You really want to be freaked out? Then, watch Angry Alien Productions’s The Shining in 30 seconds with bunnies. 
I just saw this for the second time last week. I liked it a lot, and would have loved it, had it not been for Jack Nicholson. I’ve liked him in other movies, and I think he’s a good actor, but his performance here was so distractingly awful. Like other posters have mentioned, he starts in Crazy Mode at the film’s beginning so there’s no real character arc. His madness isn’t even creepy, like it should have been - Nicholson’s practically shouting “I’m cuh-razy! Raaaaaaah!”
Then again, I thought Shelley Duvall’s performance was brilliant, especially in the context of the film. She’s the kind of person who doesn’t have much of an identity of her own and who constantly has to walk on eggshells around her husband, and I think she pulled that off beautifully.
I have a hard time seeing the movie as just a movie, because I read the book first, when I was in maybe seventh grade, and I slept with the lights on for a month. I still don’t go into somebody’s bathroom and lock the door without opening their shower curtain, just in case. And the movie just didn’t live up to how scary it was in my imagination. No amount of Stedicam is going to make up for what happened in that bathroom or with the topiary animals. This book probably had more actual effect on my life than anything else I’ve read before or since (and I’m a librarian, so obviously I have an intimate relationship with books and reading.) That is some scary shit there and I should never have been reading it at age 11 or whatever.
Can Jack Nicholson be anything but Crazy Man? Did he totally not get the “okay, this is a movie where this guy gradually does crazy” idea?
I didn’t get ‘crazy’ from Nicholson right from the start. I got "alcoholic burnout with emotional problems’, which is exactly what the character was supposed to be. He had to start out being a little bit out there for the hotel to grab hold of him in the first place.
Love it. My favorite scary movie ever.
I admit that Shelly Duvall is strange looking and has an annoying breathy little voice. But like Lisa-go-Blind, I thought she was perfect in this movie, playing a woman who’s totally dominated by her husband. My favorite scene in the movie is where Jack Nicholson is stalking her up the stairs, and she’s crying and making pitiful little jabs at him with the baseball bat, and he’s mocking her for being pitiful. Which makes the WHAMMO! that follows just that much more satisfying.
I read the book after seeing the movie, and while I generally liked it, I thought that the topiary scene was about as scary as a nature film about albatrosses or jellyfish or something. Like, topiary? Seriously? How goofy is that?
But that’s just me.
If you’re referring to what I think you are, it’s in the book, too. A vision from the hotel’s past.
I saw the movie before I read the book.
I didn’t find the movie at all scary; it’s simply hard to believe anything with Shelley Duvall in it, and it wasn’t JAck Nicholson’s finest moment, either. The naked woman in the bathtub is scary, I guess; other than that the movie, like a lot of Kubrick’s work, is very poorly edited, stilted and doesn’t suspend disbelief.
One atrcious sequence is the five or six minutes during which Hallorran (sp?) gets the distress “call” from Danny, and then makes some calls and finally gets up to Sidewinder and eventually to the hotel. It takes a good long time to do this, during which he makes several pointless phone calls, drives around, talks to a guy to rent a snow vehicle, etc. etc. What could have been accomplished in 45 seconds, tops - he gets the “Call,” tries to reach them by phone, then calls the airline and bam, you see him at the hotel - takes a truly agonizing amount of time.
Years later I read the book. I couldn’t believe it was as good as it was; it’s still one of the best books I’ve ever read, and is easily King’s best, except for maybe “The Dead Zone.” The movie Jack Torrance was a scary nutball from the first scene and wasn’t at all interesting. The BOOK Jack Torrance wsa a terrific character.
The Shining is the best horror movie out there. What other movie can come close? I understand that not everyone likes Kubrick’s slow-moving style, though. But for those of us who not only love it, but prefer it to something more fast-paced, the Shining is jaw-droppingly suspensful and quite scary. You’ll have to trust me on this one.
You totally missed the point of this sequence. It drove you crazy. That’s the point of it! It is very classic and effective technique to draw out suspense by putting in something totally mundane and boring when the audience is waiting for the climax. David Lynch does this too, to great effect.
Not only that, but Kubrick’s drawing out of this journey does emphasize that it really was a long journey. Editing a 10-or-so hour journey down to 45 seconds would feel cheap.
