If you want to hear about how an old McDonald’s commercial inspired one of the scenes with
Pennywise in IT, then stick around to the end of this video.
The 1990 adaptation of Stephen King’s IT, directed by Tommy Lee Wallace, was originally
supposed to be an epic season length affair covering much of the content from the book,
but was cut down to a two-parter for budgetary reasons. Some of the remnants of that original
story are still left behind.
In the opening credits, we go through what is presumably Mike Hanlon’s photo album,
which includes the group photo of the Lucky Seven taken at the junkyard and the haunted
house that Stan visits -- which I’d interpret as the mini-series version of 29 Neibolt Street,
the place the Losers Club first battles IT as a group in the book.
And a photo of this scene that Mike couldn’t have possibly been there for, where everyone
who starts with B (Bill, Beverly and Ben) walk home together.
The book contains more images of things Mike couldn’t have been there and couldn’t
have really even been photographed at all, and a photo of a some houses along the river,
which I’d interpret to be West Broadway, a neighborhood filled with the rich descendents
of Derry’s early lumberjack settlers.
The opening scene shows the final moments of a girl named Laurie-Ann. When we meet her
she’s singing “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider”.
"The Itsy-Bitsy Spider climbed up the waterspout. Down came the rain and washed the spider out."
This is the first of many clues foreshadowing the Losers Club’s final battle with It,
where It takes the form of a giant spider. The “up the water spout” line refers to
the fact that lives in and travels around using the sewer pipes.
The first victim, Laurie-Ann, is a combination of two characters from the book, Laurie-Ann
Winterbarger, a girl who went missing in February 1985 while going sledding; and Matthew Clements,
a boy who was abducted from his tricycle.
Also, if you look closely, the girl on rollerblades that goes past Laurie-Ann on the sidewalk
is trying to land-ski behind a bike. Pretty hardcore.
Laurie-Ann’s mother tells her to come inside because it’s about to storm. In the book,
Derry has an unfortunate history of storms and flooding during the reign of It, and this
is probably a slight nod towards that.
After the young girl’s body is found, the police chief argues with Mike about whether
or not there is a killer in Derry. One of the chief's arguments is that one of the missing
boys was actually taken by his father.
"The boy's father took him."
...which is a reference to Lori-Ann Winterbarger from the book, who police conclude was most
likely picked up by the divorced father. Mike finding the picture of Georgie is a condensed
version of the events of the book where police find the photo alongside the body of Dennis
Torio in the barrens and Mike later gets his hands on it.
After this introduction scene Mike calls up each of his old friends, the first of which
is Bill Denbrough, who apparently has acquired the ability to type at the speed of thought.
"Taggart steps onto the moors as the fog curls around his ankles. He shivers, buttons
his coat and walks on, disappearing into the mist. A shadowy figure lurches into frame,
dripping with foul water and dark oozing mud."
His script mentions someone disappearing into the mist. Maybe a reference to The Mist, another
Stephen King novel. Bill, like many of King’s characters serves as kind of an extension
of the author himself. For example Bill tells his wife:
“Besides, if they’re going to hire somebody to mangle one of my books it might as well be
me.” Stephen King would later try to re-adapt his novel “The Shining” after being somehow
unhappy with how the director Stanley Kubrick portrayed it in his legendary 1980 film. Bill
finds out about It returning and flashes back to his childhood.
In young Bill’s room, there are a lot of easter eggs and clues. Bill has a typewriter
on his desk, a foreshadowing of his future as a successful author. The photo of the Lone
Ranger on his wall references the book, where Bill is a big Lone Ranger fan and names his
bike, Silver, after The Lone Ranger’s horse.
There are a series of board games on his shelf. One is called Circle Cut, a reference to the
promise that he and his friends would make where they stand in a circle and cut their
palms as a blood oath that if Pennywise would ever return, they too would come back to try
to defeat It.
He’s also got Monopoly, the game that Bill and his friends played to make it look like
they weren’t trying to make silver bullets in the garage, and Parcheesi, the game they
would all play at their clubhouse in The Barrens.
I also spotted a comic book called “comet”, a clue about how It actually arrived in Derry
as a crashing comet millions of years ago, and a wolf photo, possibly connected to one
of the most often used forms of It -- the werewolf form.
Bill makes his brother Georgie the paper boat, which eventually falls into the hands of Pennywise.
