Editorials
‘IT: Welcome to Derry’ Explained: The Many Stephen King Connections & References in Episode Six
WARNING: The Following contains major spoilers for It: Welcome to Derry episode six.
As we near the first season finale of It: Welcome to Derry, classic references to Stephen King’s 1986 novel abound. Episode 6, “In the Name of the Father,” sees the 1962 version of the Losers’ Club begin to solidify, placing these likeable characters in imminent danger.
While chatting with Marge (Matilda Lawler) at their Standpipe clubhouse, Rich (Arian S. Cartaya) launches a Balso Wood Glider from the observation deck, hoping to land it on Main Street. Though the toy aircraft does manage to catch the breeze, it coasts into an open sewer hole, alluding to the horrific death of young Georgie Denbrough. It begins with the doomed young child playing in the rain as his own paper sailboat careens through the bars of a sewer grate. Moments later, he’s murdered by a subterranean clown while negotiating for the toy’s return. Does this loss mean Rich is marked for death, or is it just another example of Derry’s curse?
While Marge and Rich commiserate in the lunchroom, we learn that they’ve both been hearing voices drifting out of their bathroom drains, similar to those heard by future Loser Beverly Marsh. This encounter will also see Marge firmly reject a place in the popular crowd and embrace her status as a “freak” … or Loser. As the cruel Patty Cakes mock a table full of students, Marge rips off the bandage covering her gruesome eye injury and insists that she is one of them. Just moments before, an auspicious gift has aligned her with one of King’s most beloved protagonists. After their touching Standpipe conversation, Rich has brought Marge an eyepatch to cover her extensive scars.
Photograph by Brooke Palmer/HBO
Wearing it, she resembles Nick Andros, a founding member of the Boulder Free Zone in King’s apocalyptic novel The Stand. As the world falls to a deadly virus, Nick is attacked by a bully hailing from Shoyo, Arkansas. Angry and frightened, Ray Booth attempts to gouge out his eye, leaving the already deaf and mute man nearly blind as well. Nick wears an eye patch for the remainder of the novel, somehow adding to his understated charisma. By donning this iconic accessory, Marge seems to adopt his air of unexpected leadership.
As the children become more connected, Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk) moves in the opposite direction. Still reeling from his time in the sewers, he’s uncharacteristically surly and cruel. When Leroy (Jovan Adepo) consults the airman about the dangerous mission, Hallorann explains his recent malaise, detailing his childhood experiences with the Shining and his grandmother’s trick for locking bad spirits away. He explains that Pennywise was able to somehow pry the lid off of his mental lockbox, releasing decades of frightening ghosts.
What’s more, Hallorann is now plagued with visions of the dead and worries that they will notice him, mentioning the dreadful things they know. (This unnerving tidbit nods to disturbing information weaponized by those resurrected in the burial ground beyond the dreaded Pet Sematary, detailed in King’s nerve-shattering novel.) Jaime Conklin, the teen protagonist of King’s 2021 supernatural crime thriller Later, also struggles with the terrible affliction, but Hallorann’s current pain foreshadows the Danny Torrance we see in the 2013 novel Doctor Sleep.
Photograph by Brooke Palmer/HBO
Hallorran first meets the psychically gifted boy while serving as head chef of the infamous Overlook Hotel, months before the child is nearly killed by his possessed father, Jack. As an adult, Danny struggles to overcome this acute trauma while contending with constant visions of the dead. He’s particularly haunted by the ghost of a little boy he left unsupervised in a drug-filled apartment, a shameful memory he tries to suppress with substance abuse. Surrounded by his own disturbing specters, Hallorann seems similarly poised to erase his terror with alcohol.
This tension arises as Charlotte (Taylour Paige) attempts to hide the fugitive Hank Grogan (Stephen Rider) in a back room of the Black Spot lounge. Now open to Black servicemen stationed at the Derry Air Force Base and their invited guests, this makeshift speakeasy has attracted the attention of local racists thanks to an anonymous tip as to Hank’s location. While discussing their search, these dangerous men mention scouring the local railroad tracks where future Losers’ Club member Eddie Kaspbrak will one day encounter a solicitous leper. Pennywise later uses this frightening apparition to terrorize the boy outside the infamous house on Neibolt Street. They gather at the Derry Public Library, where the adult Losers will strategize after reuniting in the modern cycle.
