35 Years Later, It Miniseries Composer Reveals the Unlikely Source of His Creepiest Cue: Disneyland
Disneyland’s cheery soundscapes became nightmare fuel for composer Richard Bellis, who spun them into the unsettling score of the 1990 It miniseries.
File this under delightful nightmare fuel: Pennywise has a tiny bit of Disneyland in his DNA. Yes, the 1990 It miniseries owes one of its creepiest sounds to a childhood day at the Happiest Place on Earth.
The Disneyland spark
Composer Richard Bellis — who won an Emmy for scoring ABC's two-part It back in 1990 — told Gold Derby that a trip to Disneyland the year it opened stuck with him in a big way. In the middle of Fantasyland, he saw a big carousel with a display at its center stocked with self-playing instruments: drums, cymbals, bells, a calliope, and horns. The whole thing looked cheerful and a little uncanny — the exact kind of contrast that makes your skin crawl when you think about it later.
Bellis zeroed in on the calliope, a classic circus instrument meant to feel festive and carefree. He and his team warped that brightness on purpose:
'By artificially lowering the calliope to a register not on the original instrument, we could pervert the happy attitude into a darker place. We introduced that theme during Pennywise's appearance in the storm drain.'
Using a Disneyland memory to twist a carnival sound into a sewer-dwelling nightmare vibe? That is some inspired horror alchemy.
A quick refresher on the 1990 miniseries
It was the first time Stephen King's novel made it to the screen, airing in two parts on ABC in 1990. Tim Curry turned Pennywise into a generation's sleep paralysis demon, and the adult Losers Club lineup was stacked:
- Richard Thomas
- John Ritter
- Annette O'Toole
- Harry Anderson
- Dennis Christopher
- Tim Reid
- Richard Masur
From Curry to Muschietti to now
After the miniseries, Andy Muschietti took the book feature-length with his 2017 movie and its 2019 sequel. And now the clown is back on TV with HBO's prequel series, commonly called IT: Welcome to Derry. New episodes are rolling out weekly on Max in the U.S. and on NOW in the U.K.
Not exactly the origin story I expected for that eerie theme, but I love that something built to be joyful at Disneyland ended up making a clown sound even more sinister. Perfect.