36 Years Later, Stephen King’s Scariest TV Moment Keeps Getting Better

Published Sep 9, 2026, 9:00 AM EDT

Zach Moser has been writing for ScreenRant since 2022, covering movies, classic TV, and streaming TV. His areas of expertise cover a wide range of genres with a particular interest in horror and drama, and the conversations around the TV and film industry. When he's not covering the latest film releases or chronicling the latest season of a new show, he's writing humor pieces for McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Slackjaw, and Points In Case or working on short stories and his second novel. 

36 years after it aired, the scariest scene in any Stephen King TV show has only gotten better. TV shows based on Stephen King novels and short stories have about the same hit/miss rate as his films. In baseball terms, a favorite King subject, they probably bat somewhere between .300 and .400.

That's a top-of-the-line hitter in any league, but three or four good shows or movies for every ten is not as great in Hollywood terms. Yet, it doesn't seem to matter. The master of horror has so many terrifying, beautiful, and compelling stories, people are never going to stop taking cracks at them.

One of those shows that falls somewhere in the middle of the nadir of The Langoliers and the pinnacle of 11.22.63 is It, the first adaptation of King's monosyllabic 1986 novel of the same name. This two-part miniseries aired on ABC in 1990 and runs well over three hours.

Like in the novel, It is set in Derry, Maine, a classic American town where, every 27 years, a mysterious, shapeshifting monster, referred to as "It", awakens from a deep slumber somewhere below Derry and wreaks horrific tragedy upon those who live there, targeting children in particular.

It's one of King's densest novels, taking place over two time periods, and it is filled with some of his most bizarre, cosmic imagery. A terrifying read, it's no wonder then that the television adaptation gave viewers the most terrifying scene in any King TV show.

Pennywise’s Encounter With Georgie In It Is Stephen King’s Scariest TV Moment

Both the novel and the miniseries open the same way. During a heavy rainstorm in the spring of 1960, little Georgie Denbrough (Tony Dakota) plays in the growing rivers of water in the street with a paper boat he and his older brother Bill (Jonathan Beandis) built. The boat gets away from George, and he chases it to an empty road where it falls down a storm drain.

As he looks into the drain, two eyes stare back. Pennywise the Dancing Clown (Tim Curry) invites George to come down with him. When George refuses, he offers the paper boat instead. George reaches in, and the clown transforms into a sharp-toothed monster, bites his arm off, and George bleeds to death in the road.

It’s Movie Remake Makes This Scene Less Scary

Credit: MovieStillsDB

The movie remake follows similar beats in the lead-up to Georgie's death, but it ends up taking some of the air out of the scare. In the 2017 movie, It, Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott) loses his boat and meets Pennywise, played by Bill Skarsgård, who does a fantastic job, slowly ramping up the terror.

However, when it's time to bite off Georgie's arm, It transforms into a CGI monster with a piranha-like mouth full of teeth. It's jarring and takes you out of the scene. What makes the miniseries scene so frightening is that Pennywise feels like a human for most of the scene, giving the whole sequence an uncanny vibe, and uncomfortably reminding viewers of real-world dangers.

The 2017 version of the scene gets lost in the visual effects and overly bloody details to actually scare. Pennywise's arm coming out of the sewer in the film is a creepy touch, though.

Tim Curry’s Performance As Pennywise Was His Greatest On Television

Tim Curry's performance as Pennywise is fantastic in this scene, and is so in the rest of the film. The way he is almost near tears as he pleads with Georgie to join him is so perfectly off-putting, and when he flips the switch to anger, you know this is a special sort of horror villain.

Curry's performance in It is his best work on television, by far. While his voice work in The Wild Thornberrys as Nigel Thornberry and his one-episode guest appearances in a handful of series are excellent, it's It that he'll be remembered on TV for. As for his film roles, take your pick; there are too many good ones to list.