The Shining - 1980

Warner Bros. Pictures, Hawk Films, Peregrine

Directed by Stanley Kubrick

MY 100TH POST! Cast:

• Jack Torrance – Jack Nicholson
• Wendy Torrance – Shelly Duvall
• Danny Torrance – Danny Lloyd
• Dick Halloran – Scatman Crothers
• Stuart Ullman – Barry Newman
• Delbert Grady – Phillip Stone
• Lloyd the Bartender – Joe Turkel

Story: Jack Torrance is a writer looking for a place where he can be alone to work on his novel. The Overlook hotel seems like the ideal location. The Overlook is located high in the mountains in Colorado, and when the winter snows set in, the roads become impassable. The hotel ownership hires one man to stay for the winter, doing odd repairs and rotating the heat to prevent mother nature from taking a hold while the place is unoccupied. But when Jack, his wife Wendy, and their son Danny move in, strange things begin to happen. Danny Torrance has some psychic powers, and the spirits at the Overlook are determined to contact him and his folks to make them permanent guests of the Overlook.

Review: Combine director Stanley Kubrick with writer Stephen King and the acting talents of Jack Nicholson and Joe Turkel, and you have one of the all time classic horror films of the modern age. This thriller is subtle and nearly misleading as we open. Long shots of open highways winding through incredibly beautiful scenery, incredibly appointed rooms with lush beauty, and some small background moments to give you a little insight into the characters. But once the preliminaries are over, the film begins to step up the pace. Little Danny is having visions, as is Jack, and the characters are portrayed like all the characters in King's books...unremarkable until affected by the evil that is the Overlook. Nicholson is incredibly powerful as Torrance, a man with little moral background, a recovering alcoholic and child abuser who has already injured his son. Slowly but surely he is drawn into the Overlooks plans through the manipulations of Lloyd the Bartender, exceptionally portrayed by Joe Turkel. While Shelly Duvall's character is two dimensional and somewhat weak, she nonetheless manages to pick up the gauntlet of the challenge and we witness a transformation from the weak-willed, battered wife to a mother intent on saving her child. While the MPAA did not have the rating system in place at the time, this film would be an should be rated R for language, brief nudity, and scenes of horror and violence. Definitely collectible, they will be talking about this film for years to come as one of Nicholson and Kubrick's greatest achievements.