Ommy Lee Wallace has made many lasting contributions to genre filmmaking, first on John Carpenter's Dark Star and Assault on Precinct 13 before appearing as The Shape/Michael Myers in the original Halloween, writing Amityville 2: The Possession, co-writing and directing the original Fright Night Part II and acting and being part of the effects team for The Fog. But this film cements his legacy, with a great build and plenty of scares within the limitations of television.

Originally airing from November 18 to 20, 1990, screenwriter Lawrence Cohen turned 1,138 pages of King into a two-part, three-hour TV movie. Wallace - and others - have commented that the first night is near perfect story-wise, but it falls apart on night two.

The story concerns The Lucky Seven, or The Losers Club, a group of outcasts who learn that the shapeshifting creature named Pennywise has taking and killing children in their hometown of Derry, Maine. They first battle him in 1960 as teenagers before coming back to battle him again in 1990.

This might sound like a broken record when it comes to King movies, George Romero had originally been signed on to direct the project when ABC had planned for an eight-to-ten-hour series that would play over four nights. He left the project due to scheduling conflicts, but he would finally direct a King adaptation, The Dark Half. This is considered one of the most faithful treatments of the author's work.

That said, we're here to talk about It, which begins with Georgie Denbrough playing with the paper sailboat that his brother Bill (Becca fave Jonathan Brandis) has made for him. As it sails down the sewer, he encounters Pennywise (Tim Curry, whose work in this movie led to thousands of nightmares of 90's kids),who gnaws his arm off and leaves him to die.

The Losers Club comes together when Bill and Eddie Kaspbrak welcome the new kid, overweight Ben Hanscom. They're soon joined by Beverly Marsh (Emily Perkins from the Ginger Snaps series of films),Richie Tozier (Seth Green),Stan Uris and Mike Hanlon. They all have two things in common: they're bullied by Henry Bowers' gang and they're all encountered the evil of Pennywise. They soon learn that every thirty years, the shapeshifter comes back to town to claim the lives of children.

When Stan is ambushed by the gang, Pennywise (or It) emerges and kills two of the gang members. Henry is left traumatized and left with white hair. He eventually confesses to all of the murders, although he didn't commit them. Stanley and the rest of the Losers learn how to use their imagination to stop the creature and drive it into the sewers before making a vow to come back to Derry if it ever comes back.

Thirty years later, Mike (Tim Reid from TV's WKRP in Cincinnati) is the only member of the Losers Club to stay in Derry. When It returns and begins killing again, he brings everyone back together. Bill (Richard Thomas, Battle Beyond the Stars) is now a famous horror writer married to Audra, a gorgeous British actress (Olivia Hussey, Black Christmas). Ben (John Ritter) is an architect. Beverly (Annette O'Toole) has grown up to be a fashion designer but has transitioned from being abused by her father to being beaten by her husband. Richie (the late, great Harry Anderson) is a comedian. Eddie (Dennis Christopher, Fade to Black) runs a limo service. And Stan is a real estate broker who decides to kill himself rather than come back home to face It.

Meanwhile, Henry has escaped from the mental institution with the help of It. His goal? Kill the rest of the Losers. The shapeshifting monster also draws Bill's wife to town.

Mike is hospitalized after being stabbed by Henry and the five remaining Losers head to the sewer for a final battle. That's when the movie falls apart, as the monster can never live up to King's words. If you ask nearly anyone, they always bring this up. That's because it's true.

All of the Losers but Eddie make it out, with Beverly and Ben reconnecting and Bill saving his wife. But at this point, most people have been scorned by the spider that Pennywise becomes.

That's because it's hard to beat just how scary Tim Curry is in this movie. Supposedly, he unnerved the cast so much that many avoided him during the production.

The movie eliminates some of the problematic parts of the book for me, such as Beverly taking the virginity of all the male characters in the sewer, but retains Audra becoming a victim who needs to be rescued. Tommy Lee Wallace has noted that he doesn't think that it works dramatically in the movie or novel.

