If you want to hear how one dark detail from the book was hidden in this mini-series then
stick around to this end of this video.
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If you’ve seen some of my other It videos, you know that one of my favorite side-characters
from the book is the foul mouthed cab driver.
And while we don’t get to listen to his banter in the mini-series, part 2 does open
up with Bill being dropped off in a cab at the cemetery where he has his first Pennywise
encounter since returning to Derry.
“Take your pick, B-b-b-billy boy!
Oh!
Except for the one on the end.
That’s already taken.”
This seems to be a reference to Stan being the one out of the lucky 7 who already died,
although, it would have been more accurate if Pennywise had given him a Jewish grave
marker.
After this encounter, Bill visits Mike at the library, where there is a table set up
dedicated to his works as an author.
The title Gnaw could be a reference to the unnamed werewolf novel Stan’s wife was reading
in the book, and The Glowing could either be a reference to the glowing Deadlights or
a parody of one of Stephen King’s well known books: The Shining.
Meanwhile, Richie Tozier is rolling into town singing The Beach Boys
"...this same old strip I got to find a new place where the kids are hip."
When he notices his
own epitaph on the movie theater marquee.
This is a reimagining of a scene in the book where he finds a similar inscription on a
rock concert poster in the park.
He runs into the library to find Mike, but instead, finds Pennywise, who is reading the
finance section of the newspaper?
Is this supposed to be a joke about It’s name being Pennywise?
Really guys?
Back at Mike’s house, the boys are rediscovering Bill’s old bike, Silver, and Mike brings
out the playing cards.
“Not just any cards.
Bicycle."
"They always made the best noise."
Bill and Mike notice something is wrong when they see two Ace of Spades, and the Pennywise
design on the back of the cards, very similar to the book, where they open a brand new deck,
but there are blue and red back cards mixed in with each other.
It is at about this time that Ben arrives in Derry, and goes down into the Barrens where
he sees a fat boy getting bullied, giving him flashbacks to his childhood.
He helps fix up the boy’s scraped knee…
Ohh ohhhh no.
That cannot be sanitary.
“It’s basically piss and **** that all I’m just telling you.”
Eddie is the next to arrive back in town.
He visits the pharmacy, where he picks up his asthma medication and runs into Mr. Keene,
the pharmacist from when he was young.
“Hydrox."
"What?"
H20.
Water!"
But this is only another example of Pennywise manipulating the town of Derry.
Mr. Keene grabs onto Eddie using a hand covered in a crunchy exoskeleton like that of the
spider claw that the seven of them drove away Pennywise as kids.
The last to arrive is Beverly Marsh who visits her father’s old home.
There are three names next to the doorbells of this townhouse: Marsh, Burke and Starkeweather.
Burke and Starkeweather are the family names of the second and third floor occupants of
Beverly’s apartment in the book.
This house doesn’t appear to have a third floor, but maybe Starkweather is around back
here, I’ve still got to applaud the accuracy of that small detail from the novel.
When Beverly gets away, Mrs. Kersh transforms into the clown off screen…
...and we hear that same noise heard when Richie’s werewolf turns into Pennywise…
…which is also heard by Stan, later on in the sewers.
The remaining members of the Lucky 7 would reconvene for a reunion dinner, where even
more hidden details can be uncovered.
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Remember Bill’s wife Audra, the actress?
She’s extremely concerned about her husband after his sudden trek back to Derry, and she
meets with the movie producer about his sudden disappearance from set.
“You’ve worked very hard to get where you are, very hard.
I know you’d do nothing to jeopardize that.
Or to damage our professional relationship.
Or to turn a friend overnight into a violent enemy, ready to crucify you at at cost.”
WHOA.
That escalated, so fast.
Wake up!
Grab a brush and put a little makeup!
Richie has a momentary panic attack after realizing his old friends are all grown up
now and stops in the bathroom to get ahold of himself.
