ROX-TV’s night at the movies featuring the immortal classic “The Shining”. Part 1
Welcome back to the ROX-TV movie review. Tonight I’m going to be taking a look at the immortal movie and Stephen King masterpiece “The Shining”. As I look back over the years of my life, there are few movies that have actually scared me. Sure, sometimes a movie can startle you and even get you looking over your shoulder. But few have the ability to make you turn on all the lights in the house during the middle of the day. I think you know what I’m talking about…when a movie really gets to you, deep down, beyond the likes and dislikes of everyday normalcy. A motion picture that scares you because it could almost happen. When a show touches on the truly scarier aspects of the human mind and what happens when that fragile thought machine snaps, then I think you are dealing with another beast altogether.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of the classic prototype horror flick, which feature an undead boogeyman, perhaps stalking a campsite or a boiler room. Perhaps wreaking havoc on a small town in the Midwest, when Halloween rolls around…those are some of my favorites. But when you get to “The Shining”, it’s a different type of scare. As a child, I don’t think there are many scenes that really stuck with me for as long or managed to scare the daylights out of me quite like this movie.
I think everyone who has taken a look at this motion picture will recall and remember certain aspects of the movie for all time. As I close my eyes and peel back the years, the hallway scene when Danny comes across the twin girls is one. Another is the blood river flowing from the elevators. For some people, room 237 with the naked woman in the tub (the scene starts out ok) is the clincher, when Jack Torrance realizes he is making out with a rotten old dead woman after glancing in the mirror. Yes, this movie has plenty of show stopping terror, but the entire movie is full of these mind benders and spooky feelings. I’m afraid they (shitty movie industry) just doesn’t make movies like this anymore, or at least not at a satisfactory level. I can’t remember the last “modern” scary movie that really got to me. Gore doesn’t always equal scary, even if it does equal shock and awe. I myself, favor the classic “scare” over the “gross out” effect and feel that they aren’t really even the same thing.
It takes a certain amount of realism to knock a scary scene over the top, for the believable factor, but there are limits. There needs to be a balance and “The Shining” manages that well I think. There are some gory scenes, but they are there for only as long as they need to be and are not present for the sake of being present. They assist in pile driving a climatic scare and that’s why movies that find the correct amount of each, will always prevail in quality and lasting spookiness. Before we get started, just remember we are here to enjoy ourselves and relive a classic. I don’t work for Hollywood and I’m not an “expert”. We are here to have fun, re-hash some spooky tales, and above all, take a break from the world. If anyone wants to be a buzz kill, please find another place to shit. Now…on with the show…
The Overlook Hotel comes into focus:
The movie wastes no time and immediately jumps into the action. We observe a little shitty car, driving through the mountain pass from a bird’s eye view. Today drones do the trick, but back in the 1980’s you needed a real helicopter to pull off the amazing cinemaphotography. Today, they’d probably just use computer generated graphics, which would totally suck ass. Not everything new is better. The synth music in the background is bone chilling and the high pitched noises really get to you, especially for the first time. The scenes are majestic, yet cold in a way that isn’t overly apparent, but still leaves a trace on your clothes. We first get introduced to Jack Torrance during the “Interview” scene which follows. I’m sure even after all these years, Jack Torrance aka Jack Nicholson needs no introduction.
He’s become a piece of the fabric of Hollywood lore and is probably one of the most recognizable actors still lingering around in the modern landscape of today. As Jack makes his entrance, he walks into the lobby of the “Overlook Hotel” and actually walks past the writer of the famous book, which shares the same name…Stephen King. He is reading a magazine in a comfy chair as Jack cruises up to the front desk to check in for his interview. But think fast, because the scene is as brief as a good memory. As Mr. Torrance arrives at the general manager’s office for his interview, we are suddenly transported to an apartment, where Wendy (Jack’s wife) and Danny (their son) are enjoying a classic eighties afternoon eating lunch in front of an old tv. Wendy is reading one of my favorite books “The Catcher in the Rye” (J.D. Salinger published it in 1951) which has it’s own implications in relation to “The Shining”.
[“The Catcher in the Rye” deals with some heavy topics including the mental instability of Holden Caulfield (who is narrating the book) and a few days in the life of the troubled young man after getting expelled from school. The book seems to have some parallels to “The Shining” in that it deals with the fragility of the human mind among other things, but we will try to stick with the movie. Before closing out this thought though, it is worth mentioning that in 1980, the killer of John Lennon (The Beatles) Mark David Chapman had become obsessed with the book and played a part in the murder of the musical legend in New York. After shooting Lennon, Chapman calmly read the book until police arrested him.
