Sunday, October 23, 2016

31 Days of Horror 2016 Day 23 Stephen King's It

Title-Stephen King's It
Source-VHS

Recently started going thru my stacks of VHS. Some of them are labeled some are not. So been kind of interesting seeing what is on these various tapes. On one tape was a recording of when some channel aired the tv mini series Stephen King's It a few years ago.

Ahh It,this was one of my most anticipated adaptation of a King novel. Maybe 2 years before the mini series premiered I had read the novel. And was wondering how they would be able to keep it true to the novel and still air it on broadcast TV.

Set in the town of Derry Maine,It is about an evil entity that feeds on children. Every so many years It kills a few children then disappears again. Until it meets up with a special group of children. This group is made up of all the outcasts at the local elementary school. And thru the bond they share they managed to kill It. Or so they thought.

They grow up and one by one move away from Derry. With only one of them staying behind.Now they are approaching middle age and find out that It is back. So can this gang of now adults manage to stop It?

This aired over 2 nights. Each night it was 2 hours with commercials. The first night covered the half of the story when they were kids. And the next night covered the last half when they are adults. It is surprisingly gory for a network TV mini series. And thanks to the great acting from Tim Curry It is packed with scary moments. Even having to tone down some parts of the novel didn't hurt the mini series too much.

What hurt it was how they handled the final battle with It. In the novel it gets very metaphysical. And has a bunch of connections to King's Dark Tower series of novels. In the mini series It is revealed to be a giant spider. Which our gang defeats. Yep a giant spider. I get that it would have been hard to recreate the battle from the novel. But they could have done something better than Hey it is is a giant spider.

Stephen King's It gets a C+.