#4: The Shining (1980)

"Hello Danny. Come and play with us. Come and play with us, Danny. Forever . . . and ever . . . and ever . . . "

Struggling author and recovering alcoholic Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) has recently accepted the position of winter caretaker at the mountain resort Overlook Hotel, despite learning that the previous caretaker went mad and killed his wife and two daughters with an axe before committing suicide via shotgun. Joining him will be his wife (Shelley Duvall as Wendy) and son, Danny (Danny Lloyd), an odd youngster who often speaks through his imaginary friend, Tony.

Arriving at the Overlook the family is introduced to the hotel's chef, Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers), who surprises Danny by speaking to him telepathically. When alone with the boy he explains that some people possess what he calls "shining," and Danny is one of them. He also warns Danny that the Overlook itself has gained a shining of its own, a sort of accumulated sentience made up of all of the memories created there . . . not all of which are good.

Soon Jack, Wendy, and Danny are cut off from the outside world by the harsh weather and face a long winter alone . . . with the hotel.

The Shining, based on the 1977 novel of the same name by Stephen King, is a haunted house story, and bears a lot of resemblance to the plot of The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (later turned into the 1963 film The Haunting by Robert Wise, check it out!) But what a haunted house! An entire hotel, built on an indian burial ground, with a history of murders, suicides, gangland slayings, and stocked with a ghostly bartender, a surreal 1920's new year's eve party, rivers of blood gushing out of elevator shafts, corpses in bathtubs, and, of course, a creepy pair of twins. Yeesh! How the heck did Danny ever get to sleep at night?

Psychic kids have become such a standard feature of horror films that their presence hardly needs to be explained anymore. Consider, for instance, the Ring, which had not one but two psychic children, both of which possessing considerable powers whose origins are completely unexplored. Often these supernatural children are, in fact, the antagonists of horror films, such as the omnipotent Anthony Fremont from The Twilight Zone or the blonde-haired tykes in 1960's Village of the Damned . . . but sometimes these extrasensory children serve as helpful guides, or as amateur therapists for the dead, such as in The Sixth Sense and Stir of Echoes (isn't it odd that the other psychic in this film is also an african american? I would call foul on Stir of Echoes, but it's based on a novel that came out in 1958, so it's possible that it's Stephen King who's the thief here.)

Here, Danny serves as the film's MacGuffin ("a plot element that catches the viewers' attention or drives the plot of a work of fiction"), a powerful psychic that Wendy wants to protect and that the hotel wants to absorb (via murder) in order to become more powerful. Because the hotel itself can't deal physical harm, it exerts all of its influence on the already unstable Jack Torrence, who is clearly not the kind of guy you want to get locked up with for five months, ghosts or no ghosts. Nicholson, famous for playing completely unrestrained characters, seems born for the part. You also have to give a lot of credit to Shelley Duvall for not getting lost amidst the proceedings . . . whatever happened to her? Besides being in Popeye I mean . . .

The sense of isolation is, of course, one of the film's great strengths, but, unlike John Carpenter's The Thing, director Stanley Kubrick was given an entire hotel to play with, with seemingly endless maze-like corridors and false turns (mirrored, of course, by the hedge maze that features prominently in the film's finale.) The next time you watch it, try to make sense of the layout of the place- the hotel's rooms often have windows that can't possibly be present, or are much larger than they could possibly be given the exterior shots.

It's also interesting to note that Stephen King didn't care for this film, which greatly deviates from the ending of the novel. I can understand his feelings, but comparing the two, the Shining is the far better piece of art. I'd frankly be honored to have something I created turned into a film this hauntingly beautiful- but perhaps I'll someday regret these words.

Check back tomorrow for #3!