A hundred years later, people still think of the moving picture as being the bastard brother of literature. No, beyond the main idea, the movie is not at all like the book. But it does not need to be. A book is not a perfect form that a movie should aspire to reflect. The book and the movie are two separate works, each striving for their own goal, each exploiting what works best in their respective media. Both can be appreciated without either trying to mimic the other.
I think most problems with The Shining and other movies like it are from people trying to watch it through an overlay of the book. It’s got to be looked at as a totally separate vision. It works in the reverse direction, too–people trying to fit the images from the movie into reading the book–but that seems to be less common, though it still misses the point.
The The Shining, to me, is a great film. Anything can be interpreted any number of ways, people bring their own biases and leanings to the table and noöne is more correct than anyone else, but mine for The Shining is something like this:
While the novel Jack slowly descends into madness, I don’t see the movie Jack in the same way. There, he was always mad, but being among other people kept him in line, society forced him to function more or less within its rules. Taken outside of society, he was allowed to show himself.
I see the hotel as being a blank canvas. The world is not there to say what should be seen, and the minds of Jack, Wendy, and Danny are free to paint on it what they like. The movie operates on two levels. The first is “reality”, if you can call it that, in which the story of a man attempting to murder his family in a snowed-in hotel plays out. The second is in the mind, from which the explanation for why is explored, in dream-logic.
Jack is a writer, or at least aspiring to be one. He explores different things for inspiration. Wendy is a horror fan, and likely reads and watches the same. Both see in the hotel things from their memory. Jack begins seeing them first, with the bartender, the caretaker from the newspaper, the party goers from the photograph, etc. None are there, of course, but they’re very real to him. Wendy doesn’t start seeing them until much later, and her visions are much more erratic and confused, reflecting her own identity. The skeletal guests in the lobby likely came straight from whatever novel she was reading last, the man in the dog costume was perhaps read about in the book of newspaper clippings seen on Jack’s desk, and the man with a bullet wound in his head was the story of the last caretaker as told to her either by Ullman or Jack (likely the later, since she knew what he looked like and Jack had seen the newspaper picture).
While Jack interacts with his visions, Wendy’s are mostly separate from herself and she can only watch. This makes sense. Jack is a writer, he can more easily synthesis events from ideas. Wendy is just a fan, she’s accustomed with watching familiar events play out, but not at creating them. Jack is also mad, of course. His grounding in reality is less secure, his ability to lose himself in his creations is stronger.
Danny is something of a special case. He has the shining, or telepathy. His visions are mostly abstract ideas of bad things to come, such as the blood in the elevator. He does have more clear visions, though, like the twins and the woman in the bathtub. Where did he form these ideas? It’s unlikely anyone told him, or that he either read or saw them, but he has another mode of input not found in the others. I believe Dick Hallorann conveyed his own fears to him, perhaps inadvertently, through his mind. Dick worked at the hotel, he was intimately familiar with its goings on. He and vicariously Danny knew details of the caretaker’s story that Jack’s visions only hinted at. He also knew other stories, like that of the woman in the bathtub. I don’t think the shining is clairvoyance, I don’t think Dick’s description of it was accurate. His example and what we see are in line with telepathy and nothing more. The visions, both from Danny and the others, are all from the imagination and spurred by ideas gotten from one traceable source or another.
Speaking of the woman in the bathtub, didn’t Jack see her too? I don’t think so. The scene is framed with Danny. I believe it shows what Danny thinks Jack might be seeing, so it of course uses images familiar to him and not those more associated with Jack (the caretaker or the bartender).
Each of their visions are conflicting since none can see what the others do. The only thing tying them together is the upper level, reality, where all the characters’ actions seem incomprehensible to one another. Jack seems crazy to Wendy. Wendy’s plans seem to neglect what’s most important to Jack. Danny understands neither. Wendy can’t see what causes Danny to retreat into Tony, nor can Jack. This confusion was likely always part of their lives, before the hotel, but in society they were grounded enough that whatever excuses could be come up with seemed to answer their problems. Jack was a drunk. Danny didn’t adjust well to school. Wendy has next to no identity of her own. Out of society, their problems could no longer be hidden.
