Max’s Drive-In Movie – The Shining

The Shining

Jack Nicholson on Stanley Kubrick: Everyone pretty much acknowledges that he’s the man and I still feel that underates him. 

This movie keeps you coming back. If you ask 15 people on what the movie meant…you would get 15 different answers. The movie is so much more than the quoted lines like REDRUM and Here’s Johnny! Every time I watch it I get something different out of it. This won’t be the last Kubrick movie I feature on here. 

In 2016 or so…we saw this movie on the big screen on Halloween and it changed the movie completely for me. It made me appreciate it more than I did and that is saying a lot. The film drips with ambiguity. The Shining has to be one of the most dissected movies ever filmed. The cast was absolutely perfect. I also connect to the movie in different ways. It was released in 1980 and they filmed it in 1978 and 1979 and the hotel reminds me of that time so well.

Stanley Kubrick directed this movie and we see Jack Torrance slowly go insane and the drama builds throughout. There are no wasted scenes in The Shining…each scene has a purpose and it’s not wasted. The scenes are hard to explain. There is an open space of silence in many of them so you focus on what’s going on. The bathroom scene with Jack and Grady is careful and deliberate. Nothing else matters in the story except right now in each scene. 

Stephen King wrote the book but did not like Kubrick’s interpretation of it. Usually 9/10 times I’m a book guy…on this movie/book, I’m not. I liked Stanley’s vision for the movie over the book. Kubrick didn’t explain everything to you and it’s stronger because of that. You also get isolation, madness, and the supernatural, leaving viewers with many questions about the true nature of the Overlook Hotel.

I have read complaints about Nicholson’s performance being too far over the top.  I totally enjoyed his performance and I think Shelley Duvall is seriously underrated in this movie. I can’t imagine what she went through…she had to stay on edge and hysterical through half the movie. Danny Lloyd (5 years and turned 6 through filming) was great as Danny in the film. Kubrick kept Lloyd very reserved in the right spots and he doesn’t overact like some child actors do. The additional character actors fit their roles perfectly. Who would have thought Scatman Crothers would be cast in a movie like this? He was great at his role as was Philip Stone as Delbert Grady and Joe Turkel as Lloyd the Bartender. 

Now the music…it makes it. Very few films I’ve seen where the music flows with the dialog. In one scene featuring Jack and Danny sitting on a bed…the orchestration goes up with a question and falls with an answer. The atmospheric synthesizer they used in this movie and A Clockwork Orange adds to the movie greatly. When you are watching the film you feel isolated like Jack, Wendy, and Danny and the music again adds to that. 

The two scenes that still scare me when I see it in the movie? A simple scene really but when Wendy finds Jack’s novel she finds out what he’s been typing on a typewriter for a very long time. It sends chills up me when I see that. What a perfect way to show someone has gone insane without saying any dialogue. 

The other one is when Danny is riding his Big Wheel or Trike down the hallways and you hear the wheels changing from carpet to hardwood floors…what will be around the next corner? Then the twins appear…that gives me the creeps…forever and ever and ever. 

I’ve read a lot of Shining theories and all are all different. There are so many theories like… There were no ghosts at all, it was all in Jack’s head and what happened is what he wrote, it was all in Wendy’s head, the Hotel is really hell, it’s a reminder of the Holocaust, and even down to viewing the film forward and then backward. I think most (there are plenty more) of these are too far out there but that shows you what Kubrick built into this film…you WANT to watch it again and again. I watched it twice before writing this. 

Plot IMDB

A psychological horror film centered around the Torrance family: Jack (Jack Nicholson), his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall), and their son Danny (Danny Lloyd). The story follows them as they move into the isolated Overlook Hotel for the winter, where Jack takes a job as the hotel’s caretaker. The hotel’s eerie history, which includes murder and supernatural occurrences, begins to affect Jack, who is struggling with writer’s block and a history of alcoholism. Meanwhile, Danny, who has psychic abilities called “the shining,” starts experiencing terrifying visions of the hotel’s past, including the ghostly Grady twins and a river of blood flowing from an elevator.

As time passes, Jack descends into madness, influenced by the hotel’s malevolent forces. He becomes increasingly violent and erratic, eventually attempting to murder his family. The film culminates in a tense chase through the hotel’s hedge maze

Quotes:

  • Wendy Torrance: Well, I’m very confused, and I just need time to think things over!
  • Jack Torrance: You’ve had your whole fucking life to think things over, what good’s a few minutes more gonna do you now?

__________________________________________

  • Lloyd: Women: can’t live with them, can’t live without them.
  • Jack Torrance: Words of wisdom, Lloyd my man. Words of wisdom.

