News
Rare Tim Curry Audio Interview from Set of 1990 ‘IT’ Miniseries Has Surfaced
“I think of him all the time as a smile gone bad—that’s my image for him.”
We were excited to report earlier this week that Tim Curry has signed on to be interviewed for the upcoming doc Pennywise: The Story of IT, and the main source of that excitement is that Curry has seldom talked about the 1990 miniseries over the years. The various home video releases have been bare bones save for a commentary that Curry didn’t take part in, so to hear him talk Pennywise after all these years should be a treat for us all. We cannot wait. But in the meantime, we’ve got a vintage gem to share today that should make that wait a bit more tolerable.
Former Fangoria correspondent Steve Newton, who now runs a blog primarily about music, recently shared a snippet of an audio interview he conducted with Curry on the set of Tommy Lee Wallace’s IT back in 1990. Newton got to share lunch and a quick chat with Curry on the set in Vancouver’s Stanley Park, and we couldn’t possibly be more jealous of him for that.
Newton wrote on his blog, Ear of Newt:
As the Vancouver correspondent for Fangoria magazine back in 1990, when the TV miniseries was shot, I got to go on the set in Stanley Park and hang with Curry while he had lunch, to get the scoop on his role. And quite a scoop it was. Curry doesn’t do that many interviews, and I think Fango was the only publication he talked to about IT.
Not one to throw stuff away, I’ve kept almost all of my interviews over the years, and fortunately the cheap-ass, 90-minute, Hong Kong-made cassette I recorded the IT set-visit on still works. So here’s an excerpt of my 20-minute interview with Tim Curry, which begins with me making a major faux pas by calling his character Pennywhistle instead of Pennywise. What a dweeb, eh?
If you’re interested in checking out Newton’s full set report, which appeared in Fangoria Magazine back in 1990, you can read PART ONE and PART TWO over on his blog.
As for the rare vintage audio, you’ll find it below!
Let’s start with the good news. Lockbox looks far better than its misleading marketing materials suggest, a supernatural horror movie so darkly lit and color graded that you’ll have to squint your way through jump scares. It’s also anchored by reliable genre performers. That’s also about where the good news ends with this rote adaptation of Knifepoint Horror Podcast story “Winthrop.”
The empathetic Carla Gugino gives her all as Ellen, a saint of a woman with boundless patience who takes on life’s hard luck with a kind smile. After giving up her career as a fashion designer to become caretaker for a dying mother, she’s then forced to reinvent herself once more when her caretaker role ends. That catches us up to the events of Lockbox, where Ellen is asked to take in a cousin she hasn’t seen in quite some time who’s dealing with severe PTSD.
Just as Ellen finally establishes a real connection with Winthrop (Lou Taylor Pucci), it’s interrupted by the arrival of peculiar neighbor Vahna (Katharine Isabelle), who spells clear trouble. When Vahna shows up dead, it sets in motion a supernatural battle of possession.
Image Credit: Aura entertainment
Director Daniel Stamm (The Last Exorcism, Prey for the Devil) and screenwriter Justin Yoffe approach Lockbox in the broadest of brushstrokes, dooming it from the start with clunky storytelling and woefully underdeveloped themes of heady topics like PTSD. Winthrop is a character that comes loaded with emotional baggage and trauma that’s piled on throughout his tragic life, but much like its title, his interiority and history are treated like a tightly guarded secret meant to prolong the supernatural mystery.
The problem here, though, is that Lockbox is too sparse to sustain mystery at all, and it instead robs Winthrop of characterization. It winds up trapping the talented Pucci without anywhere to go, toggling between wounded animal and mentally disoriented.
From there, Lockbox bounds through plot developments without any sense of stakes or purpose, peppered by a smattering of haphazard paint-by-numbers jump scares. The only unwavering constant is Ellen’s resolute faith, and Stamm seems to leave it entirely to Gugino to guide confused audiences through this inconsequential story right up until its supernatural climax.
Image Credit: Aura entertainment
To give more credit, Lockbox at least injects an unconventional exorcism here; just don’t expect much in the way of explanation. When the film finally reveals the meaning behind its title, it dangles a fascinating carrot it has zero interest in delivering. More than a severe lack of fleshing out its characters beyond plot drivers or devices, this faith-based flick also seems terrified to offer any worldbuilding whatsoever.
Yoffe’s script stretches the short story beyond its means instead of fleshing it out, and Stamm fills out the gaps with cheap CGI scares and overwrought performances; Isabelle’s Vahna is beyond cartoonish in her villainy. It’s also pretty nonsensical, treating only Ellen’s faith with the utmost sincerity and largely squandering its typically reliable talent. So much so that the final imagery, pure sunkissed saccharine sentimentality, leaves you with the feeling that this horror movie might be better suited as an entry in Chicken Soup for the Soul.
Lockbox releases in select theaters on July 3, 2026.
You must be logged in to post a comment.