Leave it to Stephen King to take such sacred things as clowns, red balloons, and birds and turn them against us as harbingers of blood-curdling horror. That's what he certainly did with his 1985 masterpiece IT, the story of seven kids who rally against a disturbing evil that visits their Maine town every thirty years or so, leaving behind a body count with each tarriance. King revels in the adolescent mind and the horrors that lurk there courtesy of the active imagination and innocence. Is it any surprise that King finds the personification of evil residing behind the white makeup of a circus performer whose job is to make kids smile? Pennywise the Clown manipulates our innocence by being OF our innocence. Who hasn't been enticed by a shiny red balloon but never stopped to see the face behind the person who is handing it to us? So much metaphor and symbolism are wrapped up in this, the visages we create for our own evil ends.