Editorials
To Be Continued: On ‘IT’s’ Terrific Marketing Campaign
What a weekend!
New Line Cinema’s adaptation of Stephen King’s “IT” has just had the best opening weekend for a horror film ever. But, let’s be honest here, it doesn’t matter how good the movie is, no film makes an estimated $117m (!) on opening weekend without an equally strong marketing campaign and IT had one of horror’s best in recent years.
Let’s start with the record-crushing teaser trailer. Released in March, the two-and-a-half-minute promo clocked up 197 million views in the first 24 hours, more than any other film trailer in history. It’s a tightly edited teaser that does a great job of selling the film. As Brad noted in his box office report, budgets for studio horror films usually hover at around the $5m mark. If there’s any genre that can do more with less, it’s horror; but that does make it all the more special when a relatively big budget genre film comes along.
IT’s reported $35m budget puts it in the range of The Conjuring 2 and A Cure for Wellness, and the trailer makes sure all of that is on the screen. The gorgeous sweeping cameras and the biting rain make the film feel big and impressive, and in a different league to the smaller budget horror films that general audiences have become accustomed to. Also commendable is the fact that, unlike some other recent remakes, reboots and sequels, the trailers make little of the fact that King’s book has already been adapted as the very successful 1990 ABC miniseries. The teaser feels like something new and director Andy Muschietti brings a grandeur to the shared scenes that make this version feel like its own beast.
The teaser and all the following trailers and clips also did a great job of setting up scenes without spoiling them. As John brought up on Twitter, we were only given the bare bones of sequences. Beats are skipped, big final scares avoided: but without ever making the trailer moments feel disjointed or lacking. Even the preview of the storm drain sequence that played in front of Annabelle: Creation clipped the end of the scene.
The efficiency of the teaser ensured there was plenty of new footage to intrigue and excite in the eventual first full trailer. Trailer 1, below, introduces more of the mystery element and keeps the focus firmly on the Losers’ Club. As many people have pointed out, this bike-riding young gang looks very “Stranger Things”. However, IT was already midway through shooting when “Stranger Things” was released, so we can only presume that each production developed most of the shared elements concurrently, as opposed to copying directly.
That being said, it is worth discussing how the marketing team dealt with the similarities. Rather than advertising IT as “Stranger Things” on the big screen, the promotional materials harnessed the goodwill towards the show. The circular nature of inspiration means that it’s totally fair game for New Line and Warner Brothers to use “Stranger Things”, in the same way the Duffer Brothers used King as one of their primary reference points.
Like “Stranger Things”, the marketing campaign for IT played on nostalgia, which led to some really great tie-ins. Immersive screenings and the Neibolt House experience may be gimmicky, but they make for great little news stories. Promo footage of audience members shrieking at the special screenings or raving about how scary the Hollywood haunted house attraction is builds up a sense of danger around the film. Horror fans may find the finished film to be relatively mild, but the general discourse around IT has casual audiences wanting to test themselves to see if they can handle “one of the 5 scariest films ever made” (Joe Hill, King’s son). New Line didn’t leave it at that, though. I can’t remember the last time I played an 8-bit tie-in game, but I was first online to check out “Enter the Sewer”. And, as well as looking back, New Line also looked to the future with a VR Experience YouTube video: “IT: Float”.
But, most notably, IT was never advertised as IT: Chapter One. In a world of cinematic universes and Tetris trilogies, and even though they must have known they had a huge hit on their hands, New Line avoided making any big sequel announcements beforehand. Yes, film fans likely knew that was the plan. But, as far as I can tell, general audiences weren’t aware that there is a sequel on the way. Unlike something like The Mummy with its preordained “Dark Universe”, most viewers sat down to watch the full story. Now, had the movie been less satisfying than it is, maybe that would have backfired and left paying customers feeling short-changed. But, if the encouraging B+ CinemaScore is anything to go by, most viewers will have got a kick from the end title’s promise of Chapter Two.
Imagine going in and watching this epic horror film, complete with wonderful characters you care about and finding out you’ll get to spend even more time with them in a couple of years. New Line has the excitement of a self-contained hit, without the desperate scramble to churn out a sequel. IT: Chapter Two may still be two years away, but it’s obviously been on their minds and this film was structured to fit perfectly with a follow-up.
In the end, though, this does all go back to the fact that Muschietti made one hell of a horror movie, with enough brilliant scenes, ideas, and visuals for the New Line marketing department to do their thing. But thank god they delivered, because they’ve contributed to one of the defining box office weekends in horror history.
The penultimate season of Tales from the Crypt (1989–1996) aired its first three episodes on October 31, so it’s understandable that at least one of those three stories is set on Halloween.
Sandwiched between “Let the Punishment Fit the Crime” (Russell Mulcahy, Ron Finley) and “Whirlpool” (Mick Garris, A. L. Katz & Gilbert Adler) is the most severe episode of the bunch. Maybe the entire series? William Malone and Dick Beebe’s “Only Skin Deep” traded the show’s typical sense of fun for startling amounts of bleakness and kink.
“Only Skin Deep” is, apart from the Crypt Keeper’s intro and outro, noticeably unfunny. There are no considerable attempts at making the viewer laugh. Come to think of it, if those bookends had been replaced, and there was more of a sci-fi element in the story, HBO could have easily squeezed this tale into that successor anthology, Perversions of Science (1997). In Crypt, though, “Only Skin Deep” is much too grim for an audience that had become accustomed to campiness and levity.