This was a brave and well above average adaptation of a truly difficult novel. It is uneven at times. The first half is better than the second half, which isn't helped by a pedestrian script and a woefully miscast Richrd Thomas. IT is NOT the worst book to TV movie in existence, there have been a lot worse since then. As for the book, which is very good, it is still flawed. There is too much swearing(the children's harsh language and sexual desires are inappropriate),the character development takes far too long, the book has a very confusing structure especially in the latter half of the book, and Frankenstein is name of the inventor not the monster. Still the characters are well described, and the murders are gut wrenching. Also the way King describes fear is brilliant, and his attention to detail is unparallelled. I am not criticising the book, I am evaluating the pros and cons of both the book and the movie, or mini-series, to be exact.The movie is the closest to the language of the author. The children did miles better than the adults, especially Jonathan Brandis and Seth Green, and there was a Stand By Me-ish nostalgia, that generated a definite spark between the players. As for the second half, it started off well, and rapidly became pedestrian 45 minutes before the end, which was ruined by a poorly designed spider. Other than that, the effects and script were generally good for a TV movie. Tim Curry, one of my favourite actors, steals the show, with his almost exact portrayal of Pennywise. His career-best performance was a perfect mixture of creepiness and hamminess, like Jack Nicolson from the Shining( which was turned into a pointless TV series). He also DID NOT overact. He's a British character actor, and was the only mature actor who didn't play himself, and stayed consistent throughout the entire movie. Pennywise also isn't his poorly written role, that's Gomez in Addams Family Reunion. It was criminal he didn't win an award for his performance.Also the music by Richard Bellis is outstanding, and that alone captures the creepy mood. In the slower bits, especially with the children, it's hauntingly beautiful and makes the scene poignant. However, Harry Anderson badly underplayed the library scene, while Annette O'Toole showed the most genuine fright, which grew tiresome as the movie progressed. Most of the scenes in the book were unfilmnable for a low budget movie, so they did well in that aspect. Adaptation means to adapt, so accept that. No film I've seen is word from word to the book, it just isn't done that way. I know they missed things out, and all that, but there are some truly sensitive issues in the book that people wouldn't want addressed on screen, and there were some of the metaphysics like the turtle that I didn't understand. The fantastic Inspector Morse series had the protagonist changed completely from a sleaze to a sensitive human.See what i'm getting at. Don't bother about the remake, apparently it's 90 minutes, which isn't enough to condense a 1000+ novel in. Plus, it probably won't have Tim Curry in it, who at the moment seems to be the only person who can do the job right, even if he is a little reminiscent of the Green Goblin. In conclusion look out for It. It is not as good as the Shining, but far better than the dreadful Tommy Knockers. Only read the book if you're a true Stephen King fan( I'm not) or if you're 18 or over(I'm 16),unless you want to be sick for a week (you don't want that). I still recommend both the book and the movie.7/10 for my personal favourite of the Stephen King movies. Bethany Cox

IT is a two part miniseries (run time: three hours in total) that was made in 1990. It's an adaptation of Stephen King's 1986 massive, massive monster novel and inevitably some serious cutting has taken place to bring it down to size. What's been jettisoned is all of the richness and era detail that King brought to play in the story, but what remains turns out to be surprisingly decent: a straightforward, some might say old-fashioned, story of supernatural terror.

First, the good stuff: it goes without saying that Tim Curry tops the scale here, with his pitch-perfect performance of the wisecracking Pennywise the clown. Curry banishes memories of Robert Englund's cheesy turns as the latter-day Freddy Krueger, delivering a fine balance between grim laughs and pure unpleasantness, coming across as one of the most disturbing King creations ever put on film.

The supporting cast is decent, too. The adult actors, including Richard Thomas, John Ritter and the little-used Richard Masur, are good, but it's the child stars who really excel; Jonathan Brandis, Brandon Crane, Emily Perkins and Seth Green are all excellent as the kids who fall into a nightmare from which there is seemingly no escape.

It helps that the script is loyal to King throughout, that the scare scenes are kept quite subtle and are all the more effective because of that, and that a strong director was found in the shape of Tommy Lee Wallace (of HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH fame). Okay, THAT ending is a little cheesy these days, and this is one of the few miniseries that could have done with an extra hour or so to add some more characterisation, but for the most part IT is a hit.