Andrew Jones
IT is regarded by many as one of the greatest films ever made and certainly one of the most frightening – a masterpiece of mounting dread. Indeed, it was scientifically “proven” to be the perfect horror film by King’s College London researchers in 2004. True or not, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, which went on general release 40 years ago this month, is one of only a handful of films of any genre – let alone a horror film – to have made such an indelible mark on popular culture.
It has been parodied on everything from The Simpsons to sketch shows to adverts – a commercial for a soft drink screened during this year’s Super Bowl featured Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston recreating key scenes from the movie.
There was a whole documentary devoted to the wildly differing theories about its “real” meaning. Last year, there was a long-awaited sequel, Doctor Sleep, the final act of which pays an elaborate tribute to Kubrick’s film.
And the year before, Ready Player One, directed by Steven Spielberg, a friend of the late Kubrick, included an entire sequence set in the world of The Shining. Even the Toy Story films contain sly references to it.
It’s become so iconic, that certain shots are familiar even to people who have never seen the movie.
Everyone knows the “Here’s Johnny!” scene as Jack Nicholson bursts through a bathroom door with an axe; or the elevator doors opening as a torrent of blood cascades out; or the ghostly twin girls in the hotel corridor.
When he decided in 1976 that he wanted to shoot a horror film, Kubrick was already a revered director having made, among others,
Dr Strangelove, 2001: A
Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange. He had admired Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist, both film adaptations of bestsellers, and legend has it he bought a large selection of horror novels and sat in his office reading them.
If a book didn’t grip him within the first couple of pages, he’d fling it across the room and his secretary would hear it thud against the wall. Thud, thud, thud, as he worked his way through the diminishing pile.
Then suddenly, everything went quiet. The secretary went into the director’s office to find him engrossed in an early proof of Stephen King’s The Shining.
Although he apparently enjoyed the novel, having bought the movie rights, he rejected King’s screenplay and produced his own with the American novelist Diane Johnson.
It tells how aspiring writer Jack Torrance (Nicholson) accepts a job as a winter caretaker at the isolated, snowbound Overlook Hotel in the Rockies and moves in with wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and their young son Danny (Danny Lloyd).
The little boy is psychic and, as he cycles around the huge, empty hotel on his tricycle, sees ghosts linked to its violent past.
Jack sets to work on his book but struggles to concentrate. His mind is gradually unravelling and eventually he snaps and attempts to kill his wife and child.
Despite all this, Kubrick told Nicholson he
‘The stress was so great it made Shelley Duvall ill. She had panic attacks, her hair fell out’
saw it as an “optimistic” story. “How so?” asked the confused actor. It has ghosts in it and anything that suggests that there’s anything after death has to be optimistic, the director said.
Filming on a huge set built at Elstree Studios was meant to take 17 weeks but actually lasted from May 1978 to April 1979, almost a year.
KUBRICK was a micromanaging perfectionist who insisted on take after take. According to Guinness World Records: “The most retakes for one scene with dialogue is 148, and was achieved by the ‘shine’ scene during the filming of The Shining.”
The scene was a relatively simple one involving Scatman Crothers (playing Dick Hallorann) discussing Danny’s psychic abilities with the boy.
A long, physically exhausting sequence in which Wendy fends off the insane Jack with a baseball bat while backing up a flight of stairs was filmed 127 times.
Duvall’s performance is remarkable and is key to The Shining’s success. No one has ever played pure, unadulterated terror like she did in that movie, but the gruelling shoot took its toll.
She said filming the baseball bat scene was “one of the worst days of my life”.
Unusually, the film was shot in chronological order – movies are normally shot out of sequence and then stitched together later – and Kubrick became ever more nasty to Duvall as filming progressed in order to make her increasingly on edge, as the role demanded.
A documentary by Kubrick’s daughter, Vivian, about the making of The Shining shows the director publicly berating Duvall on several occasions.
The stress was so great that it made the actress ill. She had panic attacks. Clumps of her hair fell out.
“For a person so charming and so likeable – indeed lovable – he can do some pretty cruel things when filming,” Duvall said of Kubrick. “He pushed me and it hurt and I resented him for it.”
Even so, she was proud of her performance and claimed not to regret the experience – but she also said she wouldn’t want to go through it again. Some felt the actress never fully got over it. It seems doubtful such