1920s actress Clara Bow was known as the "It" girl thanks to here appearance in a silent movie with the title It. Some forty years later, a completely different movie with the title It! was made in the UK. TCM ran it some time back -- I think during October since it's got decided horror elements -- and since the synopsis sounde interesting I decided to record it. Having recently watched it, I can now do the post on it.
The movie starts off with a fire in a warehouse somewhere in London. Cut to a museum, where assistant Arthur Pimm (Roddy McDowall) is walking in for a day at work. He and his boss, curator Mr. Grove, get news of the fire, and go to the warehouse to see what can be saved. It seems as though the only thing that's still standing is a stone statue that came from a delivery of stuff from Prague, which seems surprising considering this was the Communist era and I can't imagine a Czech museum working with the West in the 1960s. There's some sort of inscription on the statue, so Grove sends Pim to get a flashlight. While Pimm is doing that, the statue falls over, killing Grove!
But then things get really weird. Pimm goes home and starts talking to his mother, but the way the scene is staged it sure as heck seems that Pimm's mother is more like Mrs. Bates from Psycho (sorry to spoil Psycho), and sure enough.... Not only that, but Pimm has borrowed one of the jewelry exhibits from the museum for Mom to wear. This guy is an absolute creep.
The statue is getting a bit of attention, however. A curator from the States, Jim Perkins (Paul Maxwell) has learned of it and is thinking of buying it and shipping it to America for the museum he works for. But before this can happen, the statue kills a couple of janitors, which really makes the news. All this time, Arthur is trying to woo Ellen Grove (Jill Haworth), daughter of the deceased curator.
Now, I knew enough about history to suspect that the statue was in fact a golem, what with the inscription being in Hebrew, so you'd think the curators might have figured this stuff out right away. But since a lot of viewers probably wouldn't know, we get an establishing scene with a rabbit telling us that this is a golem, and that it would protect the Jews of the ghetto where it was created by finding the scroll and placing the scroll in its mouth.
Naturally, Arthur decides that he's going to look for the scroll, and then use that scroll to become the golem's master, first killing the new curator, since Arthur thought he was going to be named curator instead. Things spiral out of control from there, and there's the question of how to stop the golem.
It! is another of those movies where you can see why the people involved in making it would want to make it, but one where it doesn't quite work. I think that part of it is that I found it hard to believe it would have taken everybody so long to figure out that the statue was even a golem. A museum like that would have been seeking out experts right away. On top of that is McDoall's character, who is such a nasty creep that it's hard to have any sympathy for him. He's not a tragic figure, which I think it what the movie would need for a lead.
But, as always, watch and judge for yourself. It! wasn't made by Hammer, but I think the sort of people who like the 1960s Hammer horror might well enjoy It!.
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