Stephen King’s Terrifying ‘It’ Miniseries Sets Max Streaming Date

If you’re looking for a little nostalgic horror to go with your black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day, Max has you covered. The streaming service will add the original miniseries adaptation of Stephen King‘s It to its roster on Jan. 1. Originally produced for ABC, the two-part terror-fest scarred an entire generation of children when it first aired in 1990, generating coulrophobia (a fear of clowns) in everyone who tuned in, due to Tim Curry’s absolutely horrifying version of Pennywise the Dancing Clown.

Based on King’s 1984 novel of the same name, the miniseries, helmed by John Carpenter protégé Tommy Lee Wallace, differs significantly from the pair of theatrical films directed by Andy Muschietti, which came out in 2017 and 2019 respectively. For one, it retains the novel’s 1950s setting for the children’s segment, as opposed to the late 1980s seen in the Muschietti films.

This setting better reinforces the dichotomy of good and evil residing in the fictional town of Derry, Maine, given that the ’50s are generally seen as a “simpler” time in America, when everyone supposedly got along just fine and family values reigned supreme. Of course, this sentimental view is a fallacy, represented by the presence of Pennywise, a.k.a. IT, an interstellar being whose evil is thoroughly rooted in the small town’s very fabric, causing its citizens to turn a blind eye to all manner of violence and injustice. In this way, Derry is a stand-in for any town in America during that time period.

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The ‘It’ Miniseries Scares With Glorious Practical Effects

The biggest difference between the miniseries and the theatrical films is the absence of CGI. Of course, CGI didn’t exactly exist in 1990, at least not in the way it does now, but the reliance on practical effects in the miniseries puts the terror in the same room as the actors, allowing the audience to experience the horror right alongside them.

Take, for instance, the Chinese restaurant scene, appearing in both the second part of the miniseries and in It: Chapter Two. The scene involves the Losers’ Club, now all grown up, cracking into fortune cookies that contain grotesque items rather than predictions and advice for the future – items like eyeballs, writhing baby birds, and crab-like creatures. According to Tim Reid, who played adult Mike Hanlon in the miniseries, the actors weren’t allowed to know what they would see upon opening their fortune cookies, so their reactions to the various horrors found within the cookie shells are genuine.

Contrast this with It: Chapter Two, where all the fortune cookie nightmares were rendered digitally (and rather cartoonishly). There’s no element of surprise here, and viewers can tell the cookies and their hidden critters aren’t real, rendering the moment more laughable than scary (in fact, much of the second theatrical installment suffers from an over-reliance on humor, which undercuts rather than enhances the horror).

But the CGI in Muschietti’s It films is perhaps most overused on Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise. Rather than simply let the actor instill fear through facial expressions and mannerisms – as is done with Curry in the original – the remakes constantly contort Skarsgård’s face and body through digital manipulation, enhancing the character’s otherworldliness, sure, but doing so in a way that feels less realistic. With the miniseries, audiences get the sheer, simple terror of a lovable birthday clown who suddenly flashes a set of razor-sharp teeth. Curry gives hands-down one of the greatest villain performances of all time, right up there with Robert Englund as Freddy Kruger or Boris Karloff as Frankenstein’s monster.