I'm not going to spend the whole month of October broadcasting Halloween-themed posts. I'm not fixated on the holiday like 'Roseanne' and the Conner Famlly or a certain 'Twilight Zone'-loving lovely in the Great White North. But as the month progresses, if I see something of interest from TV and related to Samhain, then I'll share it here.
And the lead-off here is Pennywise.
As September drew to a close, my brother Bill and I went to see the movie adaptation of Stephen King's "It". I liked it; it certainly had me jumping in my seat. And I enjoyed what I perceived as nods to past works by Mr. King - a car was seen that looked like "Christine" and there was a character's comparison to Molly Ringwald who starred in the mini-series of "The Stand".
Bill knew nothing about the story except of course that there was an evil clown named Pennywise. I had never read the book, but I did see the 1990 mini-series and enjoyed that as well. (When I got home, I read the detailed Wikipedia summary of the book's events and I think both the movie and the mini-series improved on the story.)
Don't get me wrong - I have read other books by King - "The Dead Zone", "Salem's Lot", "The Stand" (that one twice!) plus several of his short stories. He certainly knows how to grab you and not let you go!
I think the strength of this movie lay in the casting of unknowns (save for Finn Wolfhard, although his glasses disguise him pretty well. But he is back in familiar territory which helps viewers make the connection. That's him in the picture above on the far right.) For the mini-series, the second part of the story had the stronger cast, although there were two stand-outs among the kids - the late Jonathan Brandis and Seth Green.
We'll have to wait probably two years for "Chapter Two" so I'm sure they'll have an impressive line-up for actors to play the kids grown up. The key will be to make sure the adults physically match the kids, because they certainly burned their portrayals into my mind!
BCnU!
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