The Shining (1980)

In Stanley Kubrick's horror classic - it was an intense, epic, gothic horror film and haunted house masterpiece - a beautiful, stylish work that distanced itself from the blood-letting and gore of most modern films in the horror genre. The film's plot had very little resemblance to its source - science-fiction/horror author Stephen King's 1977 best-selling novel (his third novel under his own name) by the same name.

In the film's plot, while serving as an off-season caretaker of an isolated, snowbound resort (the Overlook) with his family: wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and son Danny (Danny Lloyd), aspiring writer Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) went mad, due to the hotel's bloody and historic past. The film's title referred to the extra-sensory, paranormal psychic abilities possessed by the Overlook Hotel's head cook Hallorann (Scatman Crothers) and the young boy.

There were two versions of the film: a longer US theatrical version that was 144 minutes in length (the most commonly-viewed version), while the European version was 119 minutes in length. Throughout the film, white text on black sub-titles punctuated the chapters to briefly introduce each major sequence.

• in the film's opening title credits sequence without narration or commentary, an aerial camera followed a yellow VW driving toward a mountainous Colorado resort - the sprawling and soon-to-be snowbound Overlook Hotel

Overlook Hotel in the Colorado Rockies

Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) During His Interview to be the Overlook Hotel's Winter Caretaker

• "The Interview" - Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) entered the Overlook's palatial lobby inquiring about his interview-appointment with General Manager Mr. Stuart Ullman (Barry Nelson); an ex-school teacher from Vermont, aspiring novelist Jack lived with his family in Boulder, CO - with passive, skinny, black-haired wife "Wendy" Winifred (Shelley Duvall) and seven year-old son Danny (Danny Lloyd); Jack was applying to be the caretaker of the hotel during the upcoming winter with his family, from November to May during the 6 months of winter; Jack claimed he was unperturbed by the idea of retreating into a secluded world for a long period of time
• Ullman revealed the hotel's disturbing, murderous, misogynistic history in 1970 with a past caretaker named Charles Grady who went crazy with "cabin fever" and killed his family with an axe: "Kind of claustrophobic reaction which can occur when people are shut in together over long periods of time" - a foreshadowing
• meanwhile, back in the Torrance home's bathroom, Danny received clairvoyant, visionary messages (his gift of "shining") from his make-believe playmate "Tony" about his father receiving the job; he had a terrifying, bloody, psychic vision of the past [was the vision real or only illusion?] - torrential waves of deep-red blood silently splashed from the double-doors of an elevator in the hotel's lobby; also in Danny's frightening vision, a pair of young, mannequin-like twin girls (Lisa and Louise Burns) each wearing a blue party dress, held hands in a hallway (Were they Grady's murdered daughters?); a doctor diagnosed that Danny's visions and psychic powers developed as a reaction of the boy's fervent imagination and his ex-alcoholic father's abuse and mistreatment

Danny's Clairvoyant "Shining" Visions
The Hotel's Bloody Elevator	The Twin Girls in the Hotel's Hallway	Danny's Horrified Reaction

• on "Closing Day," the family's car made its serpentine way to the hotel for the winter - it was the film's second drive up to The Overlook; on the journey, the family discussed the historic Donner Party accident - a trapped and doomed group of early pioneers; upon their arrival as the hotel was being closed up, Wendy and Jack were taken by Ullman on an interior and exterior tour of the Overlook; in its vast Colorado Lounge, he told them: ("This old place has had an illustrious past. In its hey-day, it was one of the stopping places for the jetset, even before anybody knew what a jetset was. We had four presidents who stayed here. Lots of movie stars...all the best people"); as Danny played darts in the Game Room by himself and was again startled by an hallucination of the two twin girls, his parents were also shown their staff apartment quarters

Danny's Vision of The Twins in the Game Room

Danny's Clairvoyant Experience with Hallorann in the Kitchen's Storeroom

The Two Discussing That They Shared "Shining" Powers

• outside, Ullman showed them the adjoining Overlook Hedge Maze with 13 foot high walls; he also described the hotel's history, and how the hotel's site was supposedly located on an Indian burial ground; Wendy and Danny received a personal tour of the extensive kitchen by the friendly, black Head Chef Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers); they were shown the gigantic freezer of food wealth, TV-commercially advertised products and an abundance of typically American meats, and a storeroom with a vast quantity of dry goods and canned goods
• Hallorann communicated clairvoyantly and telepathically with Danny - it was their first "shining" experience of psychic kinship when Danny heard him ask: "How'd you like some ice cream, Doc?"; they both realized that the two had similar psychic powers of clairvoyance and telepathy - a mysterious phenomenon of ESP that Hallorann's grandmother called "the Shining"; young Danny was advised about his self-protective power, and when he asked about Room 237, he was strongly warned to stay out of Room 237
• "A Month Later," in a lengthy Steadicam tracking shot, Danny pedaled his low-riding, sturdy blue tricycle in a complete circuit around the ground floor of the hotel; the family seemed to have adjusted, and Jack (during breakfast in bed) told Wendy: "When I came up here for my interview, it was as though I had been here before"

