Pennywise in the Sewer, Dissecting the Scene: Movies, Book, and Memes

There is perhaps not a scene in horror more iconic than Pennywise in the sewer. It’s the stuff of nightmares. For numerous reasons.

Nearly every part of Derry, Maine is given a twisted and macabre aura around it. From a bridge to a drugstore. But it is one of the first scenes of the book, later adapted twice to film, that takes a quiet street and a simple sewer drain and turns it into a masterful work of horror art.

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The Scene in Movies

Pennywise in IT (1990)

Let’s take a look at what is the original version of the scene put to screen, and that is the miniseries. It’s not quite the first scene of the IT 1990 miniseries, but it’s one of the first. And it’s certainly most people’s true introduction to Pennywise the clown.

The music is reminiscent of early Disney… a child traipsing the outdoors like Christopher Robin, Mowgli in The Jungle Book, or even better, Peter and the Wolf (perhaps the best Disney comparison). The music that follows when Pennywise appears and continues throughout the miniseries is straight from a circus-like jingle, which is very fitting.

When Pennywise struggles to keep Georgie there, which is exactly what you would hope to happen with a level-headed child who has been taught to fear strangers, Pennywise coaxes him with the paper boat. Just like in the original Stephen King text.

And much of the rest is very similar to the book, with Pennywise also coaxing Georgie with more “surprises”… cotton candy and rides… and balloons too. Some of the imagery that is found in Stephen King’s book is difficult to depict exactly, such as white gloves “like the kind Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck always wore,” yet at the same time when you read in the book “he looked like a cross between Bozo and Clarabell,” ultimately you feel like this adaptation came incredibly close to what was in the book. Just abbreviated in certain ways.

Pennywise in IT (2017)

In the IT movie that came out in 2017, every part had to reinvent what was done before at least in some small part. From the design of Pennywise to dialogue and what happens, just recreating what happened in the IT miniseries wasn’t a real option, even if this particular scene had become quite iconic.

There are some particular differences that were added that stray both from book and miniseries that, yes, make it less like Stephen King’s text. And yet some of them I find to be clever and very purposeful in order to draw out some additional meanings. For one, Georgie says “Bill is going to kill me” and later Pennywise repeats it… that line didn’t exist before, and of course is prophetic and sad.

And then there are the eyes. It isn’t something you would expect the miniseries to accomplish in the same way, given the year and budget. This is a case where a little CGI allowed IT 2017 to depict and highlight something that was fairly prominent in the book. Yellow eyes, turning to blue. In Stephen King’s IT: “There were yellow eyes in there: the sort of eyes he had always imagined but never actually seen down in the basement. It’s an animal, he thought incoherently, that’s all it is, some animal.”

You can see in that little detail, Pennywise is taking something Georgie has imagined, something he has feared, animal eyes peering at him in his basement, and turned it into eyes coming out of a sewer.

There is also the darkness. Pennywise in the sewer appears first as eyes in the darkness, then mostly covered in darkness for most of the scene. In 1990 I imagine leaving that much darkness on a person’s face, however sinister you wanted them to be, was considered more of a risk. Now with higher definition televisions and even darkness that can be manipulated in post-production, truly leaving a character like Pennywise in exactly the amount of darkness you want him to be in seems like a bold and interesting way of using modern technology.

There are a few other dialogue choices, especially since this scene does actually have more dialogue than the IT miniseries. Some choices are MORE like Stephen King’s book, while others are added with some thematic purpose. Pennywise asks whether Georgie has friends, and even exchanges words regarding his brother Bill. This was not in the book, but helps set in the ongoing theme of Pennywise preying on others when they are most alone, when they are most vulnerable.

— FOUNDATIONS OF HORROR —

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In the sewer Pennywise also talks about the smells of the circus, which is something right out of the book but didn’t make it into the miniseries. Smell is often considered the most potent sense, especially for children. Coaxing Georgie with candy associates him with the stereotypical stranger with candy sweets, while the POP POP of the popcorn delights Georgie with a certain burst of excitement. These are wonderful choices that accomplish slightly different things with this particular version.

Finally there is where the scene leads, which is the most obvious difference between this version and the versions in both book and miniseries. The violence. Seeing Georgie bleed. For many, this difference overshadows the rest of the scene, while for others, it may seem like giving an R-rated version what was needed. In any case, it is a major choice.

