"IT" A HIT

          A hit, a very palpable hit.
          Twenty-seven years after the made-for-TV movie, It returns. And how wonderful, because in Stephen King's novel, the terrifying entity returns to the town of Derry, Maine, to feed on fear and human bodies every twenty-seven years.
          The star, Bill Skarsgard, who plays Pennywise the Dancing Clown, is also twenty-seven.
          One gets the impression that Stephen King films never live up to the novels. Not so. Many great films come from his work. The differences between print and film are such that many efforts do fall short, but just look at the list of classics: Carrie, The Shining, Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, Misery.
          And now It.
          This film focuses on a group of thirteen year-olds plagued by bullies, their parents, and an evil clown in the late-1980s. The story begins with the loss of little Georgie (Scott). A year later, his big brother Bill is still obsessed with trying to find Georgie. But we know it was a clown down in a gutter that got him.
          The clown tries to get other kids, too. Like Freddy Kruger from A Nightmare on Elm Street, Pennywise has godlike powers of evil and can basically do anything. So perhaps in some sense It is not totally realistic or adequately explained, but with so many great evil clown moments, who cares?
          Since 1990 technology has finally advanced to the point where we can see this story as King intended. During the course of the film, admirers of the writer's work cannot help but turn frequently to one another with upraised thumbs. The way the clown rises from the murky waters of a flooded basement, flivvering angrily toward its prey--the way the clown appears from behind a collection of blood-red balloons, perhaps with the sound of a broken music box winding down--the way the clown's long sharp teeth sink into a child's flesh--these are the sorts of cinematic moments which can only be described as sublime, as true fans of King's work will attest.
          The filmmakers wisely do what King does in his book: Marble the great Pennywise stuff with the good other things--the real-life laughs and horrors the kids go through hanging onto each other for support. Featuring entertaining dialogue among the kids similar to Stand By Me, It posits that the true horrors are often found at home with freakishly monstrous parents. In real life, young brothers aren't so syrupy with their displays of love, thankfully enough, and it is doubtful that a sexually abused teen would be as comfortable and well-adjusted as the one depicted in this film, but we can overlook such weak points easily enough because so much of It flat out delivers.
          Well worth a trip to the big screen.


IT
Starring Jaeden Lieberher,
Jeremy Ray Taylor,
Sophia Lillis,
Finn Wolfhard,
Chosen Jacobs,
Jack Dylan Grazer,
Wyatt Oleff,
Bill Skarsgard,
Nicholas Hamilton,
Jake Sim,
Logan Thompson,
Owen Teagre,
Jackson Robert Scott
Directed by Andy Muschietti
Written by Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga,
Gary Dauberman
Based on the novel by Stephen King
\Runtime 135 minutes
Rated R


Stewart Kirby writes for

Like evil clowns, do we?
Check this one out:

If there's one thing clowns hate,
it's a stinkin' coulrophobe.


To read the short story CAPTAIN HIDE, click the link:
http://stewartkirby.blogspot.com/2015/04/captain-hide.html


But wait, there are still more evil clowns.


This one's getting started:

To check out AXKLOWN, the world's first serial killer superhero, click the link.
http://stewartkirby.blogspot.com/2017/04/axklown.html