Wendy and Danny in the Hedge Maze

Jack's God's Eye View of Hedge Maze

Wendy and Danny Spotted in the Center of Maze

• Jack had set up his typewriter (with a blank piece of paper) in the vast, empty space of the Colorado Lounge, but was suffering from writer's block; instead of working, he spent time vigorously throwing a tennis ball against a Native-American tapestry hanging on the hotel's wall causing an echo; as he peered down onto a table-top scale model of the Maze inside the room, he seemed to see his wife and son strolling in the hedges of the Maze, where in fact, Wendy teasingly chased after her son
• on a typical "Tuesday," "Thursday," "Saturday," and "Monday," a large snowstorm was predicted to be moving in; during one of his tricycle adventures (with accompanying sounds as the wheels hit the floor and the rug), Danny found himself outside Room 237 with a locked door; he had a recurring very brief vision of the twin girls in the hallway; Jack was beginning to lose touch with reality and showing signs of a descent into madness; after typing feverishly, he glared accusingly at Wendy with a crazed look for interrupting him in his work, and told her to never interrupt him again
• after the snowstorm arrived, a disheveled and unkempt Jack with an unshaven face and lobotomized eyes was staring meaninglessly into space ("The Kubrick Stare"); Wendy learned that their phone communications had been cut off due to the storm
• Danny experienced another vision of the two girls who beckoned him: "Hello, Danny, Come and play with us. Come and play with us, Danny - forever and ever and ever"; and then he had a frightening ghostly vision of the murdered and mutilated twin girls lying in large pools of blood in the blood-splattered hallway, with an oversized axe lying on the floor in front of them; but then after he covered his eyes, the vision disappeared; he sought refuge from his imaginary friend, Tony, and was reminded that the girls were not real (as Mr. Hallorann had told him)

Danny's Vision of The Dead Twins - Axed to Death in a Hallway

• during a halting, strained, and distant conversation with his father, Danny hyper-intuitively sensed his father's murderous hatred; with curved eyebrows and a maniacal smile, Jack seemed paranoid about Wendy, but assured Danny that he would "never do anything" to hurt him

Crazed Jack With Son Danny

Danny Lured to the Open Door of Room 237

Danny Appearing Bruised With a Torn Sweater

• on "Wednesday," Danny was lured again into the enigmatic Room 237 - with its door standing open; meanwhile, Wendy found Jack at his typewriter in the Colorado Lounge experiencing Grady-like, nightmarish visions of murderous atrocity: ("I dreamed that I, that I killed you and Danny. But I didn't just kill ya. I cut you up in little pieces"); Danny also entered the room with bruise marks on his neck and with a torn sweater, and Wendy accusingly blamed Jack for hurting their son: ("You did this to him, didn't you?")
• Jack wandered off into the hotel and entered The Gold Room, where he sat at the bar and was sucked into the past - he mentioned to himself: "God, I'd give anything for a drink. I'd give my god-damned soul for just a glass of beer!"; after his request (as a madman talking to himself in front of a mirror), he conjured up a spectral, red-jacketed, chillingly sinister bartender Lloyd (Joseph Turkel); Lloyd pandered to Jack's irresistible desire to return to his former alcoholic ways by accepting Jack's credit and offering free drinks within the Overlook: "Your credit's fine, Mr. Torrance"; Jack joked about his familial problems with Wendy, and an accidental, unintentional, "momentary loss of muscular coordination" three years earlier when he hit Danny in a fatherly rage

Jack Speaking to Spectral Bartender Lloyd (Joseph Turkel) in The Gold Room

• Wendy interrupted Jack's reverie by rushing into the bar carrying a baseball bat (signed by Carl Yastrzemski) and retrieved Jack - she hysterically screamed that Danny had told her that he had been attacked and strangled by a crazy woman within the hotel in Room 237; Wendy summoned Jack to investigate the off-limits Room 237
• simultaneously, in a Miami, Florida area hotel room, Hallorann was watching TV and suddenly registered horror to his own "shining" - a dangerous vision of an SOS call for help, possibly communicated by a drooling Danny's psychic telepathy "shining" ability about Room 237 in the Overlook; Hallorann was motivated to travel to the Overlook Hotel on a rescue mission