The Pennywise storm drain scene is the same as it is in the book, which is a reference
to this old McDonalds commercial from the 1960s.
“Well hi! Isn’t that McDonalds hamburger delicious? Mom told me never to talk to strangers.”
“Hiya Georgie! Don’t you want a balloon?” “I’m not supposed to take stuff from
strangers. My dad said so.”
“Well your mother’s right as always, but I’m Ronald McDonald. Give me a McDonald's
shake.”
“Very wise of your dad Georgie, very wise indeed… I Georgie, am Pennywise the Dancing
Clown. And you are Georgie. So now we know each other.”
By now we all know what happens to Georgie, and the memory comes back to Bill in a rush.
“My brother who died."
"Yes, George."
He didn’t just die. He was m-m-m”
"Mole... mole..."
“MOLE MOLE MOLE MOLE MOLE!”
The next Losers Club member Ben calls is Ben Hanscom, who reminisces to his date about
how he used to be fat.
“Would you believe I used to be fat?"
"I bet your were real cute!"
"No not just fat, but a regular butterball. You bet your fern I was. We used to say that
as kids. You bet your fern.”
Not sure why they changed this, but in the book, the phrase that they used is “you
bet your fur”, not fern.
Also, does anyone know the reason he has to set his phone up like this? It’s seriously
always bothered me, I mean the guy is supposedly a master architect, yet he can’t figure
out how to setup his telephone on the desk next to his booze? Come on, Ben.
Ben flashes back to his arrival in Derry, introducing himself to his new class. There’s
a picture of US president Richard Nixon, who took office in 1969, which suggests that this
movie takes place in a different time period than the novel, where the past events took
place in 1958. That, or this teacher was just somehow just a fan of Nixon before he got
into office.
There is also a geometry problem on the board asking for the circumference and radius of
a circle. When Ben gets the call from Mike in the present, there’s also some artwork
on Ben’s wall featuring the symbol for pi. Pi is the ratio of a circle’s circumference
to its diameter, and The Losers Club is often described as a wheel or circle. When all seven
of them are together, the circle feels complete, so they fear that they won’t be as strong
after the death of Stan. But pi is a ratio that always comes out the same no matter the size
of the circle, so in a way it suggests that even without Stan, the group will still be
powerful.
We see this bond start to form as the group starts small with Bill, Eddie and Ben, and
it’s in this scene in the Barrens, that Ben references one obscure detail from the
book.
After school gets out, Ben eventually finds himself with Bill and Eddie in the Barrens,
and Eddie is having an asthma attack. When Bill gets back with the medication, Ben expresses
his concern.
“Geez, he’s really got it bad. I was scared he was gonna slip into a comber like on Dr.
Kildare.”
"Yeah, me too."
This line is a little reference to Bill’s worries in the novel, where he also mistakenly
refers to a coma as a comber.
The scene where Ben sees Pennywise appear on the water is a reference to the part in
the book where he sees It as a Mummy on the frozen canal in the Winter of '58. The hand
of the monster that reaches out of the water for him is later used in Pet Sematary II,
but you already know that if you saw my Things You Missed episode.
The next character Mike calls is Beverly, who is in Chicago.
“Bev, someone calling from Maine, says it’s important.”
“Maine?”
“Pam, I said no calls until…”
Why is it that all receptions are always named Pam? I mean is it something that’s decided
at birth? Oh, she looks like a receptionist. We must continue the tradition. I shall call
you Pam!
But anyways, Beverly flees from her abusive husband Tom Rogan, and the way she throws
the bottles as she’s making her escape is very similar to how she throws rocks at the
Bowers Gang during the Apocalyptic Rock Fight.
She ends up getting in a cab which she hails in front of the sign for Ditka’s Northwest,
who of course is Daaaa Coach of the Super Bowl Champion 85’ Bears. The novel takes
place in 1985, and there is a small reference to Da Bears when they’re all at the Chinese
restaurant, and after a scare from It, they try to act as if nothing has happened when
the waitress comes by, and Mike tells Bill he likes the Bears’ chances this year.
In Beverly’s flashback, when she’s meeting all the boys in the Barrens, Eddie gets upset
at Richie for calling him Eddie Spaghetti.
"And don't call me Eddie Spaghetti."
“Oh you love it Eddie. It’s what makes you so chuckalicious.”
