It!

This sure is a weird little horror film. In fact, there are not many real highlights -perhaps none- I can find in it in terms of the issues that make a movie (budget, direction, script, camera work, photo, colour, locations, settings, edition, music, cast ...). However, every time I catch it on TV -always by chance- I get hooked up and can't help watching it till the very end. I really couldn't say why.

This unpretentious not scary horror film, sort of silly too, has a strange fascination on me. Roddy McDowall's preserved dead mother on a chair is not original ("Psycho" was first and better by far); the Golem is no big deal as a monster and doesn't even look menacing enough; no frightening situations really; McDowall has done many better jobs in his career and though Jill Haworth is a beautiful woman no doubt she is not quite my type. In fact the only interesting sequence I can rescue out of "It!" is when the stone arms of the Golem appear in different positions between shots at the museum in front of an amazed Arthur Pimm (Mc Dowall).

A great film? not at all; a good film? not in my opinion; a watchable one? I wouldn't say that either. Yet I don't know why I am interested, perhaps because I find it sort of original and really odd. Who knows?

Long before "The Golem" (1915, 1917, 1929 and, again, in 1936), the story of this mythical clay statue was a Jewish folktale. The most famous version (portrayed in these three movies) is set in Prague. The local Jews are being persecuted and a rabbi builds a clay man. And, invoking the powers of darkness, he can control it and make it kill with impunity. Now, decades later, "It!" is an updated version--going on the assumption that this creature somehow was discovered in the 20th century and its secret is revealed to an unhinged young museum assistant curator (Roddy McDowell). You know he's unhinged in the opening scene, as he apparently keeps his mother's corpse at home--dressing it and talking to it as if she is alive! Later, when he discovers how to control the Golem, he uses it to exact revenge against people who have mistreated him.

"It!" is a very nice update to the old story. While the creature is a bit hard to believe at times, watching McDowell play such a crazy guy was actually a lot of fun. Overall, a very good horror film provided you suspend disbelief and just enjoy.

By the way, during the film McDowell's character refers to the movie "The Golem" but apparently incorrectly says that it's a 1924 film. A minor mistake, I understand.

...and the production expenses are laughably low. Tongue-in-cheek to begin with, this unpretentious "shocker" is quite funny in its absurdity. The secondary characters are remarkably earnest, and Jill Haworth is exceedingly gorgeous. Love the nuclear warhead!

I saw this film in the theater when It came out when I was 11 years old. I'm surprised how much I remember of It after viewing It over 40 years later. The basic premise is if a Norman Bates type character(Roddy Mcdowall) had a Golem to do his bidding. It scared me in 1966 and its great fun to see again. The Golem reminds me of the tree creature in "From Hell It Came", great Saturday matinée movie fun. Roddy McDowall is always fun to watch and would have made a passable Norman Bates. His character in It, Arthur Pimm , Is sometimes crazed, sometimes remorseful, sometimes sad and definitely quite madly insane. The writer/director was also responsible for penning the "Fiend Without A Face", which still holds up as one of the most frightening movies of the 50's.

Herbert Leder's IT!, or CURSE OF THE GREAT GOLEM (the name the film really should have had) is one of the most bizarre and eclectic little monster movies ever made. It's a misunderstood or better yet misguided little project that had really good intentions, a decent cast, a respectable mid-line budget, some decent writing, but ultimately falls a little flat. My association with the film and enthusiasm for it is nostalgic: This used to play on our Monster Movie Matinée and Eivom weekend afternoon/evening local film slots. At the age of 11 or so I thought it was one of the coolest movies ever made ... my more mature mindset sees it's flaws but still loves every stupid, stiff, very British minute of it.

Roddy McDowall plays a very strange young man named Pimm who works for a respectable British antiquities museum and happens upon a statue slated for display there which may or may not be one of the last of the Golems -- clay juggernauts of destruction made by Hebrew alchemist/artist mystics to protect their people from outside oppression. They are infinitely strong, completely indestructible, and have absolutely no will of their own. The problem is that such power corrupts humans infinitely as well, and once you get started on being the most powerful 24 year old nebbish on the planet it's hard to make yourself -- and It -- stop. Especially when you can't get rid of the damn thing. The film is broken up into three stages: Part one involves a series of strange unexplained deaths in and around the museum that McDowall rather slowly realizes must be the work of the Golem. Part two involves his quest to learn how the thing works and his rapid descent into near madness after he learns the secret. And part three involves his ultimately futile attempts to get rid of the thing as it ruins his life, rampages across the countryside, drives him completely insane, and finally walks off into the ocean after the British Army tries to blow it up with an atom bomb. Presumably it is still wandering around down there somewhere.

Along the way we meet various people who touch on Pimm's life, most notably his stuffy museum curator bosses, the pretty daughter of one of them (Jill Haworth), a couple of British police inspectors (one of them cult horror legend Ian McCulloch), and a visiting expert professor on Golemology from America. We also get to meet Pimm's mother, who is dead, and her partially embalmed body is Pym's partner in life. He "borrows" rare jewels from the museum for her to wear, fixes her tea and after dinner toddies while he talks with her about the day's events, and introduces her to others with a kind of blasé offhandedness that suggests we are getting it wrong by reacting with horror to the corpse. The scene where Pimm, the Golem and his mother terrify a museum matron is the best laugh in the movie. All the while the power of the Golem is getting under his skin, leading to the film's finest scene where he asks a Hebrew scholar to translate a script that had been etched into the Golem's side. The subsequent scenes of destruction as the Golem runs rampant pale to the chills sent down the spine by the old man's solemn intonation.

Another great scene is when Pimm loses control of a situation and orders the Golem to commit murder for him, and it is at that point that the narrative begins to spiral out of control. We see a few scenes of carnage but for the most part the film is McDowall's, and fortunately even in 1966 he was a good enough actor to more or less carry the project. His Pimm has an odd ambiguity about him that is certainly "evil", yet sympathetic in the way that is very reminiscent of Anthony Perkins' PSYCHO character. We actually feel suspense hoping he will not get caught and perhaps figure out a way to free himself from the curse of the Golem, but alas he torches an elderly librarian, barricades himself in a secluded manor, and pouts like a spoiled brat when Jill Haworth tells him he is about to be blown up with an atom bomb.

All this is a good premise, but aside from a single incident when Pym looks at the Golem's arm's to see them bent, looks back up in astonishment at it's face, then back down at the arms to see them straightened, then back again to gawk at the stone face, the film lacks any kind of artfulness, existing more as an act of "craft". At one point Pym even tries to light the thing on fire by spilling fuel oil all over it and the director allowed him to shake the can and snarl "This will finish you ..." like he was Daffy Duck. One other problem the film has it is that it was made at the wrong time: By 1966 London was going "mod" and this film is about as square as they come. Hammer Films was making big waves with their Gothic shockers and a stiff, somewhat talky movie about a giant walking slab of clay didn't have much resonance compared to Christopher Lee in his Dracula cape. IT! was more or less forgotten except as off-hour TV viewing for 11 year old boys who would think it was the coolest thing ever made, perhaps.

7/10 nonetheless: Deserves a restoration for DVD where IT! could prove to be a cult hit of some magnitude ... and if anyone ever is of the mind to put one together, give me a call.