The Shining | |
---|---|
Directed by | Stanley Kubrick |
Produced by | Stanley Kubrick |
Screenplay by |
Stanley Kubrick |
Based On | The Shining by Stephen King |
Starring |
Jack Nicholson |
Music by |
Wendy Carlos |
Cinematography | John Alcott |
Editing by | Ray Lovejoy |
Studio |
The Producer Circle Company |
Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
Release date(s) |
May 23, 1980 (US) |
Running time |
146 minutes (Premiere) |
Country |
United Kingdom |
Budget | $19 million |
Box office | $44.4 million |
The Shining is a 1980 horror film directed by Stanley Kubrick, based on the book with the same title.
Plot[]
Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) arrives at the Overlook Hotel to interview for the open position of winter caretaker. The hotel itself is built on the site of an Indian burial ground and becomes completely snowbound during the long winters. Manager Stuart Ullman (Barry Nelson) warns him that a previous caretaker got cabin fever and killed his family and himself. Jack’s son, Danny (Danny Lloyd), has ESP and has had a terrifying premonition about the hotel. Jack's wife, Wendy (Shelley Duvall), tells a visiting doctor about Danny's imaginary friend Tony and that Jack had given up drinking because he had physically abused Danny after a binge.
The family arrives at the hotel on closing day and is given a tour. The elderly African-American chef Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers) surprises Danny by speaking with him telepathically and offering him some ice cream. He explains to Danny that he and his grandmother shared the gift, which he calls "shining." Danny asks if there is anything to be afraid of in the hotel, particularly Room 237. Hallorann tells Danny that the hotel itself has a "shine" to it along with many memories, not all of which are good. He strictly warns Danny to avoid room 237.
A month passes and Jack's writing project is going nowhere. Meanwhile, Danny and Wendy have fun and go in the hotel's hedge maze; Jack discovers a model of this maze, showing Wendy and Danny inside it, in one of the hotel lounges. Wendy is concerned about the phone lines being out due to the heavy snowfall and Danny has more frightening visions. As time passes, Jack slowly starts acting strange and frustrated, often prone to violent outbursts. Danny’s curiosity about Room 237 finally gets the better of him when he sees the room has been opened. Later, Danny shows up injured and visibly traumatized, causing Wendy to think that Jack has been abusing Danny. Prior to Wendy accusing Jack of abusing Danny, Jack suffers an extreme mental breakdown. Jack has fallen asleep at the table whilst he is working, and seems to be having a nightmare, screaming and crying. Wendy finds him after hearing him screaming, and wakes him. this is baisicslly his tipping point, and from this point onwards he loses mental stability.
Jack wanders into the hotel’s Gold Room where he meets the ghostly bartender Lloyd (Joe Turkel) who serves him bourbon on the rocks. Jack complains to the bartender about his relationship with Wendy. Afterward, Wendy shows up and apologizes for accusing Jack, explaining that Danny told her a "crazy woman in one of the rooms" was responsible for his injuries. Jack investigates Room 237 and encounters a ghost named Lorraine as a young naked woman in the bathroom, having a bath who comes out and kisses him. During that kiss, she then morphed into a rather old rotting woman who chases Jack out, cackling at his infidelity. Jack tells Wendy he saw nothing. Wendy and Jack argue about whether Danny should be removed from the hotel and Jack returns to the Gold Room, now filled with ghosts having a costume party. Here, he meets who he believes is the ghost of the previous caretaker, Grady (Philip Stone), who tells Jack that he has to "correct" his wife and child. Later, Jack sabotages the hotel's two-way radio by removing capacitors from its main circuit board, and removing the fuel injection manifold from the Snowcat, cutting off communication and access to the outside world.
Meanwhile, in Florida, Hallorann gets a premonition that something is wrong at the hotel and takes a flight back to Colorado to investigate. Danny starts calling out the word "redrum" frantically and goes into a trance, now referring to himself as "Tony." Wendy discovers Jack's typewriter and that he has been typing endless pages of a repetitive manuscript "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" formatted in various styles. Horrified, she confronts Jack, but he attacks her before she knocks him unconscious with a baseball bat and locks him in a kitchen pantry. Jack converses through the door with Grady, who then unlocks the door, releasing him.
Danny has written "REDRUM" in lipstick on the door of Wendy’s bedroom, which is "MURDER" spelled backwards as seen from a mirror. At that moment, Jack, armed with a fire axe, begins to chop through the door leading to his family's living quarters. In a frantic maneuver, Wendy sends Danny out through the bathroom window but is unable fit through it herself. Jack then starts chopping down the bathroom door with the axe and leers through the hole he has made, yelling the iconic "Here's Johnny!" line, but retreats after Wendy slashes his hand with a butcher knife. Hearing the engine of a Snowcat that Halloran has borrowed to get up the mountain, Jack leaves the room and begins to wander about the hotel, ambushing and killing Hallorann with the axe in the lobby. Jack then pursues Danny into the hedge maze by following his footprints, but is misled when Danny manages to walk backwards in his own tracks and leaps behind a corner, covering his tracks with snow. Wendy and Danny escape in Hallorann's snowcat while Jack slowly freezes to death in the hedge maze.
In the final scene, the camera slowly zooms in on an old photograph taken at the hotel on July 4, 1921 as Midnight, the Stars, and You is played through the hallways. A smiling Jack Torrance is at the front of the crowd of revelers, in which it is revealed in a documentary that it is an old incarnation of Jack.
Characters[]
- Jack Torrance — The disturbed winter caretaker of the Overlook Hotel
- Wendy Torrance — His wife
- Danny Torrance — Their son
- Tony — Danny's imaginary friend who warns him not to go to the Overlook
- Dick Hallorann — A cook at the Overlook hotel who has the shining.
- Delbert Grady — A previous caretaker who killed his family and himself, and whose ghost urges Jack to do the same.
- Stuart Ullman — The manager of the Overlook Hotel. Unlike the book, he is more friendlier and not snobby or rude.
- Lorraine Massey — One of the most violent and frightening ghosts of the hotel. She lures Danny to Room 237 and strangles him.
- Bill Watson — The season caretaker of the Overlook Hotel. His character is completely changed from the book. He's thin, has manners and is more friendly but is also very quiet.
- Lloyd the Bartender — The ghostly bartender of The Gold Ballroom. He serves Jack a drink at the party.
- Suzie — Stuart Ullman's secretary. Her role in the movie is very minor. She brings Danny back to his parents when he was looking for them.
- Nurse — The nurse who comes to Danny's house to examine him at his house after he passes out.
Trivia[]
- Danny's middle name is Anthony; his imaginary friend's name is Tony.
- Dick Hallorann appears in a flashback scene in Stephen King's novel It.
- Stephen King himself despised Kubrick's version of his novel, and made a miniseries with his original concepts.
- The Grady twins from the film appeared in pony forms in the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic IDW comic book The Return of Queen Chrysalis, in one of the doors in Queen Chrysalis' castle. Rainbow Dash opens their door and they appeared staring at her, similarly to the movie.
- The Castle Rock (TV Series) introduces a character named Jackie Torrance who appears to be Jack Torrance's niece. Curiously however, Jackie refers to Jack having used an axe rather than a roque mallet as in the novel. This seems to hint that the movie's events happened in the continuity of the series.
- In the novel The Outsider, Holly Gibney mentions having watched The Shining and says that she prefers Kubrick's other film Paths of Glory.
- In the novel The Institute, Luke Ellis is reminded of "twins in some old horror movie" when he sees the young twin girls Gerda and Greta; this is very likely a reference to The Shining.