Chuckalicious. I love that word. I need to start using that on a regular basis.
Bev returns home to find her dad watching an episode of 77 Sunset Strip, something that
Richie thinks about after his It encounter in the book.
That’s when when Bev hears the voices calling out to her in the drain. In the book, we recognize
them as the missing kids of Derry, but in this version, they have different names.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Vicky Burrows. I’m Matthew O’Connor. We’re all the dead kids.”
Victoria Burrows is one of the casting directors for this series, and Matthew O’Connor was
the name of a producer.
Bev’s dad is unable to see the blood, so she makes up a lie that turns out to not be
a lie when they fight the spider under the drains of Derry 30 years later.
“There... there was a spider. A big fat spider, it crawled out of the drain, and I
guess it crawled back down again.”
The next one we meet is the chuckalicious Eddie Kaspbrak. In this version he lives with
his mother who somehow hasn’t really aged really. It’s not too far of a cry from the
novel, where he has a wife that strongly resembles his mother, to the point that even Eddie is
aware of it.
The wife and mother characters are largely the same, no pun intended. One of the things
the wife wants in the book is for Eddie to stay in New York so he can get her Al Panico’s
autograph.
Mini-series Eddie gets one of his limo drivers to take him to the train station, and makes
a comment about wanting him to be the one to do the Pacino job.
“I want you do to the Pacino job yourself.”
Eddie’s flashback involves a scene he wasn’t there for in the book, the day out at the
horror movie matinee. And what a horrible audience. I mean... is this really what movies were
like back then?
The werewolf film they see is important, because that’s what gives Richie his fear, something
that It takes the form of later in the episode.
The group ribs Richie for pissing off the bullies at the movie theater, and he plays
it off as a ‘just a practical joke.’
“Yeah well sometimes you gotta have jokes or you’ll die of boredom. I mean are we
men, or are we mice?”
“We’re mice.”
“Then let’s act like mice.”
This phrase originates from a 1700s poem, but in this case, it’s a small nod to another
phrase the kids use to use in the novel, which is associated with building up the courage
to fight It.
And before we move on, Ben and Eddie are transfixed on this creepy structure in The Barrens. This
is something I genuinely have always found super creepy and still do, and the almost
castle like appearance of it makes me think of how the Losers see the inner lair of It,
and think of how it almost looks like a cathedral.
Meanwhile...
“Hey don’t trip”.
Immediately trips. And then…
“I was worried sick; I almost called the police.”
“Eddie was with us Mrs. K--”
“Go away.”
*Laughter* Now that’s what I call chuckalicious.
Alright, let’s get back on topic here. Mike makes his next call to Richie, and we can
see that he’s still a horror movie buff based on this monster picture on the wall
and his cemetery gate themed dress shirt. Richie tells his manager he’s gotta leave
town, and someone will have to cover for him on the show.
“Let Leno do it, I don’t care.”
Funny enough, in real life Jay Leno would take over just two years after IT came out
on The Tonight Show, the show that Richie’s show is basically emulating.
Richie flashes back to his time as a young boy in the Barrens, and Bill is telling the
group a story.
“They had learned to be strong together, they had beaten the dragon with their magic
stones and nothing would ever be the same again.”
This could be either a reference to the rock fight, which would make Henry and his goons
the ‘dragons’ of this story, or it may refer to the shooting of the silver slugs
at Pennywise, which Bill refers to at one point as stones.
“B-bev, the stones!”
They go around saying what they all want to be when they grow up. Eddie states he wants
to be a train conductor, a reference to the book where Eddie likes playing around the
trainyard, and one day a conductor throws him a box and instructs him bring it home
to his mother.
Stan says he wants to be an ornithologist -- he’s big into birdwatching in the novel,
but his hobby is barely acknowledged in this series.
They find out that there’s been yet another murder, and everyone is really down in the
dumps the next day at school. I mean, look at this kid.
*sad music*
...Honestly, it’s a little bit chuckalicious.
Bowers confronts Richie about the incident at the movie theater, to which Richie asks,
“how are Curly and Mo,” an implication that Henry and his gang are the three stooges,
Larry, Mo and Curly.
Bowers interrogates him asking which one of them threw the soda. I mean, does he seriously
not know? Play back the clip.