The Beautiful Bathtub Female in Room 237

• after entering Room 237, Jack slowly entered the half-closed bathroom door of the mysterious, green and orange room and stood spellbound; he watched as a totally-nude female figure (Lia Beldam) drew back the sheer white shower curtain, slowly rose, and stepped from the tub - an attractive, ghostly apparition; the illusory, beautiful bather calmly walked forward to embrace and kiss him

The Female Transformed Into a Old-Hag Corpse in Room 237

• Jack realized in his grisly hallucination (and mirror reflection) that he was kissing a partially-decomposed corpse - a wrinkled, thick-skinned old hag (Billie Gibson) who rose from the bathtub; Jack back-pedaled out of the frightful room and fled down the corridor as the cadaver shuffled toward him with her arms extended; Jack returned to Wendy and denied that there was anything amiss in Room 237, and suggested that Danny had committed self-harm
• later in bed, Danny, with his extra-sensory ability, suffered from another trance; he saw the word: "REdrUM" scrawled in red across a door, and another brief vision of the blood-flooded hotel elevator; when Wendy suggested to Jack that they give up their contractual arrangement with the macabre hotel and leave - in order to get Danny out of the hotel, Jack flared up: ("I'm not gonna let you 'f--k' this up!") and stormed off
• wandering around, Jack saw festive party balloons and streamers in a hallway and heard the sounds of a 1920s dance band and party revelers within the Gold Room; it was now transformed into a nightclub ballroom filled with spectral party-goers dressed as in The Great Gatsby era; he proceeded to the bar, where Lloyd was still the faithful bartender, satanically dressed with red, horn-shaped lapels on his jacket; Jack was offered bourbon on the rocks "on-the-house" ("Hair of the dog that bit me")

Jack in the Gold Room With 1920s Party-Goers and Bartender Lloyd

• after a waiter's drinks were spilled onto Jack's jacket, he was led to the stunningly blood-red interior of the gentlemen's room (filled with mirrors!) by ghostly, British-accented, quasi-cultured waiter/manservant Delbert Grady (Philip Stone) (similar to the previous caretaker, although Grady denied it); Jack suspected that Grady was the one who "chopped your wife and daughters up into little bits. And then you blew your brains out," but Grady (after admitting that he had always been the caretaker) asserted that Jack, an ex-school teacher, had also always been present in the hotel as its caretaker; he had served presumably in a past life, in a different time period, or in a previous reincarnation
• the clearly-racist Grady seduced Jack into believing that his "willful" and "naughty" son with his 'talent' was summoning a "n----r cook" to the hotel and needed to be reprimanded; he gave an example from his past about how his own offensive family had also been corrected: ("My girls, sir, they didn't care for the Overlook at first. One of them actually stole a pack of matches, and tried to burn it down. But I corrected them, sir. And when my wife tried to prevent me from doing my duty, I corrected her"); Jack acquired the idea that it was also his "duty" to protect (care-take) the well-being of the hotel by enacting a brutal, murderous plan to kill his family
• at the same time, Wendy was contemplating taking the Snow-cat to notify the Fire Service rangers that they were evacuating the premises, even if Jack didn't want to join them; she found Danny in his bedroom in a trance-like state incanting the mantra "Redrum," and speaking with Tony's voice, implying that his personality had been taken over by Tony, his alter ego; meanwhile, Jack disconnected the CB radio in the hotel manager's office
• [Note: Hallorann had made plans to fly to Denver's airport, rent a car to drive to Boulder, and then rent a Sno-Cat that could take him to the Overlook in the snowstorm, to check on the Torrances ("unreliable assholes") and see whether they needed to be replaced.]
• at "8 am," Wendy (wielding a baseball bat) approached Jack's work den in the Colorado Lounge, where she looked down from above onto Jack's typewriter - she saw only a single sentence; there were endless reams of pages all with the phrase: "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" - evidence that her struggling, self-deceptive husband was truly insane

