There are plenty of images that still shock and disturb when you revisit the original miniseries adaptation of Stephen King's IT, which debuted on ABC 30 years ago today. The leper design is still stomach-churning. The teenage werewolf is a gnarly throwback to classic creature features. Adult Bill Denbrough's (Richard Thomas) ponytail remains a style choice more nightmarish than anything King himself ever dreamed up. But there's really only one aspect of the IT miniseries that stands the test of time, beyond how easy it is to mercilessly dunk on the raccoon pelt escaping from the back of Bill's head. That would be Tim Curry's truly timeless performance as Pennywise the Dancing Clown, the immortal fear-demon that haunts Derry, Maine, more commonly referred to, simply, as It. If you're of a certain age–say late 20s, early 30s—you probably remember where you were when Curry's Pennywise first popped up from behind a line of linen and taught you what it meant to ruin a pair of pants over a scary movie for the first time. It's a no-brainer to call the character a horror icon. But when was the last time you revisited this performance in full and in context? It's still scary, it's still funny, but it's also a fascinating masterclass on why a character becomes iconic in the first place.

Like Andy Muschietti's recent two-part film adaptation, the 1990 IT miniseries adheres pretty closely to the events of the book, minus a reality-bending child orgy and at least one cosmic turtle. (IT is goddamn wild.) Seven misfit children, bonded by the type of pure, unironic love that could only form between kids on the fringes, defeat the fear-devouring entity that haunts their small town. 27 years later, grown up and scattered around the world, the crew returns to Derry when it becomes clear the monster isn't quite as dead as they believed. It's one of King's best works, an absolute unit of a book packed with equal parts warmth and terror, and director Tommy Lee Wallace gamely tried to pack as much of those vibes as possible into his two 90-minute episodes. But the glue holding both past and present—and the reason the miniseries is worth a rewatch at all—is Curry, bouncing through the narrative in full clown regalia, half Bozo, half Beelzebub.

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Image via ABC

Again, over the years the effectiveness of Curry's Pennywise has been boiled down to "clowns are scary," which isn't inaccurate. Remember when clowns were just popping up in the woods a few years ago? Did we ever get to the bottom of that? Either way, it'd be a shame to lose the brilliant subtleties both Curry and Wallace brought to a role that is not, on the surface, subtle at all. Unlike Bill Skarsgard's 2017 take on the character—also great, for completely different reasons—there are no physical augmentations to Curry's clown-form Pennywise; no inhumanly large forehead, no wandering eyes. Before he reveals his terrifying true face, Curry is just...a clown, and it's the context that's jarring. It's that idea of the Monumental Horror Image, that the scariest visual is simply something being where it absolutely should not be. A clown sitting in a grave, for instance. One of the most memorable moments of IT doesn't involve any over-the-top makeup or VFX, it just sees Curry gleefully telling a terrible joke—"Say, do you have Prince Albert in a can?"—after taunting the adult Richie Tozier (Harry Anderson) with a library filled with blood. The result, in Curry's own words, was "the idea of turning what a clown is upside-down, so he's not particularly lovable."

But so much of that is also about how quickly Curry could turn the clown act into something menacing, even before the monstrous contact lenses and teeth. Curry gave Pennywise a strong Bronx accent that hits like a meteor in IT's small-town Maine surroundings; coupled with the actor's deep, played-to-the-back-seats baritone, every line Pennywise delivers gives an unsettling sense of a peek behind a curtain. It's like you're simultaneously watching a circus clown take a dramatic pratfall on stage and a smoke break between sets at the same time. The way Curry twists the makeup with a sneer or pounds punchlines like a bass drum forms an embodiment of why, subconsciously, we find clowns scary; Curry's Pennywise is a constant reminder that beneath every painted-on smile is a person capable of anything. Except, in this case, he is literally capable of anything. "I am every nightmare you've ever had," Pennywise tells a horrified Losers Club in one of Curry's best line deliveries. "I am your worst dream come true. I'm everything you ever were afraid of."

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Image via ABC

And really, it's those small touches that add up to something iconic. Curry's Pennywise is proof that performances last longer than your most cutting-edge effects. Scares that stick under your skin for months, much less years, can only come from a place that feels at least a little real. The stop-motion spider that ends the IT miniseries is a dopey, dated footnote in horror history. (Curry, hilariously, on the spider: "I hope [Andy Muschietti] makes the ending better, because on TV I turned into a sort of giant spider. And, it was...not very scary.) But that cycle continues: The third-act of IT: Chapter Two also turns Pennywise into a massive beast, impressively rendered in slick CGI, and it still feels soulless next to the deranged physical performance from Bill Skarsgard. Look, also, to the 2010 Nightmare on Elm Street remake; the effects team went to great lengths to turn their Freddy Krueger into a more realistic burn victim, but Jackie Earle Haley—a fantastic actor!—didn't give the character any of Robert Englund's soul. Or, also, the 2019 Child's Play remake, which introduced reintroduced the franchise with a clever, modern techy twist, but in turning Chucky into a malfunctioning circuit board, it also sucked all playfulness out of one of the best voice actors alive, Mark Hamill.

In that way, Tim Curry's Pennywise offers up a blueprint for which of our modern-day monsters might stand the test of time. What is the Saw puppet without Tobin Bell's voice? What is the macabre menagerie of the Conjuring-verse without Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson grounding them? Horror icons are born from human touches. The original Pennywise still floats through our nightmares because Tim Curry pumped fears into a recognizable shell, like helium into a balloon.