31 Days, 31 Screams: Day 4 (Stephen King's It)

Just one claw and no spooky face. Not so bad.

We've been spinning our wheels for the past few days, putting off confronting this great fear. All that talk about fun cartoons and colorful arcade games was delaying the inevitable. So, let's get to it. Let's face something that pales in comparison to a hard game, or a cartoon delinquent's attempt to one-up The Amityville Horror. Here, then, is an actual fucking monster dreamt up by the King of horror, a creature without name from beyond our understanding that kills and feeds and corrupts. A creature without name that haunts not only a fictional city in Maine, but haunts my thoughts and nightmares to this day.

It.

This is not a review. It is a confession. Still, I must attempt to be rational and give a plot summary, in case you did not know. It is a novel by Stephen King, released unto the world sometime in 1986. It is a huge book, one of the longer ones King has published. In its pages lurks a creature, a creature which our protagonists have no name for and simply dub "It". It, as stated, is an eldritch horror from beyond the universe or before time or some shit which found Itself flung into our world sometime in prehistoric times, burying Itself deep within the earth. In modern times, the city of Derry, Maine is built over where It crashed... and It soon begins to follow a rigid cycle. Every 27 years, tragedy strikes Derry. Then come the disappearances, mostly small children. Food for It. Another tragedy comes after months of this, and then It returns to its sleep, ready to strike again. What terrifies is It's nature of killing. It reads the fear of Its prey, bending reality in order to transform into something Its prey is terrified of. It kills then, feeding not only on the flesh but the pure and simple emotion of a child's fear. For centuries this goes on, until 1958. Seven outcast children from various lower stations in life befriend each other, are taunted by this nightmare, and band together to delve into the sewer system of Derry and attempt to kill It. They seemingly succeed, but swear that if It ever returns, they will come back to finish the job. In 1985 they are all middle-aged, and the call comes: It has returned. The job must be finished.

It's a sparse summary, but a good one nonetheless. Still, as I said. This is not a review. It is a confession. I didn't know this basic plot summary until... I want to say 2003. I may have picked it up via osmosis somehow, but I can't be sure of that. Finally reading the book in 2003, it was mostly brilliant. Brilliant but also mad, in a creative way. I know it's in bad taste to look at something odd and go "Psh, what were they smoking when they came up with that?", but in this case it might actually be valid. It was written between 1980 and 1985, a period which Stephen King has admitted was one where he was taking a shitload of drugs and drinking a shitload of beer. The man doesn't remember the act of writing Cujo, and his later book The Tommyknockers (which has a callback scene to It, believe it or not) was a big metaphor for substance abuse and creativity. And the folly of nuclear power, but we're drifting off track. The only thing to call him to real task for is the climax ending. I'm not going to go into detail on the "Love And Desire" subchapter, but... look, I called out Neptunia for doing gross shit involving little girls. This makes Neptunia look tame. It is indefensible. Even if Stephen King had the excuse of being high on cocaine when he came up with it, he still committed it to page. The people who read the book pre-release, family or friends or editors or publishers, had no objection to it. It's still in the book and it's ugly and disgusting and indefensible. But, this is not a review. A review would condemn it further. No, this is a confession.

Between 1997 and 2003, this piece of fiction absolutely terrified me. I hadn't read it, and it still terrified me. The reason for this is that it was adapted into a TV movie in 1990... but that still doesn't quite explain it. It is not like I saw pieces of the TV movie in 1990, with Tim Curry's portrayal of It, and was terrified. One thing I failed to mention in that summary is that It's "preferred" form for luring children into a false sense of security and eating them is that of a colorful and jolly clown named Pennywise. This is important information for what is to follow. I never saw this movie between 1997 and 2003. I never read the book. What, then, horrified me so much to make this an abject object of pure terror for me? Here is my confession. It was the VHS box art. This sounds silly on paper, I know. I acknowledge that it is an irrational fear... but it is a fear I hold nonetheless. The word "trigger" would be too strong to use for something like this. I'll instead say that it leaves me feeling highly unpleasant, even at a glance. I don't like looking at it. I don't like seeing it. I'm not even linking it here, but I trust in your ability to find it. Still, I must describe it and explain why it unsettles me so. Right, so we have a plain white cover with the logo near the bottom. The upper half of the box is dedicated to Tim Curry, or Tim Curry as Pennywise. I'm not sure if it's a photo or a drawing of him, but whatever it is they've given him a cruel and horrific expression. His head is poking out of a large "rip" in the cover, and two large spidery appendages that are his "true" hands lean out over the rip. Behind his head, on the VHS cover at least, one can see the corner of a videocassette. The implication is clear; this creature, this nameless Itbeast, is breaking the fourth wall of the video box art and attempting to escape its confines. This must be what scared me so much about it, beyond the scary face and monster hands. The monster is literally coming OUT of the box to get me. For six years, this haunted me. The VHS tape was piled up downstairs with my sister's other King VHS tapes. I couldn't even get away from it while it was stacked on a shelf, because the fuckers put that same horrible image as a tiny insert on the sides of the VHS box! It's bullshit!

I eventually did get into Stephen King, and on a chilly fall day 13 years ago I faced my fear and watched the damn thing. It was scary. Tim Curry with monster fangs was scary and unsettling and still is. Then I read the book, and that had even more fucked up shit in it, good and bad. They're doing a two-part cinematic remake of It next year. Bill Skarsgard's Pennywise is unsettling, but only mildly to me. After all this time, we have a monster clown I can actually look at without feeling intensely unpleasant and unsettled. So, here we are. This is my fear. A monster clown that shapeshifts into what you fear most, Itself the thing I fear most because It transcends the laws of fictionality to try to burst forth into our world. One of the creepiest things about the book are the scenes in which whatever It has become vanishes abruptly. The sound of whoosing air can be heard when it does, replacing the thing that was there a moment ago. The very laws of physics bend to the rules of this thing, and doesn't that just terrify? I needed a release. Something to lessen the edge and power of this beast.

Next time: Something like that.