Plot
In the town of Derry, Maine, six-year old Georgie Denbrough is lured to a storm drain when his paper boat drops down into it. He encounters a seemingly friendly clown who calls himself "Pennywise the Dancing Clown." Pennywise tempts Georgie closer with promises of candy and balloons, exclaiming that they all float down into the sewer. He says that Georgie can float too before revealing his true nature, grabbing him and viciously tearing his right arm off. His older brother Bill is overwhelmed with guilt for inadvertently sending Georgie to his death and is terrorized when his picture comes to life, giving him a stutter from the trauma.
He befriends several similar "misfits." One is Ben Hanscom, a loyal, determined, overweight and ingenious builder from a home broken after the death of his military father. He is terrorized by visions of his father trying to goad him into the sewer plant. Another is Eddie Kaspbrack, a hypochondriac, asthmatic boy who is frail and shy. Kaspbrack is taunted and harassed by Pennywise (who shows a strong dislike towards him for being "girly"), while attempting to shower at school.
The group later includes Beverly Marsh, a tomboy with an abusive father and a dead eye with a slingshot. She believes Bill's stories when her bathroom is destroyed by a geyser of blood that he helps clean up before her father gets home. Richie Toizer is a comedic red head who isn't afraid to stand up to the school bully, Henry Bowers, and his friends. He is a movie buff, which prompts Pennywise to attack him as the Wolfman. Mike Hanlon, an African American student facing a difficult time as a new student and resident of Derry, often finds himself in the crosshairs of the racist Henry Bowers as well. A photography book comes to life showing him and the others Pennywise's history as he threatens the group. There is also Stan Uris, a Jewish boy scout and bird watcher, who is the last to see It that summer when he is trapped by a mummy in an abandoned house.
As each of them face their greatest fears (as well as Henry Bowers's harassment), they vow to avenge the deaths of Georgie and every other child killed by "It." They travel into the sewers followed by Henry, who is intent on murdering them for humiliating him. But instead, he witnesses the death of his best friend Belch in a manner that turns his hair completely white. Pennywise attempts to attack the children by separating them, but Eddie manages to wound him and Beverly drives him back by striking him with a silver slug made from one of Ben's silver dollars. Their job done, the seven vow to return some day if ever It returns. Meanwhile, Henry is arrested and sentenced to life in an asylum for confessing to the counts of murder of all the children.
Read more about this topic: It (1990 film)
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“Ends in themselves, my letters plot no change;
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—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
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—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)