Tim Curry brought the same wild ambiguity to Pennywise that powered The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Clue and his comic villains. This tribute looks at clown horror, the uncanny valley and the strange rhythm that made his performances funny, frightening and impossible to pin down.
Forty years after Stephen King published IT, Pennywise the Dancing Clown is still showing up: on HBO, in academic criticism, and now in Still Floating: 40 Years of Pennywise, edited by Bram Stoker Award-winner Tom Deady. The book brings together thirty contributors, including Stephen King expert Bev Vincent and co-author Richard Chizmar, to examine the cultural weight of a 1,138-page novel that never quite let go. This retrospective makes the case for why IT belongs in a different conversation than most horror fiction, and why that conversation is long overdue.