That said, breaking down these two versions and giving a fresh read to the book (below), one can see that there were many decisions made in order to bring something creative and different to each version. IT (2017) actually was able to bring more of the book to life in some ways, while IT (1990) was in other ways more faithful in certain stylistic and visual components.

The Scene in the Book

Here is the scene the way Stephen King depicted it in his original book.

Take special note of the ending and many of the word choices. It is both horrific and “playful” in a way that expertly accompanies a scene of a colorful clown monster murdering its prey. The muddy water is “surfing over his face” while his screams “sound bubbly”… these are things that can’t be replicated on screen and make reading it particularly remarkable.

Now here he was, chasing his boat down the left side of Witcham Street. He was running fast but the water was running faster and his boat was pulling ahead. He heard a deepening roar and saw that fifty yards farther down the hill the water in the gutter was cascading into a stormdrain that was still open. Ii was a long dark semicircle cut into the curbing, and as George watched, a stripped branch, its bark as dark and glistening as sealskin, shot into the stormdrain’s maw. It hung up there for a moment and then slipped down inside. That was where his boat was headed.

“Oh shit and Shinola!” he yelled, dismayed.

He put on speed, and for a moment he thought he would catch the boat. Then one of his feet slipped and he went sprawling, skinning one knee and crying out in pain. From his new pavement-level perspective he watched his boat swing around twice, momentarily caught in another whirlpool, and then disappear.

“Shit and Shinola!” he yelled again, and slammed his fist down on the pavement. That hurt too, and he began to cry a little. What a stupid way to lose the boat!
He got up and walked over to the stormdrain. He dropped to his knees and peered in. The water made a dank hollow sound as it fell into the darkness. It was a spooky sound. It reminded him of-“Huh!” The sound was jerked out of him as if on a string, and he recoiled.

There were yellow eyes in there: the sort of eyes he had always imagined but never actually seen down in the basement. It’s an animal, he thought incoherently, that’s all it is, some animal, maybe a housecat that got stuck down in there-

Still, he was ready to run-would run in a second or two, when his mental switchboard had dealt with the shock those two shiny yellow eyes had given him. He felt the rough surface of the macadam under his fingers, and the thin sheet of cold water flowing around them. He saw himself getting up and backing away, and that was when a voice-a perfectly reasonable and rather pleasant voice-spoke to him from inside the stormdrain.

“Hi, Georgie,” it said.

George blinked and looked again. He could barely credit what he saw; it was like something from a made-up story, or a movie where you know the animals will talk and dance. If he had been ten years older, he would not have believed what he was seeing, but he was not sixteen. He was six.

There was a clown in the stormdrain. The light in there was far from good, but it was good enough so that George Denbrough was sure of what he was seeing. It was a clown, like in the circus or on TV. In fact he looked like a cross between Bozo and Clarabell, who talked by honking his (or was it her?-George was never really sure of the gender) horn on Howdy Doody Saturday mornings-Buffalo Bob was just about the only one who could understand Clarabell, and that always cracked George up. The face of the clown in the stormdrain was white, there were funny tufts of red hair on either side of his bald head, and there was a big clown-smile painted over his mouth. If George had been inhabiting a later year, he would have surely thought of Ronald McDonald before Bozo or Clarabell.

The clown held a bunch of balloons, all colors, like gorgeous ripe fruit in one hand.

In the other he held George’s newspaper boat.

“Want your boat, Georgie?” The clown smiled.

George smiled back. He couldn’t help it; it was the kind of smile you just had to answer. “I sure do,” he said.

The clown laughed. “I sure do.” That’s good! That’s very good! And how about a balloon?”

“Well… sure!” He reached forward… and then drew his hand reluctantly back. “I’m not supposed to take stuff from strangers. My dad said so.”

“Very wise of your dad,” the clown in the stormdrain said, smiling. How, George wondered, could I have thought his eyes were yellow? They were a bright, dancing blue, the color of his mom’s eyes, and Bill’s. “Very wise indeed. Therefore I will introduce myself. I, Georgie, am Mr Bob Gray, also known as Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Pennywise, meet George Denbrough. George, meet Pennywise. And now we know each other. I’m not a stranger to you, and you’re not a stranger to me. Kee-rect?”
George giggled. “I guess so.” He reached forward again… and drew his hand back again. “How did you get down there?”

