IT villain Henry Bowers is already an exceedingly terrible person, but a deleted scene made the violently psychotic bully even more evil. Mostly for reasons of condensing Stephen King’s massive narrative, Henry never seems to really get his due as a bad guy onscreen. That’s partially due to Pennywise being a more interesting antagonist, but it’s also due to the fact that IT’s adaptations have more than enough characters to try and shine the spotlight on, including all seven members of the Losers’ Club.
In the IT book, Henry is a much bigger part of the overall story, and is almost as relentless a threat as Pennywise itself is to the Losers. Book Henry is also even more horrifying than in the movies and 1990 miniseries, fully carving his name into Ben’s stomach, breaking Eddie’s arm, and even killing Mike’s dog. Henry is a dangerous psychopath, and far worse than most normal schoolyard bullies. If nothing else, the 2017 movie did stick closer to Henry’s characterization in the book than the miniseries did, although the miniseries kept Henry’s rampant racism intact, so that kind of evens out.
IT fans will recall that in both the book and film, Henry ends up murdering his father with a switchblade “gifted” to him by Pennywise. It’s hard to feel sorry for Henry’s dad, as he’s an abusive drunk, and clearly where Henry gets his violent tendencies from. However, the 2017 IT movie originally added a deleted scene to that which served to fully illustrate just how off the deep end Henry went.
IT Deleted Scene Makes Henry Bowers Even More Evil
After killing his father in the 2017 IT movie’s final cut, Henry follows the Losers’ Club as they head down to fight Pennywise in the sewer, just as he did in the book. However, on the page and in the miniseries, Henry is accompanied on his quest to off the Losers by his friends Victor Criss and Belch Huggins. These characters also appear in the film, although they get much less focus, in favor of making Patrick Hockstetter a bigger part of Henry’s gang. They just disappear from the story after Henry acquires the switchblade from Pennywise, but the above short yet pivotal deleted scene reveals that either before or after killing his dad, Henry slashed both his friends’ throats.
It’s a less than 30 second addition, and it seems like an odd choice to cut. While IT was very long, by horror film standards at least, another 30 seconds wouldn’t have made much difference, and would’ve offered a surprise to those familiar with IT the book. It also adds even more menace to Henry, as while his father was a pretty rotten guy, it’s hard to argue that Victor and Belch, who primarily just assisted with Henry’s crimes, deserved to be killed, especially in such a horrific way. In the book, Henry feels forever guilty about standing by while Pennywise killed his friends. In the movie, he took a more direct role, or at least he would have had the above scene not been inexplicably cut.
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