Editorials
“They All Float Down Here…”: “It” Turns 25!
It’s hard to believe how quickly time flies, especially as one grows older. As children, summer vacation felt like a lifetime while the school year leading up to it felt like an eternity. I remember lazy summer days where I would run in the backyard and climb my treehouse for hours at a time. I remember riding my bike to the park and hanging out with my friends. But you know who never got to really experience anything like that? Georgie Denbrough. He’s too busy doing some “floating”.
That’s right, folks! Today marks the 25th anniversary of the premiere of the TV adaptation of Stephen King’s “It“, the film that instilled a terror of clowns into an entire generation.
Directed by Tommy Lee Wallace (Halloween III: Season of the Witch) the two-part film event premiered November 18th, 1990 on ABC and was based off of Stephen King’s 1986 novel of the same name. The film followed the “Loser’s Club”, a group of seven kids who were essentially the school outcasts as they dealt with the tragedy of losing one of their own. But the tragedy wasn’t some act of nature. Rather, it was the work of Pennywise the Dancing Clown, who was played by veteran actor Tim Curry (Rock Horror Picture Show, Legend).
The first part of the two-part television event focused on the Loser’s Club as children, seeing their formative years shaken and rattled by the eponymous monster that haunted them at nearly every turn. They decide to strike back to ensure no more loss of life occurs, all while having to deal with the school bullies that seemingly won’t leave them alone. After they manage to strongly wound Pennywise, they make a pact that they will return to their hometown of Derry should the evil ever arise again, fighting to save the souls of the children there.
Part two takes place almost 30 years later, when a vicious murder causes Mike, the only member of the Loser’s Club to stay in Derry, to call the rest of the crew up to return and finish what they started. It’s then that things really start to spin out of control as they are all forced to face their greatest childhood fear.
While King’s novel didn’t get the full treatment that it probably warranted, it’s understandable why so much had to be excised. “It” runs over 1,100 pages, which meant that a faithful adaptation would’ve only worked as a two to three season TV series, at the very least. Even then, a bunch of liberties would’ve had to have been taken because King’s writing is oftentimes very adult in nature and that wouldn’t have flown on TV.
Still, even with all the edits and creative liberties taken, the film was generally well received, although critics and much of the cast and crew felt that the second part wasn’t as strong as the first half. The two-part event was also incredibly well received by viewers, the first part being the fifth-highest rated program upon airing and the second part being the second-highest rated program, each being viewed by nearly 20 million households.
Even with only one movie appearance Pennywise has become a horror icon. Much of that can be attributed to the outstanding performance of Tim Curry, who rumor has it used his real hair for the performance, simply dying it red and going through makeup and hair styling each day. His mixture of pleasant charm with gleeful terror has cemented the character in our minds, filling our slumbers with nightmares.
“It” is in the process of being remade and we’ve been bringing you tons of coverage on what’s been going on there. Admittedly, it hasn’t been pretty and the process has gone through a great deal of turmoil, although now it’s apparently set to begin filming in Summer of 2016. And while we hope that the remake gives something fresh and interesting with more of the terror from the novel, we can always rest comfortably knowing that we have the original.
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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