The coda I can see in a couple different ways. The photograph is clearly the one from which Jack drew his inspiration for the party. Perhaps he did because the man in front so resembles himself. That makes sense on a logical level, but it falls flat in providing a satisfying conclusion. The way I like to interpret it revolves on the point of view of the scene. We are looking at the photo, not any of the characters. Jack, Wendy, and Danny brought their own worlds to the hotel, and now we have a chance to do the same. Maybe, like Danny, we now project what we think Jack must see, using what we’re familiar with–the imagery of the movie. Jack becomes an idea to us like the caretaker did to Jack. Where will we take it? I like the dream-logic of that, it’s more in keeping with the film and Kubrick in general.
Jack was always there. He was always mad.
Let’s get the technical stuff out of the way first. I’m a professional Steadicam Operator and so view The Shining with great fondness. It elevated the technique of operating to new heights, quite literally. It was the film where the Steadicam’s inventor, Garrett Brown, used two hands to operate the device for the first time to achieve even greater control. This became the standard proceedure.
There is a lot of exellent work in the film. I am particularly fond of the low-mode shots chasing the young boy around on his Big Wheel. These were achieved by mounting the Steadicam on a wheelchair with a hard-mount. A series of hardy grips then ran the wheelchair, Steadicam and operator ( Mr. Brown ) around the hotel take after take after take after take. If you get the current DVD of The Shining, watch the documentary shot by Kubrick’s daughter. There are some good Steadicam moments to be seen in there.
So, it’s a learning film for me. Much to refer to technically.
I read the book when it came out. Stephen King figured prominently in my teenage years’ reading material and he still does. I read that book with the eyes of a 13 year old boy. I very much related to Danny. I could not understand- but was badly frightened by- much of what Jack’s character was about.
I re-read the book about 10 years ago, having had two children. At the age of 32, one sees things a wee tad differently than at 13. The adult characters are well-drawn and Jack is indeed the dark, sickening side of many adult minds.
Kubrick was after something different. No doubt he did not wish to duplicate exactly what King had done. Witness the fine mini-series on t.v. a few years ago. Perhaps the best way to describe this is to steal from The Shining itself, where Halloran is describing to Danny what the shining is. How sometimes an event or feeling leaves a scent in the room like burnt toast. To me, Kubrick was after the scent, the essence. Not the details, but the tone. A feeling a viewer might have the next day, or a few hours later. There would be things working on you on many levels.
I’m not saying he achieved all of that, but I always felt that Kubrick was after that kind of…essence. That kind of non-verbal feeling.
Side-note. I was hired to shoot camera tests for Eyes Wide Shut, and so had to submit my demo reel to be converted to PAL and sent to London. Kubrick viewed the reel and deemed the work to be acceptable. Oh…my…god. 
And this was just to shoot some video camera tests for what would become the background plate photography for the street shots supposedly happening in NYC, but shot either by plate and optical or on the set in England. ( Borehamwood? No…hmm…which studio? ).
Came time to shoot the actual film footage that would be used, I was already booked and had to pass the job along. Killed me. I wanted a Kubrick credit. Oh well.
Cartooniverse
Yeah, I read that too in an essay or interview with Stephen King. But I didn’t get the impression that movie-Jack was mad from the beginning; from the interview with the hotel manager and the drive up to the Overlook scenes, the impression I got was that he was emotionally bitter and deeply frustrated, perhaps predisposed to having the violent breakdown that he eventually does have.
Good point. It’s a refreshing change from the horror movie in which the killer is the perfectly normal, cheery frat boy or the smiling mayor. Sometimes, the crazy guy is, in fact, the crazy guy. (Though I agree that he doesn’t seem crazy in the beginning - just stressed out and a little brittle.)
I started watching the miniseries but wasn’t enjoying it, so I stopped. I also agree that movies need not and often should not be “just like the book.” The fact that it was a more faithful adaptation didn’t help.
Shelley Duvall was very good in Robert Altman’s 3 Women (1977), now out on DVD.
I always felt sorry for her in The Shining, having to go for months with such an unflattering, stringy hair style.
The best homage the Simpson’s did in The Shinning was the shot of the camera following the arc of the axe into the door. Great in the original, funny in the Simpsons. I’m not sure how that was done. . .probably something to do with this steadicam? Maybe cartooniverse knows.
Anyway, one thing I know. . .I saw this movie when I was like 13 and was scared shitless by it. I never liked the feeling of something going on behind my back, and details like the “fallen fire house” totally creeped me out, not to mention the twins, and the bath tub, etc.
