Review of It!

Overlooked and forgotten late 60s Brit-horror, starring the underrated but always reliable Roddy McDowell as a sort of Norman Bates with a day-job. Arthur Pimm is the assistant-curator of a historical treasures' museum, but when his long workdays are over, he goes home for lovely conversations with his dead and decomposed mother in her rocking chair. I honestly don't know why this weird and blatant "Psycho" imitation aspect is part of the film. It doesn't serve any purpose in the script, apart from stating clear that Arthur Pimm is completely cuckoo. Far more interesting is that Pimm gains control over a cursed but powerful statue - a Golem creature - that he recovered from a warehouse fire. The Golem mysteriously already killed a few people, and seems quite indestructible itself. "It!" - with exclamation mark to distinguish from Stephen Kings' evil clown movie - nearly isn't a classic horror film, but it's very entertaining while it lasts, especially thanks to McDowell's performance, the unusual type of monster, a handful of delicious Grand-Guignol moments, and a downright preposterous climax (even involving nuclear bombing). Worth watching at least one, and a major improvement over writer/director Herbert J. Leder's previous film; - the disastrous "The Frozen Dead".