I recently noticed that he knocks over the artwork in the bathroom and never fixes it.
After the introductions, they discuss Pennywise.
“Maybe that means he’s afraid.”
“It.
It’s afraid.”
This little correction is a reference to a more significant detail in the book, being
that the creature It is actually a female, something that Audra discovers upon being
taken to the spider’s lair.
“The writer’s woman had put out one powerful, horrified thought—OH DEAR JESUS IT IS FEMALE—and
then all thoughts ceased.”
Eddie is the only one whose memory about what happened to them as children has yet to come
back, and after hearing the word ‘sewer’, the cloud over his memories dissipates in
a rush.
“I think I remember who Pennywise was now.
Big white guy.
Red nose.
About 75 feet tall?”
75 feet tall?
No.
No what are you talking about Eddie?
He was never 75 feet tall.
The six of them decide to save the serious topic of conversation for later and enjoy
their meal, and the music during the food montage is the same song from the building
of the dam 30 years ago, because they are rebuilding those bonds they had formed together
as children.
After chowing down, they get to discussing the reason they all came back to Derry: the
promise that they would eradicate Pennywise once more.
The camera circles around them in this scene giving the viewer a sense of disorientation
as they recall more and more disturbing things from their past; their heads are spinning
trying to process it all, and the cinematography reflects that.
Finally, their fortune cookies arrive, and each cookie contains something that represents
one of their fears.
Beverly’s is the blood, like the blood from her father’s sink.
Eddie’s is a roach, a bug associated with poor sanitation and somewhat similar to his
adult fear from the book: the crickets in his basement.
Richie’s is an eyeball, because he was always bullied for his glasses as kid.
Mike’s is a bird hatchling, referencing his fear of the giant bird that attacked him
in the book.
I honestly have no idea what Ben’s is, but Bill’s seems to be a spider, yet another
clue about the eventual final form of It that these six would come to face.
After fleeing the restaurant, they continue their meeting at the library, where they try
to get ahold of Stan and learn about his death.
Bill recalls Stan’s childhood encounter with It as further evidence of how Stan was
so deeply affected by the monster.
In the flashback, Stan wanders into an old house.
Not only is this scene a substitute for Stan’s horrifying journey into The Standpipe in the
book, where he gets trapped inside the water storage structure in a similar way and has
to use his bird book to free himself; but I think the house itself is supposed to be
29 Neibolt Street, an abandoned old property that serves as It’s bridge between the sewers
and the surface.
We don’t fully see the figure that left a permanent scar on Stan’s memories, but
from what we do see, it appears to be a Mummy in the clown suit.
This was likely supposed to be the same mummy that Ben encounters in the novel on the canal
bridge, and finds to be much more disturbing than Boris Karloff’s depiction of The Mummy
in the 1932 film.
Pennywise tries to scare them off my hitting the library with an indoor thunderstorm, so
they gather up the supplies Mike has organized and head to the hotel that Bill, Eddie, Richie,
Beverly and Ben are staying at.
The stuff Mike collected consists of boxes of hardhats, pairs of boots and flashlights.
The hardhats never actually get used though.
Throughout the night, Pennywise contacts Henry Bowers, who is locked up in Juniper Hill Insane
Asylum, as a figure that appears to him through the moon.
The guard at the asylum is named Koontz, named after Stephen King’s rival Dean Koontz,
a fellow horror author.
When It appears before Koontz, he drops a roll of quarters.
The mini-series never explains why, but in the novel, quarters are used as a form of
punishment on the patients fo the asylum.
“It was illegal for the guards (who were called “counsellors” here at Juniper Hill)
to carry billyclubs, so a number of them—Fogarty, Adler, and Koontz were the worst—carried
rolls of quarters in their pockets.
They almost always hit you with them in the same place, right in the back of the neck.
There was no rule against quarters.
Quarters were not considered a deadly weapon at Juniper Hill.
