Monday January 22, 2018
Before I begin, Stephen King has sold lots of books. And goodness knows his mind is geared to the para normal world. While the big sales would suggests easy movie rights, it is difficult to bring a King book to the screen. King is great at creating that theater of the mind effect in which is he spends lots of pages developing his para normal themes. It may be a person with extraordinary power like Firestarter. Or an inanimate object with its own powers like Christine. Or a shop that transforms its shoppers like Needful Things.
And the novels tend to be long, IT is over 1,000 pages. What do you put in and leave out of such a book to screen translation? I still don't know the meaning of the twin girls in
The Shining.
But it is interesting to watch Hollywood try to make the transition.
The re make and release in 2017 of IT cost $35 M and grossed $650 M. And frankly I am not sure how they even spent the $35 M. This involves child actors I never saw before and the setting is a small town in Maine, where King actually lives. 
It has an R rating for the violent scenes no doubt. But why did the producers decide to put foul language in the mouths of 13 year olds (bicycles are their transportation.) And it goes on and on through the entire movie. I don't recall 13 year olds talking like that in 1989. Okay okay so I was not 13 in 1989. The actual events pictured differ in small ways from each version. The theme is that a force appears every 27 years in Derry, Maine in the form of Pennywise, a clown. Pennywise can take whatever form the clown wants, appearing as different people. But the end result is the same, kids start disappearing. The film takes place in two time periods, one in 1989 when they are 13, the other 27 years later, back to Derry again. This release is the first part in 1989. I am sure there will be a Chapter Two 27 years later. the 2017 version is available at Red Box for 1.50-2.00. Oh professional clowns have objected to this violent depiction of their trade.
The first version was a made for TV minis series shot in 1990. It featured TV actors like John Ritter and the guy who played John Boy on the Waltons. I am sure this version did not cost $35 M.But he production values and acting are first rate. There was nothing 'cheap' about the production. And it was happily free of the vulgar language in the version above. I did not find the language added anything to the plot or helped move the story along. And I found the events in the older version seems to be more connected than the 2017 release. You can buy the 1990 version for 12 bucks, and the separate time periods are on each side of one DVD.
In this instance, I recommend the 1990 version, but admittedly the Second Chapter is not out for the 2017 version. But if all we get is more gore and potty language, I'll go with 1990. Back in the day on a large campus, multiple films would be shown Friday and Saturday. It made of an inexpensive date and the cance to discuss them afterwards. Digital may be handy but it precludes that sort of group participation both during and after. I miss that.
Professor Elam 