Why the orig­i­nal IT still gives us night­mares 27 years on

“What if it’s just some crazy guy in a clown suit?” says Eddie Kasp­brak, the mol­ly­cod­dled 12-year-old from the 1990 adap­ta­tion of Stephen King’s sem­i­nal hor­ror nov­el ​‘IT’, which tells the sto­ry of sev­en kids who are ter­rorised by an epony­mous being. Lit­tle did poor Eddie know at that time that Pen­ny­wise the Danc­ing Clown was so much more. To quote Pen­ny­wise him­self, he’s ​“every night­mare you’ve ever had; you’re worst dream come true.” And, boy, did he stay true to his word when fright­en­ing the kids in their seem­ing­ly nor­mal sub­ur­ban home town of Der­ry, Maine.

Soon-to-be teens Bill, Bev, Ben, Richie, Eddie, Mike and Stan each come into con­tact with the evil force ini­tial­ly in its most promi­nent form, that of said sadis­tic, child-killing clown, which the group lat­er enti­tled ​‘IT’. But they soon realise that IT is also able to man­i­fest itself as their most per­son­al (often hid­den) fears. All social out­casts of dif­fer­ing sorts, the kids form a self-titled ​‘Loser’s Club’ to try and fight the evil that per­me­ates their home.

Our first prop­er encounter with IT is right at the start, in prob­a­bly the most mem­o­rable scene in the film. It’s here we wit­ness Bill’s younger broth­er Georgie inno­cent­ly play­ing with his paper boat in the rain, which he chas­es as it sails down a drain where Pen­ny­wise is lurk­ing. Things esca­lates quick­ly and, just min­utes into the made-for-TV minis­eries, fol­low­ing a close-up of the clown’s razor sharp teeth, we’re left hor­ri­fied at Georgie’s gory demise. This bogey­man doesn’t only comes out after dark; IT is an evil that can sur­face at any time – espe­cial­ly when chil­dren are inno­cent­ly at play.

Much of the suc­cess of this adap­ta­tion lies in Tim Curry’s per­for­mance as Pen­ny­wise, arguably his finest ever. Ask a hand­ful of coul­ro­pho­bia suf­fers what brought on said fear and guar­an­teed at least one of them will cred­it Cur­ry. From that first eerie flash of Pen­ny­wise grin­ning ear-to-ear behind a blow­ing bed sheet, to the ter­ri­fy­ing moment when he climbs up a lamp post to con­front us full screen, Curry’s por­tray­al of the psy­chot­ic clown is sim­ply unfor­get­table. Heck, just hear­ing Pennywise’s voice is enough to send a shiv­er down this writer’s spine.

Of course, IT earned its cult clas­sic sta­tus not sim­ply through Curry’s per­for­mance alone. Tap­ping into the psy­chol­o­gy of fear in a man­ner unlike most oth­er hor­ror films of its day – we’re not talk­ing mon­ster-under-the-bed fear, but a deep­er kind of fear that is not con­fined to child­hood – the minis­eries even­tu­al­ly fast-for­wards 30 years, where the Loser’s Club reunite as adults, and we quick­ly learn that the things they feared most as kids have not been for­got­ten. This isn’t sim­ply about a group of chil­dren who are scared of clowns and giant spi­ders, but the depth of pain and suf­fer­ing they encoun­tered in their for­ma­tive years.

We are all afraid of some­thing, and IT remains an endur­ing piece of screen hor­ror pre­cise­ly because its por­tray­al of fear is so per­son­al. This chill­ing adap­ta­tion taps into some­thing shared while at the same time bring­ing the inner­most anx­i­eties of the indi­vid­ual to the fore – be that a char­ac­ter or audi­ence mem­ber – and with a major new adap­ta­tion arriv­ing in cin­e­mas this month, it looks set to give a whole new gen­er­a­tion nightmares.