There are very few things in the world that most people would universally agree on. But the fact that Pennywise the dancing clown is one of the creepiest, scariest, and most unsettling film and book villains of all time is something that most people wouldn’t ever argue with. Stephen King’s ability to capitalize on what scares people is obviously something that has taken him very far in his career as a writer, but Pennywise may be his most frightening villain of all time.
A lot of details that went into crafting the character of Pennywise and a lot of those details wound up on the cutting room floor when it came to the films IT and IT Chapter Two. Some of these tidbits were briefly mentioned in the movie and some of them were completely omitted. Here are some facts about Pennywise the clown that were left out of the IT movies.
Updated October 8th, 2020 by Zach Gass: The cinematic adaptation of Stephen King’s It is quite possibly the greatest version of the author’s work ever put to film. Taking as much from the novel as it does original concepts, chapters one and two combined for a horror experience that is as fine as it is frightening. However, as iconic as its red-nosed star might be, the films leave more than a few things out about Pennywise. Some are understandably cut due to time and budget, but others could have easily been handled given the right direction.
The Clown Form Isn’t Creepy… At First
Bill Skarsgård’s adaptation of Pennywise will be forever imprinted on the horror genre, much like the version set forth by the great Tim Curry. However, Curry’s version did something directly from the book that Skarsgård did not. Curry made Pennywise friendly and approachable, making him more alluring to his young victims.
In the book, Pennywise originally comes off as warm and friendly with a big smile and “the bluest eyes.” No kid in their right mind would come within three feet of the Pennywise shown in the film. With his bulbous head and lazy eye, he already looks like a Tim Burton character gone wrong. He’s scary before he even utters “Hi there, Georgie.”
His Overall Appearance
On the subject of It’s form, while the filmmakers were definitely original with their artistic interpretation, It still leaves a lot from the book version out. This might be because the version of Pennywise’s clown form in the book is not as complicated. It’s simple but effective for luring out his prey.
On the other hand, even in the final confrontation where the monster’s “true form” is exposed it just becomes a monster clown, not the Lovecraftian spider it should have been. Sometimes less is more.
It’s Clown Form Is Seen More In The Movie Than In the Book
In both the book and the movie, Pennywise the Dancing Clown is It’s favorite form to take. That being said, the clown really doesn’t appear as often as one might think in the original novel. It is a shapeshifter, and it loves to show off the various things its victims are afraid of.
This could have allowed for some seriously creative monsters and nightmarish forms for It to take. Instead, the filmmakers opted for focusing mainly on the clown to reach a more universally scary appearance. Understandably so, as to say that “it worked” is a woeful understatement, but a less on-the-nose motif might have been appreciated and allowed more creative freedom.
The Swarm of Flying Leeches
Speaking of forms It could have been, one of the biggest let-down for fans of the novel was not seeing a swarm of flying leeches devour the pyromaniac Patrick Hoffsteader. Although the scene in the book was referenced by seeing Pennywise contort himself out of an old refrigerator just as the leeches spawned from in the novel, it was a missed opportunity for a glorious, gory, and disgusting death.
While this would no doubt have been a task for the CGI department, it can’t help but come off as something that fans regret not seeing in the final film.
The Classic Horror Monsters
Although Pennywise was briefly shown with a mummy head towards the ending of Chapter 1, that’s not the only classic monster he turned into in the novel. Granted, these sequences probably wouldn’t have been the most terrifying, but they would have matched the goofy, gory, haunted house motif the first film was trying to go for.
A clownish version of Dracula, the Wolf Man, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon would have been entertaining, to say the least. If anything, it could have simply served as a horror movie throwback, or a reference to the original Stephen King miniseries.
The Deadlights
IT Chapter Two does cover the concept of the Deadlights in some way, however, the explanation for what the Deadlights actually are is pretty much nonexistent. Yes, seeing the Deadlights is what allowed Beverly to have her premonitions, but the movie didn’t explain that looking into the Deadlights is enough to kill a human being or drive them to permanent insanity.
The Deadlights aren’t something that Pennywise has control over. They’re actually as close to his true form as he can appear on earth and as a human being is capable of perceiving.
No One Knows It’s True Form
Although Pennywise almost always takes on an appearance that is recognizable to the human beings that see him, the true form of It is something that is completely unknown and completely incomprehensible to the human mind. It’s originally from something that Stephen King calls the macroverse, which is basically a universe that contains a multitude of universes within it, including our own universe.