Back at the Inn, Mike hands out copies of his collection of newspaper headlines corresponding
to tragic events in Derry’s past.
The first headline reads ‘Blackspot Club Burns’, a story about the nightclub that
Mike’s father narrowly escaped in the novel.
On the back there’s a piece on Derry’s Lost Settlers.
The book tells of an Irish group of settlers named the Derry Company that disappeared without
leaving a trace before the town as we know it was established.
There are a couple of mistakes on this paper, for example the date listed is April 26, 1960,
which was a Tuesday, not a Wednesday.
The content of the articles doesn’t correspond to what is teased in the headlines either.
In fact, the clickbait is so strong here that you’d think these articles were written
by Lance Stewart.
This one is about The Arctic and this one is about politics or something.
As they all leave the hotel for the last time, the woman at the desk has a few copies of
Bill's book, The Glowing, and what looks to a vinyl with Richie's name and gave on it.
She's got a pen ready, as if she's about to ask for autographs, but they all leave so
quickly she doesn't have the chance.
Before stepping out, Bill sees a woman and child playing Fur Elise by Beethoven.
This is the same song his mother always used to play.
What remains of the group packs into Richie's car to drive to down to the sewer and take
down Pennywise.
The model of this car is an IROC-Z, perhaps chosen to signify Richie's love for Rock and
Roll.
When they get down into the sewer pipes, spider webs cover the walls, a grim clue about the
creature they would face later that night.
The first form of It they encounter is Bill's deceased little brother Georgie.
Although we never see Georgie's death on screen, the child is missing his right arm, a reminder
for fans of the book of the disturbing method of his death, where his arm is dismembered.
In the cavern, we finally discover the meaning of It's catch phrase, "you'll float too".
The bodies of the victims float over the chamber, strung up in the spider's webbing.
Also there's the fact that this is clearly a painting, but who's to say It came have
a taste for the fine arts?
It is at this point that I would have liked for everyone to realize that Bill's wife is
the movie star, Audra Phillips, and yell out, "Hey, It got the lady from Black Christmas!"
Yeah that doesn't happen though...
The original plan for this final boss battle was to have Tim Curry, the man who played
Pennywise in control of the spider somehow, but that didn't pan out, so instead the only
resemblance is when the creature briefly flashes its carnivorous teeth, just like the clown
is sometimes seem to have.
Then this happens.
“I believe in Santa Claus.
I believe in the Easter Bunny.
I believe in the tooth fairy.”
“Eddie, Eddie, what are you saying, you're a virgin?”
And they beat It.
They kill the monster.
I love this mini series, but that isn't my favorite part.
As things wrap, we learn that Richie Tozier got into movies after returning to Hollywood.
The movie that he's shown shooting is in on Scene 574!?
Oh my, that is a long movie.
And I thought It was long.
There's also an easter egg on the slate.
The cinematographer of Richie's movie, J Bereziuk, is the name of the script supervisor in IT.
Bill is still rehabilitating his wife when it's time to leave.
The same cab driver from way back at the beginning picks him up, but he wants to try one more
thing first to try to save Audra and takes her for a spin on his old bike, Silver.
"This bike saved little Stan's life once.
Mine too.
We were going so fast I think we beat the devil.”
Like in It Chapter 2, this is an audible reference to the epilogue's chapter title: Bill Denbrough
beats the devil.
The film goes to black, and everyone gets their happy ending… or do they?
Over the credits, Pennywise's laughter can be heard continuing to reverberate.
"AHHH ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha..."
Could this imply that Pennywise lives on after this second defeat at the hands of Bill, Bev,
Ben and Richie?
The idea of explored more in Stephen King's other books, so make sure you watch my Horror
History episode on Pennywise video to find out.
But before you move on, make sure you subscribe to CZsWorld for new horrors every week, ring
that deathbell for notifications and I'll see you in the next one.
Assuming we both survive.