Ok back to the reviewing hat, right its another movie, and I've decided to go with a horror classic, the Shining, directed by the master of masters, Stanely Kubrick, so let's pick up the axe, and have good old look at this beast....
Right well starting with the usual plot stuff, the film begins with Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), who has an interview for the position of the caretaker of the Overlook hotel, over the winter months when the hotel staff are away for the season. The hotel manager Stuart Ullman (Barry Nelson) who is impressed with Jack at the interview, however is obligated to warn Jack that there was an incident in the past involving a previous caretaker, Delbert Grady (Philip Stone) who after time at the hotel, went insane and killed his family and himself. Jack however is not deterred and insists that he would love the job and the soltitude so that he can get on with his writing project. Once Jack arrives with his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and his son Danny (Danny Lloyd) they are shown around the hotel by Ullman, who also tells them that the hotel was built on an ancident Indian burial ground and that hotel can be heavily snowed in during the winters (as it is based up in Denver). During the tour of the hotel, Danny meets the head chef, Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers) who actually shares something in common with Danny, a gift he calls "shining" which basically means they are both telepathic, as they talk, Danny asks if something bad happened at the hotel, and he reads Hallorann's mind, and asks about a hotel room "237", which Hallorann responds angrily to stay out of the room.
As the days pass, Jack and his family grow accustomed to staying in the massive hotel, but its not long before the effects of isolation to start set in on Jack, as he becomes more restless and his writing project goes nowhere. Jack soon becomes more angry, distant and slowly but surely starts to lose his marbles, while in the meantime Danny is haunted by visions of the unpleasant events that happened at the hotel, with images of a river of blood flooding the corridors, and Grady's two dead daughters who ask Danny to play with them "for ever and ever and ever!". Danny also one day becomes eager to find out what is in room 237 and he finds the door ajar and enters, while this happens Jack awakens from a terrifying nightmare in which he killed Wendy and Danny, which he sobbingly confesses to Wendy. Danny enters the room in a state of shock, with a wound on his neck, and sucking his thumb, Wendy accuses Jack of hurting him, who denies it. Later Jack goes into the main ballroom and sits at the bar and is welcomed by the ghost of a bartender, Lloyd (Joe Turkel) who pours him a drink, and Jack confesses while he never touched Danny, he did once hurt him a while ago, and that he is also a former alcoholic. Wendy enters in a panic urgently asking Jack to check out Room 237, in which she claims Danny saw a woman in the bathtub, who tried to strangle him. Jack goes to check out the room and finds a beautiful young naked woman in the bathtub, they embrace, but then the woman turns into an old hag with rotting skin, Jack terrified backs out of the room and locks it.
On returning to Wendy he says that he didn't see anything and the two of them argue about taking Danny back home, which leads Jack back to the gold ballroom, where he meets Lloyd again. This time Jack also bumps into a waiter, who spills drinks over him, on going to the bathroom, the waiter reveals himself to be Delbert Grady. Jack challenges Grady on what happened to his family, but Grady denies any knowledge, but insists that he deal with his son and his wife, as he tells him Danny is trying to contact Hallorann telepahtically, to come to the hotel. By now Jack's madness has overtaken him and he gives into Grady's advice, as he confronts Wendy and threatens to bash her brains in, but Wendy knocks Jack unconscious with a baseball bat. Wendy locks Jack up in the kitchen store room, who pleads with Wendy to let him go, but then says that he has got a surprise for her as he has sabotaged the radio and the snowcat, so they cannot escape. By now Wendy is alone with Danny, who is still in a catatonic state, and his imaginary friend, Tony, has taken over his personality, as he uses lipstick to write the word "REDRUM" on the door in lipstick, which he repeats. Danny yells the word until Wendy wakes up, who looks in the mirror and reads the word "MURDER", at this point Jack has managed to escape the store room, and starts to chop down the door with a fire axe, as Wendy and Danny try to flee for their lives, Danny escapes outside, but Wendy is left trapped in the bathroom. Jack having smashed the bedroom door in, goes up to the bathroom door and "he huffs and puffs and blows the house in!", as he chops down the wood to get through the door, he leers through a gap in the door and grins evilly at wife delivering that immortal line "Here's Johnny!!!. Wendy however manages to hold off Jack, by slicing his hand with a knife, and at this point, Hallorann arrives in the snowcat outside, and on entering the hotel, Jack kills him with the axe. What ensues is a chase as Wendy and Danny both try to escape a demented Jack who limps after them with the axe, which sees Jack chase Danny into the hotel's big garden maze for the film's climax.
The Shining must easily rank as one of the best horror films in recent years, based on the Stephen King novel, Stanely Kubrick brilliantly adapted the film for the screen here. Although apparently King himself wasn't too happy with Kubrick's interpretation of his book and he himself preferred the TV mini series version remade about 15 years later, which frankly is nowhere near as good as this. King's main criticism was of course in he depiction of Jack as he felt that Kubrick had strayed from the original character in the book, and potrayed him in a less sympathetic light. As in the mini TV series, Jack is depicted as a more well meaning man who was troubled by his alcoholic past, but only started to go mad once the supernatural forces of the hotel overcame him, and in Kubrick's film, Jack is instantly far more cynical and weary of his family. Also a key difference is that Jack in the book helps his family escape as he sets the hotel on fire and stays behind, whereas in the film Jack doesn't help his family escape. But I think Kubrick's take on Jack makes for him being more sinister and effective than in the TV mini series version, and he and Diane Johnson, who co-wrote the screenplay did a great job here. I also love the use of how Kubrick uses captions to show the days go by such as "MONDAY" and "WEDNESDAY" in that they are showing the passage of time it takes for someone to go mad.