“Storm just bleeeew me away,” Pennywise the Dancing Clown said. “It blew the whole circus away. Can you smell the circus, Georgie?”

George leaned forward. Suddenly he could smell peanuts! Hot roasted peanuts! And vinegar! The white kind you put on your french fries through a hole in the cap! He could smell cotton candy and frying doughboys and the faint but thunderous odor of wild-animal shit. He could smell the cheery aroma of midway sawdust. And yet…
And yet under it all was the smell of flood and decomposing leaves and dark stormdrain shadows. That smell was wet and rotten. The cellar-smell.
But the other smells were stronger.

“You bet I can smell it,” he said.

“Want your boat, Georgie?” Pennywise asked. “I only repeat myself because you really do not seem that eager.” He held it up, smiling. He was wearing a baggy silk suit with great big orange buttons. A bright tie, electric-blue, flopped down his front, and on his hands were big white gloves, like the kind Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck always wore.

“Yes, sure,” George said, looking into the stormdrain.

“And a balloon? I’ve got red and green and yellow and blue…”

“Do they float?”

“Float?” The clown’s grin widened. “Oh yes, indeed they do. They float! And there’s cotton candy…”

George reached.

The clown seized his arm.

And George saw the clown’s face change.

What he saw then was terrible enough to make his worst imaginings of the thing in the cellar look like sweet dreams; what he saw destroyed his sanity in one clawing stroke.

“They float,” the thing in the drain crooned in a clotted, chuckling voice. It held George’s arm in its thick and wormy grip, it pulled George toward that terrible darkness where the water rushed and roared and bellowed as it bore its cargo of storm debris toward the sea. George craned his neck away from that final blackness and began to scream into the rain, to scream mindlessly into the white autumn sky which curved above Derry on that day in the fall of 1957. His screams were shrill and piercing, and all up and down Witcham Street people came to then-windows or boiled out onto their porches.

“They float,” it growled, “they float, Georgie, and when you’re down here with me, you’ll float, too-”

George’s shoulder socked against the cement of the curb and Dave Gardener, who had stayed home from his job at The Shoeboat that day because of the flood, saw only a small boy in a yellow rain-slicker, a small boy who was screaming and writhing in the gutter with muddy water surfing over his face and making his screams sound bubbly.

“Everything down here floats,” that chuckling, rotten voice whispered, and suddenly there was a ripping noise and a flaring sheet of agony, and George Denbrough knew no more.

Dave Gardener was the first to get there, and although he arrived only forty-five seconds after the first scream, George Denbrough was already dead. Gardener grabbed him by the back of the slicker, pulled him into the street… and began to scream himself as George’s body turned over in his hands. The left side of George’s slicker was now bright red. Blood flowed into the stormdrain from the tattered hole where the left arm had been. A knob of bone, horribly bright, peeked through the torn cloth.

The boy’s eyes stared up into the white sky, and as Dave staggered away toward the others already running pell-mell down the street, they began to fill up with rain.

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The Pennywise Sewer Memes

According to Know Your Meme, the use of Pennywise in the sewer as a meme started in 2010, or at least one of the earliest uses of it. Remember Demotivational Posters? It started as one of those, but of course, as memes tend to do, it grew into a life of its own. (And if you want to ever give him a call, you can even try Pennywise’s phone number.)

The most common meme involving the scene is having Pennywise offer something, and then either the person is crawling into the sewer for it, or alternatively we see crew pouring concrete over the sewer because it is something no one wants.

Pennywise in Sewer meme blank template 1

Pennywise in Sewer meme blank template 2

Buy a Pennywise Sewer Replica/Figure

NECA – IT (2017) – Deluxe Accessory Set

Description: “Based on the 2017 film IT. Accessory set includes: sewer diorama display base; Pennywise Jack in the Box; Pennywise Puppet; Georgie severed arm; SS Georgie boat; red balloon.”

BUY

Diamond Select Toys: It 1990 Classic Pennywise PVC Figure

Description: “Based on Tim Curry’s classic portrayal in the 1990 It miniseries. Stands approximately 9″ tall. Features detailed sculpting and paint applications.”

BUY

Last Updated on March 26, 2022.