TIM CURRY CLOWNING THE TV-MINISERIES OF STEPHEN KING'S 'IT'

Director: Tommy Lee Wallace Year: 1990 Rating: ****

The 1990 Stephen King adapted miniseries IT actually returned the multi-episodic genre to the glorious 1970's, when ROOTS and RICH MAN POOR MAN cast mostly actors and actresses from nearly every former famous television series that still haunted the syndicated airwaves...

It was usually the character-actors, while IT has the leading players as familiar faces: like a broodingly dramatic John Ritter, who was the hilariously clumsy Jack Tripper on THREE'S COMPANY...

John Ritter in Stephen King's IT

Richard Thomas said good night, every night on THE WALTONS; Tim Reid was the token black disc-jockey on WKRP IN CINCINNATI; and Harry Anderson the wacky judge of NIGHT COURT...

Here Ritter is the older version of Brandon Crane, the new fat kid in school, who the audience meets the central ragtag group of bullied kids with... later becoming a successful architect; Anderson's the famous comedian jokester that was once a young jokester in Seth Green...

Tim Reid and Richard Thomas in Stephen King's IT

And central character Richard Thomas is the usual Stephen King-like lead... a horror writer (never quite as huge as King himself), equally haunted by Tim Curry's enigmatically demonic/demented clown named Pennywise...

Showing up every time either the hang-around youngsters or the reunited old timers get too cozy: in a horror saga that HALLOWEEN 3 director Tommy Lee Wallace turned into more of an old-school horror thriller than the kind of violent slasher-style exploitation chiller of the 2017 remake...

Seth Green and a Marquee in Stephen King's IT

That's ultimately half good, only paying off with the young kids in part 1... but by combining the current frame-story with the 1950's backstory into a smoothly weaving cohesiveness, this IT works all the way through, in either era, equally...

Despite the flashbacks getting a little too corny... yet often seeming deliberate as we're caught in a kind of LEAVE IT TO BEAVER/MAKE ROOM FOR DADDY small town aura...

Tim Curry in Stephen King's IT

Where Curry's at his most horrifyingly effective, clashing against the innocently antique backdrop... as the main problem of the present story is: how exactly do you scare the wits out of successful adults? Make Pennywise a banker to deplete their fortunes?

Also starring lovely Annette O'Toole as the lovely lone-female tomboy, whose young version Emily Perkins (with an abusive father almost as evil as the titular evil incarnate) has an even more vulnerable and horrifying experiences than inner-tormented author Richard Thomas...

Jonathan Brandis in Stephen King's IT

His young self played by then-popular child star Jonathan Brandis, a lot more convincing as a hopeless stutterer than Thomas, seeming like (when going through otherwise important stammering expository diatribes) he's rehearsing for a beginning actor's workshop...

And Brandis tie all the group's fears together, having experienced his little brother's death, kickstarting Pennywise's body-count slayings (in the famous gutter scene that the motion picture would begin with)...

Dennis Christopher in Stephen King's IT

As both timelines have fairly well developed beginnings, middle and endings in what's a combination of the yesteryear coming-of-age classic STAND BY ME and THE SHINING, had Jack Torrance stalked less powerful children...

Featuring the only big-screen veteran, who had once combined both lead and character parts...with Dennis Christopher as a sickly wimp, even wimpier than the other self-professed Loser's Club (effectively taunted in an old-school-bully fashion by Jarred Blancard)...

Harry Anderson in Stephen King's IT

And last, and also least, is dark-horse's dark-horse Richard Masur (having co-starred in the first season of ONE DAY AT A TIME to fulfill the former TV-star theme)... whose younger self's more or less a filler role by Ben Heller...

Another deliberate choice, as IT... whether stemming from King's epic thousand-page novel or Wallace's three-hour epic... knows what characters to use exactly when, and when not to use other characters to where every spook and scare, or stalking or death, share an even balance of tension-filled suspense...

Tim Curry in Stephen King's IT

Giving Tim Curry one of his most revered performances, almost exceeding his fame-making ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW showcase... using that Cheshire Cat grin behind clown paint to be as equally formidable as he's wickedly charming enough for that inevitable shocking transition to always matter: like only he could...

Yet ultimately making the inevitable full-blown creature/monster/beast-behind-the-clown transition that much more anticlimactic... not just because of the now-dated 1990's special effects — but because IT is no longer Tim Curry. 

Emily Perkins in Stephen King's IT

Annette O'Toole in Stephen King's IT

Emily Perkins and Brandon Crane in IT

Laura Harris (center) with Emily Perkins and Brandon Crane in IT

Emily Perkins, Jonathan Brandis, Seth Green, Ben Heller and Brandon Crane in IT

Adam Faraizl in IT

Jarred Blancard, Chris Eastman and Gabe Khouth in IT

Annette O'Toole in IT

Olivia Hussey in Stephen King's IT

Richard Masur in Stephen King's IT

Tim Curry in Stephen King's IT