‘It’ Won’t Scare Up Chills or Thrills

Nothing beats a good scare.

It’s your worst nightmare, either tantalizing, slow terror or a piercing, jolting yowl of fright that makes your brain scream and your body shudder. Ooooooh, a good scare is something you replay in your mind again and again, taking it to bed and waking up with it, remembering it for days, weeks and sometimes forever.

I’ll never forget Bela Lugosi’s definitive monstrousness as Dracula. I’ll never forget the original “Psycho,” not only the shower murder in Bates Motel but also that overhead shot of a blurry form in a dress and gray wig rushing out to stab Martin Balsam repeatedly.

I’ll never forget the original “Jaws” or the original “Exorcist.” And I’ll definitely not forget Angie Dickinson getting carved up by a dolled-up Michael Caine in “Dressed to Kill,” a movie I first watched with my brother. There we were, two grown guys so terrified that we were crawling over each other like children in the theater. When I took him home that night, he was almost too unsteady to go in alone.

A good scare has you nervously looking back over your shoulder or wondering who--or what--awaits you in the next room or in your closet or under your bed or on the other side of your shower door.

A good scare “It” isn’t.

At least not ABC’s two-part version of this Stephen King best-seller--about an evil, supernatural force that terrorizes a small town every 30 years--which many King devotees insist is his best and scariest work.

Airing at 9 p.m. Sunday and Tuesday on Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42, “It” isn’t even much of a thriller. Now “Mother Love,” the recent PBS “Mystery!” starring Diana Rigg as an insanely predatory parent, was a swell thriller, not so much scaring you as keeping you in a constant state of anxiety as this awful woman went about her murderous ways.

That’s rare for television. So is the terror that surges through David Lynch’s “Bob” sequences on ABC’s “Twin Peaks.” And so is “The Stranger Within,” a real charge of a chiller coming Nov. 27 on CBS.

More typically, there is something about TV that softens savagery even as it uses violence to draw viewers to the screen.

Is this by design? For example, the dramatically improving syndicated series “She Wolf of London” (9 p.m. Tuesdays on KCOP Channel 13) pairs a London professor and a young woman who turns werewolf when there’s a full moon. Violence you get. But the ultimate intent here is not horror, but rather parody--sort of “The Avengers” with fangs.

Or perhaps it’s the smallness of the screen that moderates, with everything from sitcoms to mass murders being rendered the same size, and thus equal. Or is it the experience of watching at home in lighted, familiar surroundings instead of in a darkened theater, where you’re entirely focused and undiverted?

Instead of TV being soft, perhaps it’s a matter of its audience having been hardened. Perhaps our tolerance for horror is now greater due to a 1980s crush of cheap fright flicks in the theaters. After the often mindless gore of “Halloween,” “Friday the 13th” and “Nightmare on Elm Street” and their infinite sequels, what’s left?

Or perhaps it’s something much wider and more profound that we’re experiencing, a growing desensitization to violence in this country since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Ratcheting back to a smaller reality, meanwhile, you expect something different from that horror maven King than what ABC gives you in “It.” The setting is a small town in Maine called Derry, where children are disappearing and being murdered in a repeat of events 30 years earlier.

Town librarian Mike Hanlon (Tim Reid) realizes Derry is witnessing the return of It , an evil force that assumes the human form of a wisecracking, sinister clown named Pennywise (Tim Curry), a sort of good cop/bad cop demon who suckers children with balloons.

Hanlon summons back to Derry the six classmates who were his close childhood friends and with whom he battled Pennywise in the sewers beneath the town 30 years ago, all of them thinking the clown had been dusted for good.

Bill Denbrough (Richard Thomas), Ben Hanscom (John Ritter), Beverly Marsh (Annette O’Toole), Eddie Kaspbrak (Dennis Christopher), Richie Tozier (Harry Anderson) and Stan Uris (Richard Masur) have all achieved success since moving away years ago. One of the six chooses suicide rather than return for this reunion.

However, back come five of these 40-year-olds for a final confrontation with It in the slimy subterranean labyrinth underlying the town.

Pennywise is no sweetheart. Yet this is a story that’s icky, not scary. And when you finally do get a look at the evil force in its natural state, well c’mon! Now, the monster in “Alien” was a load. But this clanky klutz? Please!

The performances here, especially Thomas as the stuttering horror novelist Bill, are very good. And director Tommy Lee Wallace nicely mixes realities, artfully using his flashbacks to establish Pennywise and repeatedly return “It” to its 1960 roots.

It’s in the past that “It” works best, almost on a separate level as a genuine, affectionate, heartfelt lament for lost youth--somewhat reminiscent of King’s small-town Americana in “Stand by Me.” There is something very poignant and warming about these kids, branded as losers, closely bonding and banding together in “It” to battle not only the town bullies, but also the demonic Pennywise.

A small tear, yes. A big scare, no.

“It’s” Not Scary ABC’s two-part adaptation of Stephen King’s “It” is more icky than frightening. A sinister force returns to a small Maine town in the human form of a wisecracking demonic clown named Pennywise (Tim Curry). Airing Sunday and Tuesday, this version of the horror best-seller affirms TV’s aversion to good scares. Reviewed by Howard Rosenberg.