Photograph by Brooke Palmer/HBO
Though we don’t yet know who placed the anonymous tip, all signs point to Ingrid Kersh (Madeleine Stowe), who takes a decidedly villainous turn. Desperate for kindness, Lilly (Clara Stack) enters the woman’s home and wanders up to her cluttered attic. A familiar clown suit sits by a sewing machine, and a framed photograph of Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) leans against the wall. But most damning is a book of family Memories, similar to those mentioned in King’s source material. While flipping through a photo album, Loser Bill Denbrough watches images suddenly jump to life, the jagged paper slicing into his fingers. Lilly’s digits remain intact, but the pages she turns contain a series of damning revelations.
As Ingrid approaches behind her, we recognize a black and white photo of a man bearing an uncanny resemblance to Pennywise himself, posing with a younger Ingrid. Eagle-eyed viewers will remember this photo from Andy Muschietti’s It: Chapter Two and a harrowing interaction with the elderly Mrs. Kersh (Joan Gregson). Fleeing the monstrous woman, Beverly walks in on the strangely sinister man removing his heavy clown makeup. King’s novel identifies him as Robert Gray, “fadder” to the monstrous Mrs. Kersh, but remains vague about his position in the story.
Photograph by Brooke Palmer/HBO
Muschietti adds crucial information to this shadowy character as Ingrid explains her father’s disappearance. While she stops short of identifying him as Robert Gray, we learn that he was a circus performer who disappeared during the 1908 cycle, and she has spent decades trying to bring him home. Flashbacks to 1935 bookend the episode as a younger Mrs. Kersh leads a little girl to a clandestine meeting with the sinister entity. Sensing an opportunity, It appears as Gray, recreating Bev’s disturbing intrusion. Ingrid falls for this dangerous trick, though the results of their meeting remain unclear.
Spying a familiar costume and wig, we learn that Mrs. Kersh was once part of her father’s act, a clown performer known as Periwinkle. We first noticed her near the freak show tent in episode three, and she’s the clown photographed near the shadowy crypt in episode four. Determined to connect with her long-lost “fadder,” Ingrid has been donning her Periwinkle costume and terrorizing the town’s children. But this revelation raises further questions about Ingrid’s age and humanity. Had she been old enough to perform in 1908, she would have been nearing seventy years old in the 1962 cycle. Perhaps it’s more likely that she now exists as a supernatural element of Pennywise’s arsenal, infiltrating the town to procure future prey. The episode ends with the mysterious woman donning her sinister costume, promising answers to these questions in the next chapter.
For more on It:Welcome to Derry, check out episode by episode coverage from Bloody FM’s The Losers’ Club: A Stephen King Podcast.
Photograph by HBO
Auteur Filmmaking is a term that gets thrown around a lot these days in reference to big name directors like Quentin Tarantino and even Wes Anderson, but the truth is that film is a collective medium, and no one person can be responsible for every single aspect of a particular production. However, the smaller a film’s budget, the bigger the individual impact of every creative decision behind it – and the easier it becomes to identify a genuine auteur.
This isn’t necessarily a judgement of value, as blockbuster filmmaking comes with its own challenges and a good movie remains a miracle regardless of how big the crew is, but I’ve always been more interested in soulful b-movies produced by handfuls of passionate artists than blockbusters backed by creative armies.
That’s why I love exploring low-budget franchises that never left the hands of their original creators, as you really get to know the artists involved with these flicks and can accompany their evolution over a period of time. With that in mind, I’d like to invite readers to join me in this multi-part series as we look into a vampire saga helmed by one of the most fascinating auteurs of the 1990s. Naturally, I’m referring to Ted Nicolaou’s criminally underrated Subspecies!
The Birth of an Unlikely Horror Franchise
A proud graduate of the University of Texas’ Film program, Nicolaou got his start in the industry as a sound technician working on Tobe Hooper’s original Texas Chain Saw Massacre. From there, the filmmaker would go on to work for notorious indie producer Charles Band, the founder of both Empire Pictures and Full Moon Productions. According to Nicolaou, Band would usually contact him with an offer to direct a feature after more prominent filmmakers, such as the late, great Stuart Gordon, had already refused, meaning that his projects tended to have lower budgets and more inexperienced crew members.
