan, the one guy in the group they haven't bothered to show as an adult until now. Why IS that, you might be wondering? Well, it's because when Mike Hanlon decides to give him a call, his immediate response is to go upstairs and kill himself in the tub. His wife comes up and finds him in the most drawn out and ridiculous way ever, dropping the beer she's holding and letting out a scream more befitting of a terrible and cliché horror movie than anything else.

Oh, wait.

Come back here for the second part of this in a few days! It gets so much worse!

Images copyright of their original owners, we own none of them.

Storm of the Century, Part 1

So, winter has finally come, there’s snow outside and the air is ass-numbingly cold. Your plans to go outside and frolic may have been quelched by the oncoming tide of snow flurries and ice-cold winds. It might be time to dig into the attic and bring out the mittens, scarves, wool blankets and kindling for the fireplace. And while you’re doing that, why not put on one of the best wintertime movies, Storm of the Century?

Creator: Stephen King

Starring: Tim Daly, Colm Feore

IMDb

Yes, the Stephen King TV classic of murder, madness and I’m a Little Teapot itself. This is a huge, huge movie, with a lot to cover, so I’ll be splitting up the review into two parts. Isn’t that exciting? Aren’t you just unable to contain yourself?

Yes, my fans are all Asian now.

Well, shut up. This is Storm of the Century!

We start off this masterpiece with some narration, informing us that the great “storm of the century” did not teach the narrator the value of life, but that he only just learned it a little while ago. Well gee, isn’t that a strange way to start off a movie?

Now with real snow and ice! Take the Universal Studios ride!

It’s like “Yeah, I didn’t learn anything from the story of the movie you’re about to see. But when I woke up drunk and high off my ass in a motel with a fat hooker the other day before coming in to record the final narration, THEN I came to the realization that my life was a catastrophic ruin and I should have managed my money better!”

I mean geez, imagine if some other films started off in a similar manner. Imagine if Se7en started like that.

“I didn’t really learn anything from the events in the film you’re about to unfold. But now, years later and after many therapy sessions, I think I finally understand the point: you should never, under any circumstances, trust Kevin Spacey.”

Yeah, not quite as powerful, is it?

So what am I talking about? Well, when you’re in the movie that thinks it’s a good idea to juxtapose the brutal murder of an old lady while her attacker sits down to watch the weather channel and sing “I’m a Little Teapot”…

Note: No teapots were harmed in the making of Storm of the Century.

…and the brutal head-stuck-in-the-stairs scene of a young girl in town as her classmates mock her ruthlessly, setting her up for years and years of psychotherapeutic sessions with an overpaid, over-medicated shrink:

She went on to star in the 8-bit version of Let the Right One In.

Yeah, not quite seamless, is it? Bit of an odd pair of scenes to play after one another. I love the head-in-stairs scene just because it’s so bizarre…they spend way too much time on this. It’s not a particularly telling or atmospheric scene. Unless the point is that the little girl will now begin a downward spiral of getting her head stuck places throughout her adolescence. But mostly it’s just hilarious to picture Stephen King, the master of horror himself, putting so much effort into this.

And the other scene is just baffling, too. “I’m a Little Teapot,” really? That was the scariest thing you could come up with for the villain’s motif? Apparently, yeah, this guy’s name is Andre Linoge. He kills the nicest old lady in town for no reason and then sets up camp to watch TV. The weather channel is hilarious, warning of the coming storm in the most fanatical way possible. Check out the weather lady’s great TV journalism:

“The forecast is calling for destruction tonight, death tomorrow, and Armageddon by the weekend. This could be the end of all life as we know it.”

Yeah, THAT wouldn’t incite panic, right? Totally neutral and definitely how weather people are supposed to act! I’m sure she’ll have a great career writing tabloid junk for The National Enquirer by day and fanatical 2012 Mayan calendar bullshit by night. I guess maybe it’s just part of Linoge’s magical sorcery after breaking the TV though.

So a couple people come in and discover the horrific crime, and then find themselves accosted by Linoge, who somehow knows their darkest secrets. The town manager, Robbie Beals, comes in and finds out that Linoge knows all about that time he was with a hooker while his mother was dying in a hospice bed far away. It is actually a very creepy, effective scene, and the atmosphere is through the roof.

And this continues as Mike Anderson, the town constable, and his men arrest Linoge and take him down to the county jail, which for some reason is located in the grocery store. As the back door is jammed shut and there is no way into the jail directly, Mike and his guys are forced to take Linoge through the grocery store where most of the town is shopping before the storm. As they do, he reveals some things about other town citizens, like the young woman who went onto the mainland and got an abortion recently, or the guy who sells marijuana out of his warehouse illegally.

