IT! (1967)

Director: Herbert J. Leder

Writer: Herbert J. Leder

Producer: Herbert J. Leder

Cast: Roddy McDowall, Paul Maxwell, Jill Haworth, Alan Sellers, Noel Trevarthen, Aubrey Richards, Oliver Johnston, Ernest Clark, Richard Goolden, Dorothy Frere, Ian McCulloch, Tom Chatto, Steve Kirby, Frank Sieman, Russell Napier, Brian Haines, John Baker, Mark Burns, Raymond Adamson, Lindsay Campbell 

Arthur Pimm (Roddy McDowall), the assistant curator of a London art museum, discovers that the latest piece to be put on display is the legendary Golem of Prague. This Hebrew statue can be brought to life and serve the will of its master. The frustrated and unstable Pimm is infatuated with the possibilities of the power he can wield controlling the indestructible Golem (Alan Sellers). 

The Flashback Fanatic movie review

It may surprise my readers to know that this classy and cultured character doesn’t frequent museums very often. Is that due to this retro reprobate’s arrested development and intellectual laziness? Of course not! I avoid public collections of historic and cultural interest due to a finely developed sense of self-preservation. My lifelong study of cinematic artifacts has discovered that museums are very dangerous places. Hang around a museum too long and you run the risk of becoming a wax-covered display, getting strangled by mummies, or being disemboweled by demonic beings. The best you can hope for is that the gorgeous museum patron you obsess about will drive you nuts.

There is no clearer example of the warning about the danger zones that museums pose to the public than It! The joint in this flick makes headlines with the fatalities suffered by its staff and contractors at an alarming rate. Morbid bastards that the public are, it turns out to be good for business. Morbid bastard that I am, It! keeps me returning for more viewings, as well.

The novelty of this movie’s menace is that there had not been much done before with the Golem legend. Since there had been only a handful of Golem films made over thirty years earlier and one Czechoslovakian film in 1951, this monster seemed like a pretty fresh gimmick. Although this is not a Hammer Films production, this British film seems to be following Hammer’s lead by doing a contemporary take on an old movie monster. In fact, Carlo Martelli’s music score here is actually using similar themes he used a few years earlier in Hammer’s The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (1964). 

The title menace itself is a monster lacking in any character aside from an unwillingness to stay idle. The Golem is little more than a weapon used by our villain. As portrayed by Roddy McDowall, Arthur Pimm is the one that brings the Golem to life, and Roddy McDowall’s performance is the force that animates this entire film. 

If ever a movie was carried by its star, It! is certainly held up by Roddy McDowall as nutjob protagonist Arthur Pimm. While his Golem can tear down Hammersmith Bridge, such power pales alongside McDowall’s performance singlehandedly lifting this wild and unwieldy story. He is funny, crazy, and sympathetic. We know he is wrong, yet as the main character he keeps our interest wanting to see just how long he can get away with his crimes that were already underway before he animated his stone henchman. 

As if to atone for being one of the biggest knobs I have ever seen in a horror film back in 1958’s How to Make a Monster, Paul Maxwell is the hero in It! As Jim Perkins, the visiting American representative of the New York Museum, Maxwell gives a nice performance that plays well off of McDowall’s. Perkins’ manner borders on smug, but his easy confidence contrasts nicely with Pimm’s instability. Of course, the fact that he scores instantly with Ellen Grove (Jill Haworth), Pimm’s object of unrequited lust, makes us empathize even more with the mad curator. 

Speaking of madness, there is another obvious horror film influence lumped into this narrative. Fans of Psycho (1960) can’t miss it and I rather like it. Derivative though it may be, it pumps up the ghastly content in the thin story and demonstrates how flawed our protagonist Arthur Pimm is. The whole point of the movie is that when power falls into the wrong hands, as it does with Arthur Pimm, that power will be misused. 

I appreciate a simple story well told, and It! is a fun bit of horror hokum. The only lapse for me is that, although the Golem is indestructible, it is awfully slow. Even if the military can’t destroy it, they could certainly outmaneuver it to raid Pimm’s hideout late in the film and waste the mad curator. Of course, that would still leave the Golem at large, and destroying it seems to be the military’s main objective. There may have been some concern about the safety of Ellen as Pimm’s hostage, but eventually the army decides to hell with that and goes for the nuclear option. This provides another heroic opportunity for Paul Maxwell to make me forget what an absolute jerk he was in How to Make a Monster. 

The thing I have always found to be most unsettling about the film is the warning that is engraved on the Golem. In attempting to understand the Golem and how to control it, Pimm takes a rubbing of the engraved characters to an old scholar (Richard Goolden) for translation. It is such a bleak prophecy that it is as nihilistic as anything appearing in any horror film at the time when things seemed to be taking a much darker turn in the genre.