Kubrick fans will say that he put together the most accurate look on outer space when he made “2001: A Space Odyssey,” so I guess it would come as no surprise to everyone when he used the same soundtrack some 12 years later in “The Shining.” Emma Dibdin said in her review of the movie, “The remote, snowbound Overlook Hotel might just as well be a spaceship; existing as it does in an impenetrable vacuum that makes either coming or going close to physically impossible, its inhabitants left to stew in their own neuroses.”
After all these years of this movie being around, “The Shining” still holds up very well today with its bone-chilling horror. Few of the horror classics are able to not be called “dated,” but Kubrick’s limited special effects, psychological harshness and relative disinterest in the horror genre was a big help to him. For anything supernatural in the movie, this is a story about a struggling family with a former alcoholic jerk to us debating on him seeing people in the bar, and it’s just as frightening now as it must have been when it was first released.
Stephen King hated Kubrick’s adaptation on this novel, so much so to call Nicholson’s performance for being over the top that it took away all of Jack Torrance’s character dimensions. It’s true that this performance is one of the scariest performances ever on screen, and one that Nicholson will be forever known for. Even when Torrance was being interviewed as the caretaker for the hotel during the winter, he had that look like he was going to go nuts. Dibdin specified that “the point isn't to create suspense around the possibility of violent madness, so much as to set it up as an inevitable destination.” At the point when the hotel owner, played by Barry Nelson, warns Jack that the previous caretaker went crazy and murdered his family with an axe, we have no idea where he’s going with this.
Dibdin mentions, “And so Nicholson's perma-maniacal turn fits right into this sense of predestined doom; his Jack is not an everyman destroyed by circumstance, but a powder keg.” The question that you will be asking is whether you want to see this as psychological (like when he’s naturally unstable and inclined to violence) or supernatural (look at the scene when Philip Stone’s character Grady says, “always been the caretaker at Overlook” and is required to do the same violent act).
This is what Dibdin said about the re-release of the movie, “Certainly looking at the new footage, which was always included on the US release but cut in Europe, it's the psychological reading that holds up. There's more backstory all around on the Torrance family; a child psychologist examines Danny after his first vision, we hear more about both Jack's violent episode and his drinking problem, and Shelley Duvall gets more time to play notes besides shrieking hysteria. In fact, Duvall's oft-maligned performance holds up spectacularly well and Wendy isn't anywhere near as shrill or inept as you remember her.” That’s right, Shelley Duvall plays Jack’s wife. Also, Scatman Crothers, the same man who voiced Jazz from the Transformers cartoon and Hong Kong Phooey, is in this movie as the chef.
The parts which still are scary to this very day are ones that don’t even further the plot at all, like the blood coming out of the elevators, REDRUM being written on the door (which is Murder spelled backwards), the ghost of the twin girls, played by Lisa and Louise Burns, Nicolson’s famous cutting the door with an axe and saying “Here’s Johnny!,” even the music which adds to the scare value. With 2001, Kubrick didn’t use a lot of the electronic score for “The Shining,” but instead used the Eastern Europe classical music to create an equally irresistible sense of hostility. Didbin said in her review, “ghostly strings segueing sickeningly into industrial rumbling and whistling drones.”
Like the film itself, it’s a harsh, disturbing and occasionally pretentious combination that succeeds on a strange kind of beauty thanks to perfect construction. Whether or not you want to watch the re-cut, “The Shining” remains one of the most intuitively disturbing films made.
I know this will come as a surprise to everyone, but I wasn’t scared by this movie. I was laughing the entire time when I was watching it, but if you get scared, I understand. You should definitely check this film out, as it still holds up very well today. I would rate this film with a solid 10, hands down, as it is one of the best in the genre.
Stay tuned tomorrow to see what I will review next for “Halloween Month.”
I like how you mentioned the extended version, and I loved this film as well. You also made very sophisticated points. Great job!!
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