___________________________________________

  • Jack Torrance: Hi, Lloyd. Been away. Now, I’m back.
  • Lloyd: Good evening, Mr. Torrence. It’s good to see you.
  • Jack Torrance: It’s good to be back, Lloyd.
  • Lloyd: What’ll it be, sir?
  • Jack Torrance: Hair of the dog that bit me.
  • Lloyd: Bourbon on the rocks.
  • Jack Torrance: That’ll do ‘er!

I remember this trailer back in 1980…it’s one of the best trailers I’ve seen of any movie. Modern trailer makers should study this one.  

..,

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

77 thoughts on “Max’s Drive-In Movie – The Shining”

    1. It’s one that I watch on a yearly basis…I like open ended movies…to think what you want. Yea that scene is shocking.

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    1. Yes no doubt. “IT” didn’t go by the book enough and it needed to. This one left many of the key things out and I’m glad Kubrick did…there is still elements in there though… a mini series was made in 1997 that did go by the book…it doesn’t compare to this to me anyway.

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      1. I’m a King fan most of the time but his take on his own work just didn’t work. Little things, f’rinstance the Overlook is wooden in his version and whether it is ‘authentic’ or not it needs the solidity of stone to make it feel unmoveable and forever.

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      2. That is a great point. To me obbverse is that in the book everything is a little too spelled out….I love the mystery of Kubricks version of it.
        Now I was the opposite on IT…they didn’t go enough by the book for me.

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  8. I thought I better bite on this one Max. A film experience of a high order. You nailed it. I went and looked at some comments from an old take and found a few familiar faces and a bunch of very good takes. You are right, the film brings out some engaging dialogue. Madness is a very scary thing. You behave yourself down there or you could be in line for some “correction”

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    1. Thanks CB…I was surprised to hear that it wasn’t huge when it was released…that came afterward. I find myself embarrased that I keep looking for meanings in it but I just can’t help it. There is one thing I noticed and this gets me….maybe it’s common but I don’t think so. When you watch it again…notice that Jack will at least glance right into the camera on most every scene. None of the other actors do this…I put that in the review but cut it because it made it way too long. I wonder if this was on purpose or just him.
      Yea when Grady said “correction” it was about as cold as you can get.

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      1. We could discuss this one around and around. So much going on and most of it subtle till the shit hits the fan. Just the way Kubrick filmed it and set the tone. He was firing on all cylinders. He really did make it feel like the place was coming down on old Jack and family.
        Other than reading the book and being familiar with Stan, Stephen and Jacks work I got to see this as a clean slate. I love seeing and hearing things with no outside opinions. Big effect on my film watching experience. It still has that effect.
        ‘Cold” is the word for the whole film. Watching someone lose their mind is about as hopeless as it gets.

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      2. Cold is a perfect word to use for it…I keep coming back to it…I would say honestly I watch this at least once a year…this year…two times. His movies never have a tarantino feel…or loose…they are perfectly planned… and I like both styles.

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      4. There is one by him CB that I just saw not long ago…the entire movie takes place on a lifeboat…called Lifeboat and it’s fantastic. I love when whoever can make a story work in mostly one location…kinda like 12 Angry Men

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      5. I remember your comment on that film. He has so many. Im on a bit of a chronological trip with him. We’ll talk more on his films as we go. North by North West is an experience on the big screen like you mentioned.

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  9. A truly scary movie for me. Haven’t seen it for a long time. I would have to gear myself up mentally to watch it now. Congrats on watching it twice in close succession.

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    1. The movie fascinates me so much. I can quote many lines… he left it so open ended that you can think of so many scenarios that might have played out

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      2. Yep! I went to midnight screenings of the Rocky Horror Show…it tripped me out that people would repeat the dialogue all night.
        That is a good lineup though!

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  12. Nicholson is completely over the top flipped out of his mind batshit -eating-the-scenery wild eyed foam flecked gone down the road where there is no offramp crazy. And he makes it so unsettlingly believable. His performance makes the movie, but everyone is brilliant in it. Poor Shelley, these days she would have sued Kubrick’s ass for millions. He really put her through the wringer.

    (My movie loving daughter bought me a joke hotel keyring, Room 237. I use it to lock the woodshed now…😉)

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    1. Guess what I ordered last night? An Overlook Hotel keychain lol.
      Even the kid Danny Lloyd was really good for being 5-6 years old. A very calm kid…but yea Jack makes it and yes…he did treat her awful and told everyone to isolate her.

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      1. Uh oh- now with that keychain jangling in your jeans pocket I hope you don’t hit BuyMyCar.com and pick up a classic ’58 Fury- you might be putting too many bad things in a row. My advice- stick to the Opel.