Wendy's Shocking Discovery of Jack's Redundant Manuscript

• behind her, Jack appeared with a smiling, demonically insane, shining face, now transformed into a doppelganger Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde; he berated her: ("Wendy, darling, light of my life. I'm not gonna hurt ya... I'm just gonna bash your brains in"); retreating, she backed up the stairs at the beginning of a prolonged stalking, and defensively clobbered him with the bat (on his hand and then on his head), and he toppled backwards; she dragged his unconscious body by his feet into the food storeroom, and enclosed him inside, as he begged to be released: ("Wendy, baby, I think you hurt my head real bad. I'm dizzy. I need a doctor. Honey, don't leave me in here"); although she was expecting to escape and use the Sno-Cat to seek a doctor, Jack revealed to her that had cut the Sno-Cat's distributor wires and damaged the CB radio ("You're not goin' anywhere")

Jack Threatening Wendy: "I'm not gonna hurt ya... I'm just gonna bash your brains in"

• at "4 pm," Grady released and unlocked the locker door to let Jack out, and continued to reprimand him to discipline his unruly family; in the Torrance apartment, Danny methodically repeated "Redrum" in Tony's voice, and wrote "Redrum" on their bathroom door - spelling "Murder" in the dresser mirror's reflection; Wendy realized that Jack was intent on murdering them
• in another memorable sequence, the crazed, demented and bellowing Jack was now an axe-wielding homicidal madman with a deformed limp, who approached their outer apartment door with an axe - and after bashing through it, he looked in and declared: "Wendy, I'm home"; Danny and Wendy retreated to their locked bathroom, where Danny slipped out the window, but Wendy was unable to fit through the window and was left cowering inside
• at the inner locked bathroom door, Jack compared himself to the "Big Bad Wolf" in the "Three Little Pigs" fairytale ("Then I'll huff and I'll puff...") before smashing his way in with his axe; as Wendy cowered with a knife, he again peered through the splintered door and delivered Johnny Carson's Tonight Show catch-phrase greeting: "Heeeeeeeere's Johnny!"; as Jack reached in to open the door handle, Wendy whacked his hand with her sharp knife blade and drew blood
• with the sound of Hallorann's approaching Sno-Cat, Jack retreated to stalk after the intruder in the kitchen and lobby, to find "the outside party" that Grady had warned about; meanwhile, Danny had come back inside to hide in a metal kitchen cabinet
• Hallorann called out: "Anybody here?" Jack jumped out from behind a pillar, swung the axe at him, and put it through his chest, leaving the sacrificed, murdered man lying across a large Indian design on the floor of the lobby; Danny's hidden location was revealed when he screamed in terror

Jack's Axe-Murder of Hallorann in the Hotel's Lobby

• while rushing upstairs to find Danny, Wendy glanced into one of the hotel room's open bedroom doors, and caught a disturbing, perplexing glimpse of a sexually perverse scene from the hotel's sordid past (a decadent sexual act of fellatio being performed in a bedroom); she also saw Hallorann lying bloodied in the lobby; in the hallway, a tuxedoed, bloody-faced injured guest (Norman Gay) toasted her with a glass and a smile: "Great party, isn't it?"; she also viewed cob-webbed skeletons of past hotel guests seated in familiar positions; she also experienced the vision (familiar to Danny) of the elevator doors releasing torrents of blood

Wendy Searching in the Hotel For Danny	Wendy Witnessing Sexual Perversion in One of the Hotel Rooms	Ghostly, Bloodied, Injured Guest: "Great party, isn't it?"
More Shocking Sights	Cob-Webbed Skeletons of Past Guests	Bloody Elevator

• in the film's climactic conclusion, Jack hobbled and staggered after his retreating son through the blizzard into the outdoor garden's icy maze: ("Danny! I'm coming! You can't get away! I'm right behind ya"); Danny - using an old Indian trick to retrace his steps in the maze, escaped from Jack's pursuit into Wendy's arms, and the two managed to flee in Hallorann's Sno-cat; Jack was left to meet his demise in the convoluted maze - where he froze to death from the cold elements

Jack Pursuing Danny Into the Icy Hedge Maze (Who Retraced His Steps and Escaped), and Eventually Getting Lost and Freezing to Death

• the closing shot was an extremely long, zoom-in tracking through a hallway outside the Gold Room toward one framed, b/w photograph, from the Overlook's evil time-zone, taken during the hotel's hey-day (1921) at the July 4th Ball - Independence Day; broadly grinning and waving, a younger-looking Jack was revealed to be forefront in the picture and dressed in black tie and dinner jacket; behind him were ghostly revelers all dressed in smart, 1920s formal evening garb; Jack completely embodied the spirit of the massacre of innocents