He also has the gall to touch Mike’s son, which turns the whole thing into a circus once Mike finds out that Linoge doesn’t have a wallet. Obviously keen on setting a good example for the cops and the rest of the townspeople, Mike goes apeshit and shoves Linoge up against the wall like a crazy person. Isn’t it a bit early to go nuts at this point, guy? I mean Christ, so many more people are going to die over the next five hours of movie screentime! Save some inhuman rage for later!

"I'll show you that I can act dramatic and bland at the same time!"

This is all fine and good, but I just want to know what would happen if he got one of these “prophecies” wrong for once. Wouldn’t that be hilarious? Just imagine his face!

So I guess they lock him up and all, and he keeps on jabbering about how if the townspeople “give him what he wants,” he’ll go away. As the storm is coming in, they don’t really have time to focus on that, and half the town is stuck in a shelter whilst the other half is watching over Linoge. But Mike does find time to go back to the murdered old woman’s place and find Linoge’s slogan written on the wall in blood:

Well, geez, there are easier ways to redecorate a house you don't like than killing its sole occupant and painting the walls in her blood...personally I like Craigslist.

The only frustrating thing about this whole thing is that Linoge won’t say what he wants. So this whole time he’s killing everyone and causing Stephen King-ified trouble all around town and asking them to “give him what he wants,” there’s no clues to what it is he actually wants! It’s sort of like having a fickle girlfriend angry at you for some reason she won’t tell you about. Well, actually that’s selling the movie short – picture that same fickle girlfriend if she didn’t even speak the same language as you. That’s what Storm of the Century’s villain’s evil plan is like.

While that’s going on, we also get numerous scenes of Mike interacting with Robbie Beals. Apparently Robbie likes to try and take things into his own hands and investigate, even though Mike sees this as his own job. They have a couple separate quarrels about this, spread out throughout the film, and really I don’t see the point … unless  Robbie really has this history of messing up police investigations, in which case I am not sure how he’d even have a high city position at all. But this is never established, and the movie mostly just wastes time with these two, which could have been cut out and made the movie that much shorter.

What is this, a remake of The Odd Couple?

And that’s another one of the problems with this. As much as I love a good, long, epic film, and as entertaining as this is, there are way too many characters. It’s like two simultaneous games of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon going on. You will never be able to keep track of all these characters. I mean, even as much as King tries to fix that problem by having them all constantly refer to one another by their full names. Nice effort, but it’s still about as confusing as your last family reunion with your super-distant cousins and their super distant cousins, and so on. I will give it that it tries to genuinely replicate the feeling of a small town though.

While the townspeople are clamoring about, Linoge is busy doing incredibly important things while locked up in jail, like helping the police with crossword puzzles:

This truly is the only way Andre Linoge could get his point across. He just got lucky and found the only town in America with a crossword puzzle superstition.

Yup, that’s the extent of his evil so far. Singing “I’m a Little Teapot” over and over and helping the police with crossword puzzles. Why do I get the idea this guy would be laughed out of the annual villains’ convention? But I guess he does eventually kill that guy by making him hang himself though.

"You've helped with your last crossword puzzle, buddy..."

Oops, wait, no, I had another one.

Good start, but how about something a little more adventurous? Like … an ax to the face, maybe?

Now introducing Axe-O-Vision.

Yeah, that’s more like it! I give that kill scene three out of four stars. But you could still do better, though … like, maybe have the couple with the aborted baby argue outside in the snow. That’s a good way to set up a kill scene. Or at least, make the viewers want to kill someone.

Back the fucking camera up. We don't need to see what it's like to French kiss this jackass.

So, I gotta admit, this scene actually isn’t that bad. For a scene where two young people are arguing about abortion, Stephen King handles it surprisingly really well in a medium where his stories usually turn to crap. The girl, Kat, apparently had the abortion because she couldn’t count on the guy to help out, seeing as he was cheating on her at the time. Neither side is really right and neither side is completely wrong either. It’s a pretty damn good, heavy drama scene.

After that, Linoge tries to make the guy kill Kat, but he can’t do it. So then Linoge does the ole switcheroo and makes Kat kill the guy instead, which she does. She then sits on the ground and intones creepily about the murder in a dead-sounding voice. Which is also done very well, and creates a lot of atmosphere:

…until she eventually just comes out and says she killed him, which kinda ruins the moment. It worked better at first because she was being so vague about it, but when she just comes out and says it, the spell is broken.

Ah well. At least we have a scene after that in which Linoge talks about how this other guy and his friends once beat up a gay guy. In retaliation, as Mike is standing in between them, the guy shoots at Linoge and instead hits Mike. How awesome. This guy should be the official marksman of the town. Why haven’t they handed him a gun award yet?

So that’s pretty much the end of Side One of my DVD – they get ready for the storm and then that’s it; cliffhanger. Tune in next time for the exciting conclusion, when we learn that really, all Andre Linoge wanted was a lifetime supply of Lean Cuisine ravioli.

Am I bullshitting you with that? Well, you’ll have to wait until next week to see!

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.