I've seen the 1990 miniseries and the 2017/2019 movie adaptions of Stephen King's It, with Tim Curry and Bill Skarsgard (left), respectively, playing the transdimensional "destroyer of worlds" who animates every 27 years to kill kids. The original novel has a gay character (buried right away), and the 2017/2019 adaption has a gay-subtext guy, played by Jack Dylan Grazer and James Ransone, who sort of comes out in a blink-and-you-miss-it gesture.
So I don't have high hopes for the tv series Welcome to Derry (2025). The usual Stephen King heavily closeted and buried-right-away traditions will be compounded by the setting: 1962 (every 27 years, remember?). But we'll give it a look.
Scene 1: The Music Man (1962) is playing on the big screen. Young teenager Matty (Miles Eckhardt), sucking on a pacifier, watches. Manager Cal yells at him for sneaking in without paying, and chases him into the lobby. A girl covers for him (always kind, nurturing girls and blustering, bullying boys, innit?).
Notice that it's Christmastime (actually January 4, 1962), and Matty has a black eye, signifying that he's a victim of abuse (obviously --what Stephen King kid hasn't been abused?)
Matty runs out into the snow, past a billboard reading "Welcome to Derry, Birthplace of Paul Bunyan.
Several towns claim to be the birthplace of the folk hero, including Ankely, Minnesota (where they hold Paul Bunyan days every summer), and Bangor, Maine.
Matty hitchhikes, and is picked up by a male-female couple, a Wednesday Addams-looking girl, and a young boy who spells out everythiing; "L-I-E-S," Not R-E-D-R-U-M? Asked where he's going, Matt says "Anywhere but Derry."
Weird family, bragging that the daughter is "our little harlot," and having the boy spell scary words like "necrosis," "kidnapping," "strangulation," and "cadaver." "I want out!" Matty screams, and they repeat "Out! Out! Out!"
Mom gives birth to a bloody bat-winged thing that flies around and attacks everyone before deciding to kill Matty.
A very impressive scene. But what's with introducing a major character, then killing him off?
Scene 2: Four months later, April 1962. A Femme Boy is making a list of the fighter planes that fly by.
The plane lands, and two soldiers get out: Russo and Hanlon (Jovan Adepo, seen here with his boyfriend in Watchmen). Russo complains about being stationed in small-town Derry, where nothing exciting ever happens, har har. But the Big Boss notes that as the northernmost air force base in the U.S., it's essential to monitor Soviet air space and prep for Cold War era-nuclear war. Wasn't Alaska a state in 1962?
Hanlon has rented a house in town; he and the Missus are longing for "normal."
"Well, if normal is what you're looking for, you're going to love Derry." Har-har.
Scene 3: Cut to the "idyllic" small town. A year after Bay of Pigs led the world to the brink of nuclear war, everyone is on edge. At the high school, they practice "duck and cover."
Meanwhile, Femme Boy tells his boyfriend Teddy (Mikkal Karim Fidler), "We're not alone in the universe." He doesn't mean gay people, seven years before Stonewall -- he means aliens. Maybe they have one hidden in the Derry Air Base. Boyfriend thinks he's crazy.
"Teddy sucks balls" on his locker. Homophobic or all-purpose slur?
"Did you study for the test?"
"What's the point, when World War III is imminent?"
Femme Boy is played by Jack Molloy Legault, who fills his instagram with photos of his girlfriend (except for this one with the director). But I assume that Mikkel Karim Fidler is gay in real life because, when his talent agency got him tickets to the advance screening of Karate Kid: Legends, his date was a boy.
More after the break. Caution: Explicit.
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