Obviously It is now in this universe, however, it’s unclear if It can really revert to its true form within this world and how the human mind would perceive It if they saw it. It seems likely any person wouldn’t be able to comprehend It at all.
It’s Real Form Is Inspired By H.P. Lovecraft
Unless you’re an avid horror fan, the name H.P. Lovecraft is probably a name that you’ve heard in passing at best, but this author’s work has inspired a lot of the horror genre for over a century. Pennywise the clown very clearly draws inspiration from some classic Lovecraftian ideas.
A running theme within Lovecraft’s work is the idea of monsters that are from another dimension and are incomprehensible to humankind. Another common theme is the idea of seeing something that is so horrifying that it kills the person who sees it or drives them insane. The true form of It is very clearly a Lovecraftian monster.
Pennywise Is Awake For A Year
The time span of both It movies feels like it takes place over a relatively short period of time. However, Pennywise’s hibernation cycles seem to be pretty specific. Pennywise goes into a deep sleep state for 27 years at a time, but when he awakens to feed, he’s awake for about a year at each time.
So although the Losers Club seem to discover Pennywise and go toe to toe with him pretty quickly afterward, he may have been awake for quite a bit of time before actually getting into it with the Losers.
Pennywise May Be Female
It’s difficult to nail down what exactly Pennywise looks like in his most fundamental form, and Stephen King has been clear that his true form is not something that can really be perceived by a normal human anyway. But the spider form of It that occasionally rears its ugly head may be the closest to his real appearance as he can get in his earthly form.
To add onto the creep factor, even though It seems to take on the appearance of masculine entities more often than not, his spider form appears to be a pregnant female spider, leading some characters in the book as well as fans of the book to speculate that he’s actually a she.
It May Not Be The Only It
Once again, it is believed that the closest to It’s real form that can be achieved while Pennywise is on earth is the pregnant female spider that he appears as towards the end of the novel. However, It doesn’t appear as just any old spider, Pennywise appears as a pregnant spider.
So it’s plausible that It may be capable of reproduction and that there may be a bunch of It babies running around in other parts of the world, or even on other planets or in other universes. It’s a grim thought, but given how incognito Pennywise has managed to be in Derry, it’s certainly not outside the realm of believability that there are more out there.
It Has A Great Enemy
The being that we mostly see in the form of Pennywise is actually an ancient, primordial evil that has existed long before our universe even existed. And while It used to exist in the macroverse that contains our universe it’s certainly not the only thing that exists there.
Pennywise actually has a great enemy called Maturin. But Maturin is supposed to be a force for good, and it seems like both It and Maturin were created as counterbalanced energies to one another that date back to before the beginning of time itself. And although these creatures possess a nearly godlike level of power, they were both created by Gan, which is essentially Stephen King’s version of god.
The Enemy Is A Turtle
So the forms that these ancient beings take on aren’t things that a regular human mind can fully comprehend, but Maturin, the natural rival to It, is basically a giant turtle. And when we say giant, we mean giant. Maturin exists in the macroverse which contains many different universes, and the universe that we exist in is one that Maturin himself created when he had a brutal stomach ache and puked this universe up.
Not even kidding, you can look this all up. But despite the fact that he is powerful enough to create universes he was not powerful enough to defeat It.
There’s A Reason It Goes After Children
Children are just humans that generally make for easy prey, and Pennywise has some pretty specific reasoning behind why he goes after kids instead of adults. Pennywise is a character that thrives on creating illusions of the fears of his prey and making them feel like a reality, and children just have much easier fears to exploit than adults do.
Pennywise can exercise a lot of control over his own appearance as well as what his victim will perceive when he’s trying to control their minds, but adults tend to have more complex and internal fears, whereas scaring children is always pretty easy.
It’s Not Even From This Universe
It’s entirely understandable that Andy Muschietti left out a lot of the more mystical and esoteric elements of the novel It. Aside from the fact that there just needed to be a lot of editing down of the source material in order to squeeze the entire story into two movies, the whole macroverse storyline is a difficult concept to understand and even more difficult to make a cinematic reality.
However, when they were explaining the origins of Pennywise on earth, they could have easily explained that he wasn’t just an alien, but he actually came from a different dimension.