The plans for Subspecies began almost immediately after the fall of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, with screenwriter David Pabian turning in an initial draft of the film after a Romanian producer contacted Band and explained that Romanian tax incentives could cover the cost of film production there so long as Full Moon took care of the post-production process. Since Stuart Gordon was unwilling to travel to Romania, Ted Nicolaou ended up taking over the picture.
However, while the financial incentives meant that this Romanian-American co-production could look and feel much more expensive than it really was, with Nicolaou scouting for locations in advance and selecting real castle ruins to be featured in the movie, the director was soon faced with an incredibly difficult shooting process. In interviews, Nicolaou would later describe the experience as something of a nightmare, with language barriers and the generalized distrust of capitalist outsiders sabotaging many of the team’s plans for the film.
In fact, the script, which had already been altered by Band, ultimately had portions of it rewritten by both Jack Canson and Nicolaou himself in an attempt to adapt the story to their unique limitations.
Radu Is One of Horror’s Greatest Underrated Villains
In the finished film, which was released directly to video in 1991, we follow a pair of American anthropology students, Michelle (Laura Mae Tate) and Lillian (Michelle McBride), as they reunite with their Romanian colleague Mara (Irina Movila) in her native land. The group intends to study the folklore surrounding the secluded town of Prejmer, but their research is cut short by the return of Radu Vladislas (Anders Hove) – the evil son of a vampire king (Angus Scrimm) who had previously established a truce with the region’s human residents. It’s now up to Radu’s human-loving half-brother Stefan (Michael Watson) to protect the girls from a fate worse than death as the power-hungry vampire seeks to control a magical artifact known as the Bloodstone.
Right off the bat, you may have noticed that the film’s premise sounds decidedly old-fashioned when compared to other vampire movies from around the same time. While the 1990s saw the rise of cool-looking bloodsuckers with badass elements borrowed from Westerns, as well as the sexy aristocrats of Anne Rice’s stories, Subspecies has a lot more in common with Nosferatu and the Hammer Horror series than any of its contemporaries.
This is both a blessing and a curse, as the film falls victim to overly familiar genre tropes while also standing out as a rare example of a ’90s vampire flick that isn’t afraid to flex its muscles as a Creature Feature. In fact, I’d argue that the presence of age-old clichés is a small price to pay when confronted with one of the most compelling vampire antagonists in all of cinema.
Named after Vlad the Impaler’s real-life brother, Anders Hove’s Radu is such a fascinating character and the main reason why Subspecies is still worth watching 35 years later. From his animalistic mannerisms to the joy he feels in simply existing as a chaotic creature of the night, and that’s not even mentioning the iconic makeup that almost certainly inspired the undead from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Radu is a hypnotic presence harkening back to a time when audiences didn’t mind purely evil villains that couldn’t be redeemed through tragic backstories or sex appeal.
Gothic Atmosphere on an Indie Budget
Of course, the film’s Romanian setting and authentic art direction do a lot of the heavy lifting whenever Radu isn’t around. From the masked festivals of the village to the visually interesting selection of local extras, Subspecies’ multicultural elements help it to stand out when compared to similar flicks from the ’90s.
That being said, Nicolaou’s unique eye for special effects and exciting action sequences – as well as Vlad Paunescu’s excellent cinematography – make the movie a delight for fans of expressionist cinema and old-timey gothic horror. While the crew is obviously dealing with limited resources, many of the flick’s blemishes (such as the odd stop-motion demons that serve Radu) end up feeling more like charming idiosyncrasies than actual flaws.
I’d argue that the only real issue here is pacing, as there are long stretches of film where the protagonists are simply bumbling around without realizing what’s really going on around them. Thankfully, the gorgeous visuals and surprisingly effective soundtrack usually make up for this. Besides, how can you dislike a movie where shotgun shells are loaded with rosary beads and our lead vampires duke it out in a dramatic swordfight that would feel out of place during the golden age of Hollywood?
Your overall enjoyment of Subspecies will mostly depend on whether or not you find low-budget corner-cutting and janky practical effects charming rather than distracting, but I know I’ll keep coming back to this Full Moon feature again and again in the future.
That being said, while this first movie is worth revisiting by its own merits as the birth of an indie horror icon, I’d like to invite you to join us as we look into the cult sequel Bloodstone: Subspecies II soon.
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