“If I were you guys, I wouldn’t pay to see a monster movie, I’d just stay home and
look in the mirror.”
Yeah, you know, I’m not quite sure who did it…
But anyway, Richie’s flashback ends with the entire lunchroom laughing at him when
he brings up his werewolf encounter. One detail I noticed here was that Richie’s lamp is
modeled as an Indian chief, and in the book Richie is one of the two members to make it
through the Indian smoke hole ceremony, and have a vision that teaches them more about
Pennywise.
The next character to have a flashback is Mike himself, but first we see the Derry manuscript
he is working on on the desk. There’s something about him being a good student, and something
about It only waking every 30 years (as opposed to the 27 years from the novel, and Ice Nine
Kills song).
"It's coming back around every 27 years!"
The manuscript is essentially the framing device for King’s entire novel, and there
are interlude chapters scattered throughout where we actually get to read from it directly.
We can see that Mike is researching about Derry in newspapers from the 1930s. His desk
is also stacked with phone books for each of the cities that the Losers now live in,
such as the Atlanta phonebook for Stan Uris.
Mike is chased by the bullies in his flashback and as he runs, there a poster advertising
a circus -- which may or may not be part of It’s influence on Derry.
The Losers Club protects Mike from Henry by throwing rocks at him and his goons.
“AHH! Ah man, you’re gonna get a surprise, you’re gonna get such a surprise.”
Well it isn’t a surprise if you tell him about it, now is it Hen?
After this fight, Mike joins up with the Losers and together they flip through the photo album
of Derry’s history. If you pause during the page flipping shot, one of the pictures
is a grave marker -- could be a foreshadowing the graveyard scene that would come in Part
2, or just a connection to the impending death of Stan.
On a personal note, this was one of scariest scenes ever. I watched this movie as a kid
-- probably 6th grade -- and instantly loved it -- but it definitely put spooky thoughts
in my head whenever I was around a drain by myself. But this scene was the scariest. Whenever
I saw this still image around the internet, I’d just start to think: maybe it could
start moving and reach for me.
The unexpected sound that Pennywise makes,
*ROAR*
their reactions, just the fact that Tim Curry is looking right into the camera…. I love
it. It gives me chills.
But enough of my personal experiences, because we’ve still got one more character to cover,
and that is Stan the man Uris.
It’s pretty funny that if you take a closer look at the stuff in Stan’s house, he and
his wife have this lamp of boy playing the flute, because 27 years after this mini-series
came out, the movie version of Stan is afraid of this woman in a painting who plays the
flute.
When the phone rings, you can spot, Stan’s bird book, an item given to him by his father
in the book which he uses to ward off It by demonstrating that he believes in all these
rare species of birds that he’s never seen before, but he does not believe in It. You
can also find his binoculars used for birdwatching and these bird statues by the stairs.
The time comes for the Losers to confront It down in the sewers, but first, Henry and
Belch get ahold of Stan, but before they can do anything, they are attacked by It, in the
form of these bright lights that abduct Belch and make Henry go crazy.
This is a representation of The Deadlights, the true form of It that Bill battles in the
macroverse in the novel. The kids aren’t able to interpret the actual shape of the
Deadlights in the book, so in this adaptation, they are literal bright lights. The sound
of The Deadlights is the same sound that can be heard when the werewolf in the school basement
turns into Pennywise, so it may be associated with It changing forms.
When Stan joins back up with his friends, the light comes after them and knocks them
all over, and you can briefly see a strange shape floating over them, which we later find
out is the underbelly of the spider in Part 2.
I always thought the line that Stan chants with his eyes closed was kind of odd, but
I looked it up and it’s actually the boy scout oath, which makes sense because that’s
kind of his thing in this series, he’s always got the boy scout uniform on, but we don’t
really get to know him as well as we do in 2017 adaptation or the book.
Through the Lucky Seven’s combined efforts, they’re able to defeat It, and send Pennywise
retreating deeper into the sewers. Bill urges them not to let It get away, and they grab
hold of the white clown glove, but It’s insectile claws poke through and they all
see the appendage of the spider momentarily before It retracts down the drain, one last
clue about what they would be up against in the second part.
And there are more Things You Missed in that second part, so make sure you’re subscribed
to CZsWorld for new horrors every week, ring the deathbell for notifications and I’ll
see you next week when we cover Part 2… Assuming we both survive.