IT

In 1985, at the age of fourteen, I spent a few weeks on serious medication. I had contracted my first bout of pneumonia (spoiler alert, I’ve had instances of the condition every few years since) and was more or less confined to bed. The drugs were good enough to knock down the fluid in my lungs, but not enough to help me sleep. So I read. Unfortunately for me, the book I read at the time was Stephen King’s __IT__.

As I still do, I took the slip-cover off the massive hardback, carefully stashed the terrifying cover in my bookcase, and retired to my bed surrounded by tissues, pillows, and a jug of water. With the overhead light turned off, the room lit in spooky shadows by the end-table lamp, dim illumination cast across the Iron Maiden, Metallica, and Megadeth posters. The “Somewhere in Time” poster looked particularly menacing every time I glanced toward the window. Hopped up on medicine, the Eddy, the Iron Maiden mascot, seemed to be staring at me. Yup, perfect environment to read a horror novel.

And read I did. I lost myself in “It.” The book is a sprawling tale, filled with characters that both confused and intrigued me. Since a good portion of the book takes place in 1958, I immersed myself in the atmosphere King had created. A world without computers, a world where black people were still referred to as “negroes,” and a time when every neighbor knew every other neighbor.

“It” is one of those rare novels that tells two tales which are interlinked. Half of the book is told from the point of view of preteens facing an awful evil, while the other half is their adult selves facing the same evil while burdened with the long-buried fears of their distant pasts. In short, it’s really two stories interleaved with grace and mastery. The tale is Stephen King at his best.

While hungrily devouring every word, every sentence, and seeing the story through the eyes of both the young and middle-aged protagonists, the room seemed to disappear, leaving me facing the textured paper and the posters grinning from the wall. Did they move? Did they twist their faces to leer at me from their 2-d paper prisons? Certainly seemed like it at the time.

By the time I finished IT, I’d had waking nightmares, dreams where I was chased by a malevolent clown in between bouts of fever and medicine that flat-lined reality. When my pneumonia episode ended, so had the book. I was left with a desire to tell that kind of story. I was inspired to create something so immersive. I had a mission and in some ways, I began to get serious about writing, although the voices told me I’d never be able to match King’s masterpiece.

Here I am at the age 46, 30 plus years later, and revisiting the book. Why? Well, they made a new film and I wanted to have some perspective. Also, I wanted to know how the suspenseful horror experience of my youth compared when filtered through the mind of a fully realized adult. Especially one that’s been writing his own tales for a profession.

One disclaimer: I’ve been listening to the audiobook version of IT rather than rereading it with my tired old eyes. The narrator is very talented and adds a bit of the dramatic to the tale, but occasionally pulls me out of the story with certain idiosyncrasies. That said, I’m still enjoying the hell out of once again experiencing the tale. Further disclaimer: I haven’t finished the audiobook yet. But hearing the words, meeting the characters again as if for the first time, has helped ground me in my thoughts. So I guess we should get to them.

In 1990, they made a miniseries out of IT. The tale interleaved just as it did in the book, and while Tim Curry was terrifying as “Pennywise the dancing clown,” and the casting of the adults was more or less spot on, the tv movie did little justice to the tale as a whole. I mean, how could it? But at least it attempted to capture the feel of the 1950s and the 1980s, the two time periods in which the book takes place.

Fast forward to the 2017 version of IT: Chapter 1. The first film in what looks to be a two movie series, only tells the tale of the characters when they were children, when they first faced off against the “evil clown” that can change shape at will, invade sepia toned historical photos, and scare the children into questioning their own sanity.

I’m uncertain as to why they felt they had to “update” the children’s tale. Instead of taking place in the 1950s, this version is set in the America of the 1980s, a time when most folks didn’t have personal computers, and having one was a luxury that most could not afford or couldn’t see the use of. Had they set the tale in the late 1990s, cell phones, the internet, and other technological advances would have seriously skewed the film’s sense of isolation for our characters.