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  13. I saw this film on opening night. The show was sold out and we sat in the front row (I never do that) and off to the side. It was an uncomfortable spot, for a movie that makes “uncomfortable” sound like luxury. I agree about the typescript scene. “How do you like it?”

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    1. I envy you for catching it that early. I want to ask you something about that. Opening nights around the US got an extra scene at the end of Danny and Wendy in the hospital. He decided against it and made everyone send it back and he cut it and burned the original ending. Do you remember that by chance…hell I know it’s been 44 years.
      This post would have been twice as long but I had to chop it up…I went on and on because you could talk about this movie on so many levels.

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      1. I don’t remember that…but I don’t know if it had an initial wide release, or if opening night here would have been after the edit. There were only so many prints made and we weren’t usually the first place to get one.

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      2. Yea it might have only been for New York or something like that. But that piece of film is gone…only a photograph or two remains. Some people thought they were going crazy when they saw the movie later on…on VHS when it wasn’t in there.

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  15. “The Shining” perhaps is my favorite Jack Nichelson movie, together with “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Nichelson acts the part of Jack so well that you really wonder whether he’s actually gone mad. I also like Shelley Duvall who actually passed away just recently at the age of 75. Nichelson is now 87.

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  16. “Wendy, I’m home”, the sentence slams like an axe blow in a door. As you may know, I went back to the Overlook myself this summer. First to pay tribute to the late Shelley Duvall, then for the pleasure of getting lost again in the insane labyrinth traced by Stanley Kubrick. The winding road that leads to it could just as easily lead me to “Eyes Wide Shut”.
    Bravo for this excellent article which lets a current of cold air pass between the lines.

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    1. Thank you so much…that means a lot to me. I could have written it 3 times as long. The movie is the ultimate rewatcher…
      I must have missed that one…but I want to see that and The Bond movie you reviewed…

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  18. A film that scared the … out of me the first time, and once was enough. I wouldn’t ever want to get to a place where I was desensitized to it. I do remember the isolation, the silence in the cavernous, shadowy hotel, and those twins at the end of the hall as the worst/most unnerving to me.

    I think there have been quite a few nods to this film over the years, not all scary. There was an episode of Psych with some twins but they ended up being harmless. The parodies help dispell the terror for me.

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    1. Parodies do help fight that fear. This one…and I won’t go in it because you don’t want to know…but has so many strange things to it….that I would guess it’s the most written about movie ever…as far as what it meant.

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      2. I like that one and Kubrick’s daughter made one while they were shooting it…but Room 237 was great.
        Shelly Duvall got treated like crap on this film.

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      3. UGH sorry to hear it about Shelly. I have read repeatedly how directors manipulated actors to get the effect they wanted on film. Alfred Hitchcock was well known for doing it. I read about how Ridley Scott did it on the first Alien movie. Tarantino has had some questionable practices also. Uma Thurman got blacklisted after she spoke up about it.

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      4. Yea it’s not right. You saw Shelley’s character in that movie. She is on the edge all of the time. He told the staff not to sympathize with her…so it helped get her to that point….not that I agree with that. But she said it improved her acting…which it probably did but at what cost?

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      5. Of course she would say that, as she takes on the “sin” of the act. We can only hope the directors suffered some karma as a result of their choices to harm others to make their movies better.

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      8. You are fine…yea I watched that last week while getting ready for this…I had it at least double the length but cut it down.

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      10. It’s very interesting….I know you don’t want to but…you can go down the rabbit hole with one question on YouTube. “What does the Shining mean?”
        You would not believe the videos made about it…sorry to drag on…but one is very interesting. Jack glances into the camera…breaking the 4th wall in every scene…it’s just a glance…no other actors did that… it makes you uneasy watching him.

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      11. I thought the kid had “the shining” and I actually wondered why they would name it that as that’s not the focal point of the movie (imo.) Like my story last week about “the gift” I see the shining like that. What they meant by it is another matter.

        Max, after you telling me that, about Jack breaking the 4th wall in every scene, I will not be watching it again! lol

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  19. p.s. Kubrick is one of my favorite directors and I’ve seen most of his movies. They’re brilliant each in their own way. With The Shining, I think he succeeded too well. Can’t blame the man for that.

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  20. I saw The Shining in a theater when it came out, and liked it well enough. Though I was a big fan of Jack Nicholson (loved him in Five Easy Pieces, Chinatown and Terms of Endearment), I too felt his performance was a bit over the top. Also, I’d previously read King’s novel, which I though was superior to the film, so as is often the case when I’ve first read the book then later saw the movie, the film was a bit of a disappointment for me.

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      2. The All Work and No Play part…was brilliant because it showed him going insane without any diologue or anything. I agree with teh cinematography.

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