The Shining (1980)

A family heads to an isolated hotel for the winter where an evil and spiritual presence influences the father into violence, while his psychic son sees horrific forebodings from the past and of the future.

Director:

Stanley Kubrick

Writers:

Stephen King (novel), Stanley Kubrick (screenplay)

Stars:

Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd

Top Rated Movies #58 | 3 wins & 5 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Jack Nicholson	...	Jack Torrance
Shelley Duvall	...	Wendy Torrance
Danny Lloyd	...	Danny Torrance
Scatman Crothers	...	Dick Hallorann
Barry Nelson	...	Stuart Ullman
Philip Stone	...	Delbert Grady
Joe Turkel	...	Lloyd the Bartender
Anne Jackson	...	Doctor
Tony Burton	...	Larry Durkin
Lia Beldam	...	Young Woman in Bath
Billie Gibson	...	Old Woman in Bath
Barry Dennen	...	Bill Watson
David Baxt	...	Forest Ranger #1
Manning Redwood	...	Forest Ranger #2
Lisa Burns	...	Grady Daughter

Storyline

Signing a contract, Jack Torrance, a normal writer and former teacher agrees to take care of a hotel which has a long, violent past that puts everyone in the hotel in a nervous situation. While Jack slowly gets more violent and angry of his life, his son, Danny, tries to use a special talent, the "Shining", to inform the people outside about whatever that is going on in the hotel.

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Plot Keywords:

haunted hotel | identical twins | breaking down a door | imaginary friend | labyrinth | 

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Taglines:

He came as the caretaker, but this hotel had its own guardians - who'd been there a long time

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Genres:

Drama | Horror

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Certificate:

R

Details

Official Sites:

Official Facebook

Country:

USA UK

Language:

English

Release Date:

23 May 1980 (USA)

Also Known As:

Shining

Filming Locations:

Epcot Center, Walt Disney World, Lake Buena Vista, Florida, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$19,000,000 (estimated)

Gross:

SEK 6,140,088 (Sweden)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Warner Bros., Hawk Films, Peregrine

Technical Specs

Runtime:

144 min (cut) 119 min (cut) (European) 146 min (original)

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The ghost of an injured guest says "Great party, isn't it?" In the book, the ghost of Horace Derwent, the late owner of the Overlook, says this to Wendy and Danny. The miniseries returns the line to Derwent. He reappears in Doctor Sleep and says the exact same thing and kills a member of The True Knot, a group of psychic vampires.

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Goofs

When Wendy visits Jack in the lobby while he is typing (where he gets very agitated that she has interrupted him, approx. 45 minutes into the film) he rips the current page from the typewriter and never reloads a new one; when she walks away and he resumes typing, (with no breaks in the dialogue/action) there is a new page already loaded.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Jack Torrance: Hi, I've got an appointment with Mr. Ullman. My name is Jack Torrance.

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Crazy Credits

After the 146 minute version of the film was met with poor reviews and weak box office in the US, Stanley Kubrick re-edited the film for European release, removing 24 minutes of footage. Included in the removed footage were the entire performances of Anne Jackson as the Doctor and Tony Burton as Larry. However, both Jackson and Burton's names were still listed in the opening credits despite them no longer appearing in the film.

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Connections

Referenced in Hellraiser (1987)

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Soundtracks

Home (When Shadows Fall)
(uncredited)
Written by Peter Van Steeden, Geoffrey Clarkson and Harry Clarkson
Performed by Henry Hall and the Gleneagles Hotel Band

User Reviews

Jack Torrance Meets David Bowman

What can I say about the scariest movie I have ever seen that has not already been said by others more articulate than yours truly? Do not view this film expecting to see a screen version of the Stephen King novel. Rather, this is a Stanley Kubrick film, and to fully appreciate it one should judge it within the context of Kubrick's entire body of work as a serious filmmaker. Thematically, THE SHINING relates most closely to 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, though flourishes of PATHS OF GLORY, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and BARRY LYNDON do manage to figure prominently in the film's overall technique.

In a nutshell (no pun intended), Jack Nicholson and Shelly Duvall co-star with Oregon's Timberline Lodge - enlisted to portray the exterior of the Overlook Hotel - in a story that appears on the surface to be about ghosts and insanity, but deals with issues of child abuse, immortality and duality.

What the film might lack initially in terms of coherence is more than made up for in technique. Garrett Brown (the male voice in those old Molson Golden commercials), inventor of the Steadicam, chases young Danny Lloyd through hotel corridors and an amazing snow maze, providing magic-carpet-ride fluidity to scenes that ten years earlier would have been impossible to accomplish. If the film starts off too slow, remember who the director is. This man likes to take his time, and the results are well worth it: incredible aerial shots of the Overlook Hotel; horrific Diane Arbus-inspired twins staring directly at us; portentous room 237 and its treasure trove of terrible secrets; elevators that gush rivers of blood in slow-motion; Jack Torrance's immortality found via the hotel (akin to David Bowman's journey through the Space Gate); and some of the best use of pre-existing music ever assembled for a motion picture.

It would take a book to examine and defend the film's strong points and drawbacks. If you've never seen it, you owe it to yourself to watch it alone with the lights off, with no interruptions, and make sure that it's raining. This is a cinematic experience that changed my life at the age of 14. Makes a great double feature with Robert Wise's 1963 thriller THE HAUNTING.