A few thoughts about The Shining

I haven't finished The Shining as of yet. I've been reading it during my lunch break at work, while watching the HBO mini-series, Deadwood, on disc. A review of Deadwood is coming up next.

I've definitely been taking my time with The Shining. I usually only get about fifteen pages read on my lunch break at work. I've been so exhausted by the time I get home in the afternoon, I've done little in the way or reading. I only answer my e-mails and check my e-book ratings on Amazon. I then wrap a blanket around me and sit on the couch, watching two or three espisodes of Deadwood at a time. If you love westerns, this series is very addictive. Anyway, I finished Deadwood a few days ago and then watched the Stanley Kubrick version of The Shining while I was still reading the novel.

Here's some personal observations on my part about the film and the book. The first is that Mick Garris' TV mini-series is much closer in following the novel than the theatrical film does. I think had Mick been able to do a four hour movie based on the novel, he would have scared the bejesus out of everyone. CBS gave him and King the necessary time for the mini-series, but put definite restrictions on them with regards to what could be shown on television and what couldn't. Stanley Kubrick didn't have this problem per se with the film. The problem this genius had (and, yes, Kubrick was a genius within the movie industry) was that he couldn't understand horror of the make-believed kind. He had no problem with the husband/father going over the bend and killing his family in a fit of rage, but he had a difficult time dealing with King's novel and the evil of the hotel. Had Kubrick been able to grasp the concept of fictional horror, I think he might have made one-hell-of-a-scary film...maybe even a classic horror film that stood on its own on opening weekend.

Some things I liked and didn't like about the film. I loved the hotel Kubrick used as the Overlook Hotel. The Timberline Lodge in Oregon has a much more haunting look to it, especially during the winter, than the Stanley Hotel does in the mini-series. That's just my own opinion, but I can see a hotel that looks like that being filled with decades of evil energy from the guests who have stayed within its rooms.

The actor playing Mr. Ullman (Barry Nelson) in the film is a much nicer gentleman than the character in the book. Elliot Gould, who plays Mr. Ullman in the tv mini-series, captures the personality of Mr. Ullman more perfectly. Let's face it, Ullman is a snob and a prick of the worse sort, but he loves the hotel and simply doesn't think Jack Torrance is the right person to take care of it during the winter time, but he has to follow his orders and hire him. Here's another thing that's totally different between the book and the movie versions. The novel goes into the relationship between Jack and Al Shockly (the man who gets him the job)in greater detail, which is important to the book but not so much to the movies.

As I stated in an earlier posting, Jack Nicholson plays the role of Jack Torrance slightly off kilter at the beginning, starting with the car ride to the Overlook with his family, rather than building up to it as the evil of the hotel gradually takes over his mind. Once the character is taken over by the Overlook, Jack Nicholson does an Academy Award-winning job of playing crazy. This brings me to a couple of the most famous scenes in the film. There's the small one where Jack tells his wife, Wendy, to stay out of the lobby when he's working, acting as though he's about to kill her right then and there. Then, there's the scence where Wendy discovers that her husband's manuscript is nothing more than page after page of "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" that's written in various formats on the typewriting paper. Jack sneaks up behind her and wants to know how she likes it. This leads into the staircase scene where Wendy is backing up the stairs, swinging a baseball bat at Jack, who keeps on telling her that she's the light of his life and he's not going to harm her...he's only going to take the bat and bash her fucking brains in. That is one fantastic scene and Nicholson is truly frightening! Next is the scene where Jack is locked in the dry food storage room. He's trying to talk Wendy into letting him out. We can see the craziness on his face, but she can't. Still, it looks almost as if Shelley Duvall is about to cave in to his demands. Rebecca De Mornay in the mini-series would have told him, "Hell, no, I'm not letting you out, you crazy son of a bitch." Probably the most famous scene in the movie is when Jack does get out and starts chopping down the door to their bedroom upstairs to get at his wife and son with an axe. The famous lines spoken by Jack Nicholson ("Wendy, I'm home!" and "Here's Johnny!") in this scene were adlibbed after dozens and dozens of takes by Kubrick. The final scene, of course, is Jack chasing his son through the maze and shouting crazily at him--"Danny! I'm right behind you!". I would have been running like hell, too.

Like the majority of people who saw the film, I didn't like Shelley Duvall in the role of Wendy Torrance. She wasn't right for the part, and that mistake falls squarely on Kubrick's shoulders and those of the casting director. Shelley plays the part the way Kubrick wanted her to and for all its worth, but the performance falls flat. Like I said in a previous posting, by the middle of the film, I was hoping Jack would kill her and the kid. I didn't feel that way with Rebecca De Mornay. She gave the character more strength and cunningness in her will to survive the Overlook Hotel. She was also pretty and seemed like the perfect wife for Steve Weber in the role of Jack Torrance. I couldn't see Shelley Duvall and Jack Nicholson getting married, unless he was drunk as a shunk at the time. That isn't to put Shelley Duvall down as a person or actress, but only her role in The Shining.

I did, however, like Scatman Crothers as Dick Halloran, Joe Turkel as Lloyd the bartender, and Philip Stone as Delbert Grady. In the novel (I'm only about 277 pages into it right now) you know that everything is happening in Jack's mind when he goes into the Colorado Lounge and orders a drink from Lloyd. In the movie, the characters of Lloyd and Delbert could be spirits that the house has brought back to life to entice Jack's character to subcumb to their desires of getting Danny.

After three decades, I still consider The Shining to be the scariest novel I've ever read. I still get caught up in King's descriptions of the characters, their interaction with each other, and the hotel. For me, the author makes everything seem so real and frightening. Stephen King has often stated in interviews that if Carrie hadn't sold to Doubleday, he might have quit writing. Thank God he didn't. The world would've missed one of the greatest horror novels of all time and one of the finest storytellers of the 20th Century. When I finish The Shining in another week or so, I'll do a short review of it.