I liked the casting of Duvall in so far as she was clearly so much weaker than Jack. It made him that much more menacing that she was so defenseless.
Still, as an adult, I don’t think the movie is so great. IIRC, Hallorann shows up after his interminable journey and. . .takes an axe to the belly and dies? Why even have him return to the story? In the book, he actually did something.I can appreciated what Avumede is saying to RickJay but you can’t just have an extended, frustrating sequence with no point whatsoever. Maybe it’s a personal taste there. What it felt like was Kubrick saying, “well, I need to do this because it’s in the book but it doesn’t really fit with the rest of what I wanted to do, so I’ll just kill him.”
Of course those who have established Kubrick at the top of their genius pantheon would never ascribe something so mundane to one of his choices.
The pacing was too slow for a real horror movie, while the descent into madness angle was not fully fleshed out.
Basically, it turned into a stylized “crazy man chases wife and boy around the hotel”. The style can be enjoyed for the most part, but honestly, I do think Kubrick thought he was above the source material and thought he could do more with it than Stephen King did.
In the end, he did less.
[QUOTE=mamboman]
I don’t know about weak actors, but the ones with absent actors don’t really have female roles in them. You’re not going to find a find a lot of main female characters in a movie about bootcamp if,like FMJ, it’s focused on bootcamp. 2001 has few female characters to speak of at all in the book. Doctor strangelove is centered around the military in 1963. You aren’t going to realistically have women running around except in supporting roles. Ditto Paths of Glory.
Hindsight is always 20/20. I saw the movie when it came out, in 1980. JN didn’t give off crazy vibes for me, basically because the movie shows his gradual descent into madness. I think all you guys who claim he was crazy from the start are seeing to much Hollywood Jack, filtering him through 25 years of chewing the scenery and automatically translates the slightest quirk as a sign that he was indeed crazy to begin with.
And seeing it in the theatre when it came out, it was a truly terrifying experience. The only thing close to it in the horror genre up to date was the Exorcist. It’s a movie about what evil that lurks in the hearts of men and something totally different from monster movies with guys in rubber suits.
Psycho is of course up there too, but it was old when I saw it the first time and didn’t scare me half as much. Possibly it did just that for those who saw it when it was just released.
A sidenote: Kidman is the only good thing in that awful crap EWS.
I’d have to say that’s not an entirely accurate assessment. Certainly Jack was far more nutso by the end than he was at the beginning, but he was pretty fucked up to start with. He had enough psychological baggage to stock a Louis Vuitton store, between the drunken and abusive father, his own drinking and violent tendencies, and his anger and resentment at people he felt weren’t giving him his due (like Wendy sniffing his breath for alcohol, which, frankly, nobody could blame the woman given the circumstances). A mentally healthy person does not break a toddler’s arm for spilling a beer on some papers, ya know?
Jack was a nutjob. A pretty high-functioning nutjob at the beginning, but still a nutjob. That’s what made it so easy for the hotel to take him and to use him. He had far more cracks and chinks for it to worm its way into than Wendy had, which is why it took so much longer for her to start seeing things.
I absolutely adore this movie. It is, in my opinion, the best and scariest horror film ever made. The first time I saw The Shining, I ended up staying up all night reading Far Side cartoons because I was scared to turn out the lights. No other movie—or book, for that matter—had ever done that to me before, and none has since.
I’m a fan of the book, too. In my opinion, it’s Stephen King’s best work. I read it a few years after seeing the movie. The differences between the movie and the book don’t bother me in the least. In some cases, I think when a story is changed and adapted to movie format, it ruins it. I don’t feel that way about The Shining.
On the other hand, I somewhat disliked the mini-series version. I would have liked it, I think, had it not been for that stupid kid. He was no Danny, that’s for sure. I feel the same way about that kid as some of you feel about Shelly Duvall. Totally ruined the movie for me. I did like how the mini-series went into more of the history of the hotel. But still, that kid! Did I mention that I didn’t like him, by chance?
What do you think of the kid in the Kubrick version? Did they have to drug him to make him suck that bad?
I thought the kid was fine. He didn’t have much actual acting to do except for looking scared. A bit wooden, yes, but it fits in with how Kubrick actors normally behave, which is something I really enjoy. What is interesting is that Kubrick & co fooled him into thinking he was making a much different movie (so he wouldn’t be traumatized). I wonder how they did that.