Editorials
Did You Know There Was an Indian TV Series Based on 1990’s “IT”?
Turns out the kids in Derry, Maine weren’t the only ones who needed to fear Pennywise’s grease paint and fangs, as his scaly claws apparently had the ability to reach out from deep in the gutter to far across the sea…
Stephen King is no stranger to having his work adapted. In fact, almost every single one of his novels and short stories have found their way to the big and small screen in some form or another. A handful of these adaptations could be considered what you might call “unique”: Carrie, King’s debut novel and in some ways his most popular release, has been brought to both theaters and television no less than three times, not including unrelated sequels.
Other interesting adaptations include The Lawnmower Man, a film that has absolutely nothing in common with the work from which it got its namesake (so much so that King would later sue New Line Cinema to have all instances of his own name removed from the final product).
But perhaps one of the most interesting adaptations of Stephen King’s work is Woh, an Indian television series from 1998 which was based on the American television miniseries It from 1990!
The major beats of Woh are almost identical to the American series. The titular character — a red-balloon toting, child-murdering monster disguised as a clown – is eventually bested by a group of seven teens who all vow to return should Woh ever return. Years later, when the balloons start popping up and kids start going missing again, the group of old friends reconvenes, intent on destroying Woh once and for all. Much like the American series, several members of the group fall victim to Woh’s shape-shifting and mind tricks, but by the end, the remaining survivors defeat the evil force.
That’s sort of where the incidental similarities end, however. The Indian series didn’t feel the need to marry itself to the source material. In fact, it took a lot of creative liberties, including giving Woh a mother. Near the end of the series, she provides the group with Woh’s backstory and motivations: apparently, he was a short man who found it hard to get along in society, and so he decided to commit suicide and became an evil spirit in the process. Another difference is how the group eventually defeats Woh: they sort of work with him to help him attain “salvation” so that he’ll stop being such a scary creepy clown.
Despite running for a whopping 52 episodes, Woh never caught on. Indian audiences were unfamiliar with the original American series (and King’s novel, for that matter), and found the material a little too niche for their tastes. Because of this, the show was not a success and only ran for one (albeit, long) season.
If you’re interested in checking the show out the complete series is currently up on Youtube, but there’s a little catch: it’s entirely in Hindi and there aren’t any subtitles. However, don’t let that dissuade you from at least checking out the opening credits. They’re perfectly creepy – not to mention oh so wonderfully ’90s.
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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