Tim Curry Watch: It (1990)

Watched:  08/29/2026

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  First

Director:  Tommy Lee Wallace

It (1990) has long loomed large over the world of horror media.  The book was a big deal, but I never read it.  Honestly, I'm unsure I've read any Stephen King since middle school and the book of It was thick, and most likely avoided.  When the TV movie of It showed in November of 1990, I completely missed it.  No idea what I was doing, but I know what would have been happening that Fall, and my eye and interests were elsewhere.

Since, I have not seen it as the 3-hour run-time has been a bit of a deterrent.  Still, that's much shorter than taking in two movies as the new version of It was released into cinemas in the 2010's. 

But with this week's passing of Tim Curry, I figured now was the time to finally see the movie.  

SPOILERS

I don't get it.

By that, I mean, I don't get how or why this is the thing everyone's been telling me about for the past 36 years.  I do get how Tim Curry's stock may have risen based on this performance, which is @#$%ing great.  But as a horror movie?  

My feeling is, maybe a lot of people read the book and were just pleased to see some version of the book on screen, while people who don't normally watch much horror saw this for free on TV and because it had characters who weren't campers running away from a guy with an axe, felt like it had deep character work.  I don't know.  Y'all tell me.

Mostly, it's overwhelming how much this feels like what it is:  a TV movie from 1990.  

Back in the day, we'd have huge made-for-TV movies and "mini-series" that were the networks trying something prestige.  Even then, you could feel the ability to tell a story with commercial breaks cutting things up strained the story.  The actors were usually The Best TV Could Offer as there were distinct camps between TV and movies at this time.  And the budget just wasn't there, which shows up in funny ways.  

And this feels like that, which is something I don't see often anymore.

My guess is that the Salem's Lot show had done well, King was reaching peak popularity, and it seemed like a slam dunk to do it again.  

It features A-list "TV" stars.   Harry Anderson from Night Court,  John Ritter from multiple shows, Tim Reid I think of from WKRP but who is in a million things.   Richard Thomas of The Waltons.  The most *movie star* player is Annette O'Toole, who we adore here, but who was not competing with Kim Basinger in 1990.  Olivia Hussey is also in this, somewhat inexplicably.

As younger versions of our adult characters, we get actors like a teen Seth Green (this dude has an absolutely insane career) and the late Jonathan Brandis.  

But the *direction* is just... maybe not great?  Tommy Lee Wallace has limited directing credentials and I'm unsure why he was selected other than a relationship with John Carpenter that started when he played The Shape at times for the OG Halloween.  He would go on to direct Halloween 3: Season of the Witch (recommended), but his last credit prior to It was Baywatch.  So I don't know.  But scenes are often awkward, rely on *yelling* for no reason, and the cinematography is clunky - and often what most makes this feel like TV instead of a movie.  

I don't know if the movie was shot on telefilm, but it looks like a TV film, not something on crisp 35mm.  Visually, it's not terribly striking despite some nice sets.  It never feels like there's much *mood* to all of this, like we're just doing what we can with locations, which is something I associate with TV from the 70's - 00's.  

Maybe if I'd seen this at age fifteen on a 27" Zenith, my feelings would be different.  As it is, this was mostly a slog of a film where I got the idea and then the movie just kept doing the same party trick in different colors.  

Kids are turning up dead in Derry, Maine - just as they did decades ago.  Tim Reid is the last of a gang of kids who were terrorized by an evil entity known as Pennywise.  Somehow, mysteriously, no one recalls this wildly traumatic part of their life until Tim Reid calls (can't believe this isn't somehow a meme).  Each has a flashback to being young and beat-up-able.  We see snips of how they all became friends, and how Pennywise and a local bully who is *not* Ace Merrill made life real bad for them.

All of the kids have kind of shitty homelives, because Stephen King, and it's about as nuanced and subtle as a punch to the face.  Yet somehow all of them end up at the tops of their chosen professions as we return to the present.

In Derry, they all take a while to meet for flashback availability reasons, and Pennywise begins scaring each of them.  After what I'd consider a shocking amount of talking about what they should do, the group - armed with only a slingshot? - enters the sewers from their first encounter with Pennywise and now he's a big spider.  A big, stop-action spider.  

All of the FX in this were of questionable quality, and it is here that I just really don't know what anyone was thinking.  Was this convincing in 1990?  It's sub-Jason and the Argonauts and lacks that Phil Tippet touch that made stop-motion work in that era.  And then they just hit it a few times?  There seems like there's something else at work with the notion that believing in imaginary ideas has power or something, but...  it just kind of lays there.  Our end for Pennywise is just a bunch of people who look like they're dressed for a work retreat kicking a big-assed bug.  Not exactly the thing that haunts one's nightmares.

I think what's weirdest is that the movie just introduces ideas like "wow, somehow we all lost memories of our youths and this didn't bother us" and "Derry is actually just a well of evil where things are mystically bad" and then just shrugs.  And not in a fun HP Lovecraft way.  It all gets waved off more in a "we don't have time for this and we need to wrap things up to show one more Keebler Cookies commercial before the 10:00 News" kind of way.

For his part, Curry really is pretty scary!  The make-up doesn't hurt, but he *gets* it.  This may actually be the Joker we've all wished we could get (as Mark Hamill never put on the white make-up himself).  He seems like a *threat*- like something that can play with its food without worry.  And he's just uncanny enough to give the character an other-ness that plays better than anything else in this movie.

Y'all tell me, seriously...  is this a favorite of yours?  Or have you not seen it since 1990?  I promise not to judge, I'm just curious.  It feels like being told for 36 years that you just have to try this amazing pizza, and you do, and you're like "is this a Red Barron?"