The Big Picture

Stephen King’s
It
is a massive horror novel that delves into a town’s history and friendship, culminating in a battle with a shape-shifting monster.
The recent film adaptation of
It
had to omit a scene involving the main child characters having sex, which shocked readers.
King’s reasoning for including the scene in his book involves themes of childhood, trauma, and the loss of innocence, but it would not translate well on screen.

There’s a reason The Los Angeles Herald Examiner called Stephen King’s It the “Moby-Dick of horror novels.” At a whopping 1,153 pages, King manages to create an entire town with a haunting history dating back thousands of years and a miraculous, motley crew of friends who take on the town’s shape-shifting monster, known as Pennywise the Dancing Clown. No wonder it took King about four years to complete the book. The most recent adaptation of It, a two-parter directed by Andy Muschietti and starring Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise, dropped its first installment in theaters in September 2017, 27 years after the original, TV-miniseries adaptation of the novel. The audience noted that gap as eerily appropriate, as, in King’s book, Pennywise returns to haunt Derry every — you guessed it — 27 years.

Like most book-to-film adaptations, a few scenes were jettisoned from Muschietti’s take on It, despite the story being told across two films. The most notable is a scene so shocking that most King readers tend to gloss over it or prefer not to discuss it at all. It’s a scene that happens towards the end of the novel and takes the readers by surprise, to say the least.

It (2017) Seven young outcasts in Derry, Maine, are about to face their worst nightmare — an ancient, shape-shifting evil that emerges from the sewer every 27 years to prey on the town’s children. Banding together over the course of one horrifying summer, the friends must overcome their own personal fears to battle the murderous, bloodthirsty clown known as Pennywise.Release Date September 6, 2017 Director Andres Muschietti Runtime 135 minutes Main Genre Horror Writers Stephen King , Chase Palmer , Cary Fukunaga , Gary Dauberman Studio New Line Cinema Tagline Your fears are unleashed. Expand

The Disturbing Scene in Stephen King’s ‘It’ That Everyone Tends to Forget About
So, near the end of King’s novel, the six male, preteen members of the Loser’s Club all have sex, in turn, with the club’s lone female member within Derry’s old underground sewer tunnels. Yes, you read that correctly. Bill, Eddie, Stanley, Richie, Ben, and Mike (played in the films by Jaeden Martell, Jack Dylan Grazer, Wyatt Oleff, Finn Wolfhard, Jeremy Ray Taylor, and Chosen Jacobs) all have sex with Beverly (Sophia Lillis) after they just conquered Pennywise in a battle so epic that it caused the town above to nearly collapse amid heavy floodwaters and downed power lines. The whole thing is Beverly’s idea, and, although the boys protest, she gently encourages and guides them through the process, with each boy taking his turn having sex with her. The scene happens after the climax of the novel, the fight between the Losers and Pennywise, and is written under a subheading titled “Love and Desire/August 10th, 1958.”

The next seven pages give a detailed account of each boy taking their turn with Beverly on the cold, damp floor of the Derry tunnels. The idea occurs as they are making their way back to the world above but get lost in the process. Beverly, who’s frightened, overcome with love for each boy, and worried that the group’s power is weakening, suggests the idea of sex. It is perhaps an act, once completed, that she thinks will help them find their way back, or maybe it serves as a final declaration of how much she cares for each boy. No matter how you analyze it, everyone can agree that putting this scene in the film would have been catastrophic considering these are children we’ve been watching for two hours. Horror as a genre is about many things, and shock value is certainly high on the list. Each jump scare or flash of gore is meant to emphasize the levels of terror which the genre, more often than not, aims to achieve. However, it’s safe to say that children having an orgy to regain their footing after fighting an evil alien being might be taking things a step too far.

King’s Reasoning Behind the Infamous Scene in Question

The novel was able to get away with this explicit scene because, unlike with a movie, it doesn’t outright show the viewers the act of sex between children, though it is still quite detailed. It’s important to note that Beverly first discovered what sex was from her abusive father. Although the book characterizes that abuse as more often physical in nature (grabbing, slapping, etc.), the movie leans more towards the notion that he sexually abused her as well, especially when he repeatedly asks her if “she’s still his little girl.” During one of the many disturbing scenes in the book, Beverly’s father confronts her after he’s heard from people in town that she has been hanging out with six boys in the woods all summer. He demands that he check to “see if she is still intact,” to which she responds by running from him halfway across town. It is after this that she and the Losers Club enter the tunnels to defeat Pennywise. (Viewers can expect to revisit those infamous tunnels in the upcoming Max series about the town’s history called Welcome to Derry.)

King is able to execute the notorious sex scene in the book because, leading up to the act, there is an abundance of love and trust between the children, especially when it comes to how the boys feel about Beverly. She is a mother figure, a sister, and their best friend for whom they have the deepest respect. Perhaps King thought it would serve as a metaphor for children losing their innocence after being forced to grow up because of the various traumas each one has endured. According to a National Post article, King wrote in a forum post in 2013, “I wasn’t really thinking of the sexual aspect of it. The book dealt with childhood and adulthood –1958 and Grown Ups. The grown ups don’t remember their childhood. None of us remember what we did as children – we think we do, but we don’t remember it as it really happened. Intuitively, the Losers knew they had to be together again. The sexual act connected childhood and adulthood.” In addition, he noted, “Times have changed since I wrote that scene and there is now more sensitivity to those issues.”

Nevertheless, there is no feasible way the film adaptation could get away with depicting this scene, at least not without a major public outcry. Reading about it is one thing, because the brain can fill in the blanks or even water down some details. But putting it on screen would be an entirely different and unnecessary experience.

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