Stephen King's It

Last night, instead of dressing up and doing something traditionally Halloweeny, Candace and I decided to stay in and watch a horror flick. Unfortunately, we chose Stephen King's It. Growing up, Candace and I had heard this movie was pretty scary, so we were excited to finally check it out.

Bad idea.

The first warning sign came when I noticed that the movie is over three hours long! Fortunately, we noticed this before we started watching it, so we settled in for a long movie, thinking that was the worst of our problems. Our next disappointment was that the movie is more or less The Sandlot with a creepy murderous clown in it, but unfortunately the Sandlot bits WAY outnumbered any scary moments. Then came the horrible acting, despite Tim Curry being cast as Pennywise the Clown (he was arguably the only good thing about this movie). Another oddity to the film is that its scenes cut in and out as if it were episodic, leaving the film feeling a bit un-immersive. After all this though, we were expecting a big payoff in the end...a payoff which never came. Instead, it was replaced with an ending better suited to a Might Morphin Power Rangers episode than a horror flick.

So, after a tedious, unscary, and totally unfulfilling viewing experience, I checked out the movie on Wikipedia, and what did I find? It actually was not a cinematic movie at all, but rather a two-part made-for-TV "horror" flick that supposedly was about as watered down from Stephen King's original novel as it could be! This explained everything really...from the episodic nature of it all, all the way to the horrible casting and B-grade horror effects.

Ultimately, I don't think we could have rented a worse horror film for Halloween, but at least this will give us something to laugh about! By the way, the clip above is the only genuinely good moment in the film, where John Ritter's character realizes the woman he had just been kissing was in fact a wise-cracking Pennywise.