I haven’t read the director’s logic behind the time change, but I think they did it for two reasons. First, they didn’t want to deal with the rampant racism of the 1950s. Mike Hanlon, a major character in the tale, is black and that may have had something to do with the change. Another possibility is that the director and writers felt the story would be much more accessible to the audience of today. For someone who’d read the book, however, the time-period change was jarring to say the least.

Regardless, they made it work. For the most part. During the 1950s portion of IT, movie monster matinees are referenced throughout. The “I was a teenage werewolf,” “I was a teenage frankenstein,” and other such classical b-movie horror films of the 40s and 50s armed Pennywise with plenty of nightmare material with which to frighten the children.

The lack of those references definitely changed the way “Pennywise” interacted with his victims. I wish, in some ways, the writers had included Alien, The Thing, and other 1980s classical monsters to replace them. Instead, the entire thread was all-but eliminated. Again, rather jarring for those of us who read the book. For B-Man, who has not read the book, their absence meant nothing. So I guess maybe their inclusion wasn’t all that important after all. Still, I missed them.

The casting of the kids in the film was more or less spot-on, although Bill Denbrough seemed too old, too mature. Maybe that’s because 1980s kids are so much more worldly than their 1950s counterparts. But their relative innocence seemed to be lost in the age of cable tv, Penthouse magazine, and modern rock and metal music. Again, it’s probably just my aged mind having difficulty imagining these kids during the same relative timeframe in which I grew up. Probably.

The film more or less gets the feel of isolation, small-town life, and the horror dead on. But the modernity damages one of the mainstays of “It.” The fact that the kids have very little news about what’s going on, the number of children missing, and the growing sense of dread and doom is a central component of the book. I just didn’t get that sense from the film. In fact, there are many other details they could have used to heighten those feelings. Alas, the film just didn’t have the same terrifying feel as I’d hoped for.

That said, Pennywise is fucking terrifying. The modern version makes Tim Curry look both cheeseball and campy. The special effects add a certain edge to the character that would otherwise be absent. Still, they could have done so much more. I wish they had.

I was a little surprised at the ending of the film. While the book more or less wraps up the fate of each of the protagonists, how they all leave the haunted town of Derry for lives of success, and slowly lose their grasp on exactly what happened. I’m sure they will cover all of that in the sequel, but I wonder if I’m going to be pleased with their attempt.

“It” was a seminal moment in literary horror. The novel, partly written in an American literary style while dripping with modern horror sensibilities, is still a mainstay in my imagination. While writing Closet Treats, I was certainly thinking about scenes from “It” and how it grabbed me as a teenager. I wanted so badly to create something that terrifying, that engrossing, that I wandered and meandered through the tale realizing my skillset was still incapable of matching those of the master that wrote “It.”

Here I am 30 years later still trying to capture the magic of another writer’s work. But doing it my way. I’ll probably never write a book like that, and I have to console myself that I still manage to scare the shit out of folks with the modest tools at my disposal. There are plenty of readers out there wondering when the next Black book, the next Derelict book, or a sequel to Closet Treats will be published. I have patrons that pay me to podcast, to create stories, and purchase the books when they come out, although they have more or less already paid for them. I have three Amazon bestsellers under my belt, a Parsec award, and a community that interacts with me on a daily basis. I’m still surprised I’ve accomplished so much in such a relatively short period of time. I’m thankful because the boyhood dreams of seeing my books on the shelf next to the likes of Stephen King are still possible, and perhaps just a few more successes away.

In closing, I’ll just say this. If you’ve never experienced IT as a novel, the film will probably whet your appetite for the apocalyptic second act. If you’ve read the novel, you might be engrossed with the portions of the film that get the dread and doom right, while left cold by the fact they could have done so much more. Regardless, the 2017 film version of IT will definitely be in my library, as I’m sure its sequel will. Go see the film. But dammit, go read the book. I’d love to hear how your experience compares to mine.

Become a patron and get access to published and unpublished books voiced by the author!