There is also the fact that Curry's clown is funny - and intentionally so. There is none of the dormant insecurity that Skarsgård brought to his interpretation of the role from start to finish, Curry's version is 100 percent convinced of his superiority and inevitable victory. Even better (that is, more scary), Curry's Pennywise gives off an air of omnipotence, like he is the puppet master pulling the strings in this small Maine town and anyone trying to stop him may as well try to kill God himself. For non-coulrophobes, however, the performance is all the more frightening because he takes something that we assume to be innocuous and fun and makes it sinister. While I'm not a coulrophobe myself, it is easy to imagine people with an instinctive fear of clowns being terrified of him for that reason alone. While Skarsgård's take on the character places a greater emphasis on his extraterrestrial nature, Curry looks and acts for all the world like an honest-to-God circus clown. So what makes Curry's performance as Pennywise so amazing? Three things come to mind.įirst, there is the fact that he feels first and foremost like a clown.

If not for Curry's hypnotic central role, the film itself is unlikely to have been memorable. Even the performances that work, like those of Ritter and Green, are merely effective. For every John Ritter (as an adult Ben Hanscom) and Seth Green (as a young Richie Tozier), you have child actors delivering unconvincing dialogue and adults who chew the scenery in ways that feel hammy rather than entertaining. Indeed, whereas the 'It' movies boast strong performances from both the child and adult actors playing the Losers' Club members, the miniseries is much more hit-and-miss when it comes to its casting. And that miniseries, in turn, is memorable almost entirely because of Curry's unbelievable performance as Pennywise the Dancing Clown. The Stephen King novel may be famous, but not as widely beloved as masterpieces like 'Carrie' or 'The Stand.' The nostalgia that some fans feel for 'It' stems not from the behemoth of the original book - which was bogged down by opaque prose, weird plotting and some squeamish sexual moments that have definitely not aged well - but for the 1990 miniseries, which aired on ABC during the Thanksgiving season. Yet while all credit should go to Skarsgård for taking an iconic character and making it his own, we would be remiss if we didn't doff our collective hats to Tim Curry's original performance in the 1990 'It' miniseries.įor one thing, it is quite unlikely that we would have had the recent pair of 'It' cinematic adaptations if it hadn't been for that two-part epic, which was directed and co-written Tommy Lee Wallace (perhaps best known for directing and writing the underrated 'Halloween III: Season of the Witch').

While the new 'It' sequel has received mixed reviews (I personally enjoyed it), most critics agree that Bill Skarsgård was outstanding as Pennywise the Dancing Clown, the preferred form taken by the transdimensional malevolent creature known as It.Īs I noted in my own review, the Swedish thespian 'takes the role of Pennywise the Dancing Clown and makes him into a presence both over-the-top in his campiness and yet weirdly haunting long after the credits have rolled.' It is a genuinely terrifying performance, one that works both because of Skarsgård's ability to evoke an otherworldly presence while still remaining eerily childlike and vulnerable, particularly when faced with the threat of death.

Pennywise actor 2016