THE SHINING (1980)
Starring Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall
At first, the idea of the great Kubrick directing a movie based on a work by Stephen King seemed like a dream come true.
The two men were the absolute best at their crafts. Kubrick hired two of the best actors in the world—Nicholson and Duvall—to play the parent that moves into a secluded hotel as house-sitters for the winter.
Naturally
the hotel turns out to be haunted and Nicholson goes totally
insane, gets an axe and tries to hack up his family.
It' almost a masterpiece. King hated the film, feeling it betrayed his original work, but fans liked Nicholson's over-the-top performance, the eerie score by Wendy Carlos (who was named "Walter" before his sex change operation), and the very scary sequences featuring a pair of twin girl ghosts who had been hacked to pieces by one of the hotel's previous winter managers.
There's the usual haunted house fare in this flick: an ocean of blood streaming out of an elevator, a party featuring an army of spirits and, of course, a dad going completely insane. It's done with more style and substance by Kubrick.
But, in the end, "The Shining" is no masterpiece. It's too conscious of itself, too pretentious. Ultimately, the best horror films are aware that they're really B-movies, no matter how fat their budgets are.
Roman Polanski seemed to know this when he crafted "Rosemary's Baby," arguably the greatest terror flick of all time. Despite having the best actors and flawless direction, it still had a dark sense of humor. Polanski knew it was schlock, no matter how good a filmmaker he was.
It's this black comic sense that is lacking from "The Shining," preventing it from being a horror classic in the same league as "Rosemary," "Halloween" or "The Exorcist."
One would expect better from Kubrick. His film simply wasn't totally original. A great movie, yes, but its haunted house conventions had been used time and time again in countless movies.
All of this prevents "The Shining" from being a classic. That's not to say, however, that it isn't a terrifying film and a wonderful film.
But I can understand why King became so dissatisfied that he actually made "The Shining" into a 1997 miniseries.
Kubrick's film was still superior to that series, which failed to garner very high ratings. It was through Kubrick that terms like "Redrum" Nicholson's "Heeeere's Johnny" line (which he tells his wife after breaking a hole through a door with an axe) became a part of popular consciousness.
But Kubrick's "Shining" isn't perfect—which is saying a lot, given that it was directed by the man who gave us "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "A Clockwork Orange."
"The Shining" should have been a masterpiece, but in my view, "Pet Semetary" turned out to be a better horror film.