And here Kubrick uses all his skills to create a cinematic masterclass in how to make a horror film, and his signature shots and visual sense are as brilliant as ever here. As noted in quite a few of Kubrick's films, here we get his usual brilliant use of symmetrical shots (which he usually uses in scenes involving walking in long corridors), long slow pan outs, and also worthy of note is the steadycam shots of young Danny pedalling on his trike, which were filmed by the steadicam creator, Garrett Brown, who deserves alot of credit for his great work here.
Performance wise, The Shining is pretty much top of the drawer stuff, with Jack Nicholson providing a wonderfully over the top performance, as he starts the film as a cool composed guy, but as things progress he loses his mind, and before we knew he is dementedly limping around with that axe, with wide rolling eyes. Jack has several highlights in the film, the scenes where he rows with Wendy are gerat, particularly the first scene where we see him grow frustrated with his wife and he tells her "to get the fuck out of here" and leave him to his work, as well as the confrontational scene where Wendy finds his pages and pages of typing with the words "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy". I also like the scene where he sits on his bed in a catatonic state, as Danny slowly creeps into the room to get a toy, and Jack asks his son to come over and sit on his knee, which he does, and drowsily asks him if he is enjoying the hotel. Its easily the most disturbing scene in the whole film, because we see in that moment Jack's madness slowly set in, and there is already the impending threat that he will hurt his family, but its neatly offset by his cheeky little grin at the end as he tells his son he would do nothing to hurt him.
Shelley Duvall is also excellent as Jack's suffering wife, and she proves to be quite a strong resilient character, despite her going into an almost full traumatic meltdown as it goes on, and the famous scene where she is in the bathroom as Jack smashes the door down is a terrific highlight, as she brilliantly reacts with such hysteria. Scatman Crothers also makes a fine impression as the good hearted chef, Dick Hallorann, who shares the gift of "shining" that Danny has, who is eventually drawn back to the hotel by Danny's telepathy in order to help them. Crothers himself was moved to be involved in the film, but he also at times grew frustrated with Kubrick who was infamous for doing many many takes of one scene. Philip Stone also makes a creepy cameo as Grady, and his bathroom scene with Jack is great as he tells him how he "corrected" his family. And finally Danny Lloyd is terrific as the young Danny, as he plays him as an almost detached boy, who is quite morose, but also has a special gift that let's him see things, and his scenes where he takes on his imaginary friend's persona, Tony, are almost creepy at times, especially when he mutters "redrum" over and over.
Technically as I already said, Kubrick pretty much does everything to perfection here, there is precious little to fault in his stunning visual presentation of the film. The photography by the late John Alcott is also outstanding as he produces some amazing rich images in the film, particularly the opening vista shots (which were taken overhead in a helicopter, as you can see the reflection of the copter blades in one shot! Also this footage was later re-used in Blade Runner) and the eerie beautiful lighting in the hotel. The sets are also truly remarkable, designed by Roy Walker, the Overlook Hotel at that time was the largest set ever built, and they look stunning on film.
Score wise Kubrick again brilliantly chose his music tracks very carefully, and they do nothing but add to the intense dread and atmosphere of the film. Some of the tracks Kubrick chose included works by the composer's Gyorgy Ligeti, Bela Bartok and Kyrzsztov Penderecki, and they are terrific and quite often they will send shivers down your spine, they certainly had the hairs standing up on my neck for sure. Some of my favourites are used in the scenes where Danny looks in Room 237, and where Jack goes mad and chops down the door with an axe (followed by the mad montage of the river of blood, and Wendy seeing the bizarre image of someone in a teddy bear costume giving a party guest a blow job!). Wendy Carlos also created one or two original pieces of electronic music for the film and they also add well to the atmosphere of the film, although more in a spatially atmospheric way (to do with the vista shots I mean). Wendy's most notable piece of music is of course in the opening shot where she does a cover of Berlioz's "Dies Irae".
Its also worth noting that there are in fact two different versions of the film, with the US version running at 146 minutes, but for European version, Kubrick reduced the running time by 24 minutes, cutting out various scenes. You could argue that either version of the film works well, but my preference is the original US release as it features several interesting scenes, which also reveal a bit more about the characters, especially the scene where Wendy explains to the doctor that comes to their house after Danny takes a funny turn, about her son and a bit about Jack's background and his alcoholism. And with the extra scenes put in, one or two other scenes make more sense, especially when Wendy asks Danny to stop speaking in Tony's voice, and Danny explains in Tony's voice that "Danny has gone away, Mrs Torrance", which helps explain why he mumbles "REDRUM" in the scene when Jack takes the axe to the door.
Sooooooo that's it for The Shining post, its one of my favourite films for sure and it remains a great horror classic, and if you are silly enough to have not seen it, and like an old horror film now and then, then its a must see.
So I will leave it there.
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