‘It’ from Stephen King novel
By James Colt Harrison
It is not the story of Cousin It from the popular television show The Addams Family. No, this is an new adaptation of one of Stephen King’s horror books. But King’s books are somewhat derivitives of what has come before. For instance, Cousin Itt was not a creation of cartoonist Charles Addams’ original family of kooks. Itt came as an addition to the original characters. Character actor Felix Silla of Italy (b. 1937) played “Itt” with as much vigor as he did his circus act, his stuntman roles and the many television parts. But he has no relation to the King film. And King’s title character is spelled with only one “t”.Based loosely on King’s novel, with help from screenwriter’s Cary JojiFukunaga, Chase Palmer, and Gary Dauberman, the movie has everything horror fans love—mayhem, gore, and horror served up in large bowls.Shot in Toronto and the small, bucolic town of Bangor, Maine, the scenic area stands in for the town of Derry. It’s so nice up in Maine, but the local kids are disappearing one by one in swift fashion. The only thing left of them are occasional body parts—an arm, a leg, an eyeball. Nasty stuff that disembowelment thing. From the standpoint of local boy Ben Hanscom (Jeremy Ray Taylor), “Derry is not like an town I’ve been inbefore. People die or disappear, six times the national average. And that’s just grown ups. Kids are worse. Way, way worse.” Hmmnn—there’s something going on in that town to make citizens flat out disappear for no reason. What is it?King’s novel and story owe a nod to Agatha Christie’s 1939 novel “And Then There Were None” (Sometimes known as “Ten Little Indians,” which was cleaned up from the original offensive title of
“Ten Little N——s” sometime in the early 1940s. The first film of the story was made in 1945 at 20th Century Fox. It starred Barry Fitzgerald, Walter Huston and stage star Judith Anderson. Subsequent films were made in 1965, 1974, and 1989. The plot was similar to what King has conjured up in that a group of people end up dead one by one in an inexplicable fashion. However, the two stories diverge from that point and are not similar.Starring is handsome young actor Bill Skarsgard, who made a big splash last year in The Divergent Series: Allegiant. Skarsgard plays plays characters It and Pennywise The Dancing Clown. If that doesn’tgive you the chills, nothing will after you see the imaginative look that hair stylist Ryan Reed designed for Skarsgard to wear as Pennywise.Ever wake up in the morning and scream after looking into the mirror? This is worse.After seeing this scary movie and your eyes pop out of your head, it issuggested you save them in two nice crystal shot glasses. Creepy? Yes, It’s supposed to be