What makes “Only Skin Deep” feel dark, among other things, is its protagonist. Showing up to a Halloween party where he’s not welcome, and where his former girlfriend (Diane DiLasco) is attending, Carl Schlag (Peter Onorati) first comes across as your standard bitter ex. You soon realize it’s much worse than that, once Carl threatens Linda (“You know, silly me, thinking I gave you what you deserved. If I’d have done that, I’d have killed you”). Now, I haven’t forgotten that Tales from the Crypt was teeming with vile men who did women harm. Yet Carl’s brand of misogynistic menace hits differently—it borders on being too realistic for this kind of series.
Mike Vosburg’s EC-style comic cover for “Only Skin Deep”, as seen in the Tales from the Crypt episode.
Despite donning a party mask for much of the episode, Carl can’t ever mask his true nature. The invitation did say “come as you are”, after all. That inability to change and be better, however, is why Carl ends up in such a karmic predicament. His outburst of anger at the party attracts the attention of one loner partygoer named Molly (Sherrie Rose, who was also in Season Four’s “On a Deadman’s Chest”). Her bone-white, featureless “mask” and body-bag costume don’t initially register as too strange, especially on a night like this. But at a party chock-full of colorful, cartoonish, and lighthearted ensembles, it does look out of place.
Darkness attracts darkness as Carl ditches the party and accompanies the mysterious Molly to her place. Which, by the way, should have been an immediate red flag. But perhaps she’s so hot, he doesn’t seem to mind the serial killer aesthetic. Resembling a warehouse that has been converted into living spaces, but never then decorated to remove the cold, industrial look, Molly’s home (or lair) is as gloomy as this whole episode feels. It’s like the set of a grungy music video, albeit a tad cleaner. The environments in a typical Crypt episode tend to be small, overfilled, and broken-in. Warm, regardless of any weird goings-on. All that empty space in Molly’s hovel, on the other hand, elicits a creepy feeling that Carl was unwise to ignore.
Tales from the Crypt featured more sex than it didn’t, but hands down, “Only Skin Deep” boasts the steamiest scene in the show’s history. Pushing it over the line, in addition to Onorati showing bare buns and the camera never turning down one of his pelvic thrusts, is the twisted dirty talk. Carl stays in the moment, whereas Molly unleashes charged lines like “the hurt, the anger, give it to me” and “take it out on my flesh like you want to”. It’s all quite kinky, as well as tied into the story’s theme of pain.
How else “Only Skin Deep” differs from other episodes is its twists. Or rather, its lack thereof. Nothing comes as a great surprise here, particularly because the deuteragonist’s ulterior motives are so obvious. By no means is Molly a wolf in sheep’s clothing; her face is a fright mask, she practically reeks of death, and she lives in what can best be described as a serial killer’s hideout. That last-act revelation of Molly’s mask really being her face is also nothing shocking. Cleverness is certainly not this episode’s strength.
A page from “…Only Skin Deep!”, as seen in EC Comics’ Tales from the Crypt.
While “Only Skin Deep” isn’t the most universally loved episode of Tales from the Crypt, it’s an interesting preview of William Malone’s future as a director. Most notably, he went on to helm House on Haunted Hill (1999) and FeardotCom (2002), the former of which was co-written by Dick Beebe, this episode’s writer. Dark Castle Entertainment, that genre house founded by Crypt producers Joel Silver, Robert Zemeckis, and Gilbert Adler, was instrumental in bringing out Malone’s gruesome, over-the-top vision in House on Haunted Hill. However, FeardotCom and Malone’s Masters of Horror episode, “Fair-Haired Child”, are the most stylistically compatible with “Only Skin Deep”.
As one might guess, this episode is nothing like its source material. The “…Only Skin Deep!” found in the pages of EC Comics is set during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and save for its last couple of pages, is pretty sweet in nature. There, a man named Herbert is enamored with a woman he met five years prior to the present-day story. Every year, he has come down to Mardi Gras to see Suzanne, who’s always dressed as a hag-faced witch. Well, this time, Herbert plans on popping the question and marrying someone who is, for the most part, a total stranger. Suzanne accepts his proposal, but with one condition: they stay in costume until they’re officially hitched. You can probably see where this is going…
Once they are married, Suzanne remains incognito, even when she and Herbert have consummated their vows. A semi-predictive nightmare then rattles Herbert; he dreamt that Suzanne’s real face was as wizened as her mask. Finally, in his haste to find out the truth, Herbert winds up killing his new wife. Faceless and well on her way to bleeding out, the dying Suzanne manages to say she never wore a mask.
For more traditional EC-style ghastliness, your best bet is reading the comic. It’s wickedly sad. For something less conventional, as far as Tales from the Crypt goes, the role-reversing adaptation is worth watching. It’s not the best this show had to offer, although Malone’s visual style, plus the sexual abandon, does set the episode apart. If nothing else, “Only Skin Deep” leaves an impression that, even years later, shows no signs of fading.
Season Six of Tales from the Crypt can be streamed on Shudder, starting on June 5.
Tales from Tales from the Crypt celebrates the show’s Shudder premiere by singling out one episode from each season. So don’t even think about changing that dial, boys and ghouls. More spot-“frights” are to come.
Carl discovers Molly’s collection of human ‘masks’ in the Tales from the Crypt episode, “Only Skin Deep”.
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