A year later in 1981, the book would again come into play when John W. Hinckley Jr. attempted to assassinate the President of the United States, Ronald Regan. After the assassination attempt, investigators found a copy of “The Catcher in the Rye” on Hinkley’s coffee table. Even going back as far as November 22nd, 1963 the book had another connection to probably one of the biggest murders of all time, President John F. Kennedy in Dallas Texas. After Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the President’s murder, his home was documented by investigators. A “dog eared” worn copy of “The Catcher in the Rye” was located in his bookcase. There are implications and theories about J.D. Salinger, his time in the military, and the book being used as a trigger for alleged participants in the MK-Ultra program that the CIA ran in this country…or so the story goes. Ok, enough of the weeds…back to the movie.]
Nothing unusual to see here, as Danny and his mom talk about the move. It is here that we find out that Danny has an imaginary friend named “Tony” that seems to take over Danny’s body from time to time. Weird, but at this point in the movie, the imaginary pal seems harmless. Jumping back to the hotel, Jack is working his way through an uncomfortable portion of the interview. Although he has been awarded the job by Mr. Ullman, there seems to be some questions lingering about. Although I have never thought about it before really, what the hell happened to the caretaker of the “Overlook” from the previous year? Or any number of years since the tragedy? The movie was released in 1980 (I’m assuming the present day of the time, so there is almost a decade in between Jack and the tragedy. Who was the caretaker during these years?)
Another thing that stands out is that Jack has a shaky story in reference to his past. He was a school teacher, but one day up and quits his only paying job, to become a writer, which isn’t a paying gig, and is forced to find a position as a long term “care taker” handy man. Even for a fuck up like me, that sounds like one hell of a shit sandwich to raffle off in an interview. Oddly though, Jack should have picked up on the lack of resistance by his interviewers. If he could have slowed down to think about it, they didn’t seem to care about his dodgy background, or the fact that being a “handy man” didn’t seem to be the case with Jack either. Perhaps the place was doomed and Mr. Ullman needed a body? I still want to know what happened to the most recent caretaker?
“I don’t suppose they told you anything in Denver about the tragedy we had up here in the winter of 1970”
“He killed his family with an ax, stacked them neatly in one of the rooms of the west wing…then he put both barrels of a shotgun in his mouth” Mr. Ullman casually states to Jack as they enjoy coffee and Bill’s company. My god, this is a heavy interview. It started out with hiring a guy who didn’t have the faintest clue about being a handyman and ended with a triple murder and a graphic suicide. It seems like an interesting day for old Jack Torrance, the desperate man who needed a job badly enough to “fudge” his capabilities meets a nightmare masked in a reasonable employment offer. Sometimes I wonder who was playing who in this scene, with each side selling a shit burger, while unbeknownst to each other, they were receiving one in return. Pretty clever indeed.
In typical fashion, both sides walk away with a win. Jack lands a job and a place for his family to live and Mr. Ullman located someone desperate enough to live in total isolation for almost half a year in a haunted hotel. I assume the bad endings flashed in both Mr. Ullman’s mind as well as Jack’s, but sometimes people are forced to do what they have to, even though catastrophic consequences await the doomed voyages. Back at home, somehow within the last few hours, Danny had some type of episode and Wendy calls a Doctor out for a home visit. Even though Danny’s had some type of episode, the Doctor seems hyper focused on shining lights into his eyes, all the while he is missing his pants. Seems like a strange set up, but whatever. We learn a short time later that Jack Torrance (who’s is or was an alcoholic) had accidently ripped Danny’s arm out of socket while smashed on booze sometime before the move to Denver. Alarm bells are ringing Willy (Thank you “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels”).
Closing Day:
We encounter another ride through the mountains, only this time its closing day and the Torrance family is making their way to the Overlook Hotel. By now, we can start to appreciate some of the problems brewing on the horizon. Jack can be unpredictable when he drinks too much, which highlights larger problems. Danny has a bizarre imaginary friend and is prone to “episodes”. Wendy has been reading the serial killer’s favorite travel companion “The Catcher in the Rye” and the hotel has been the site of grizzly murders as recently as 1970.
To make matters worse, Danny and his father engage in a story about the “The Donner Party” which has it’s own horrific history of cannibalism. “You mean they ate each other up? Danny asks his father….”They had to, in order to survive” Jack says with a devilish look that only Jack Nicholson could pull off (That look where your not really sure if this guy is actually ok, deep down inside). This movie knows how to build a house of cards and does so with exceptional discretion.
The tour of the grounds kicks off, with Wendy being rather impressed by the opulence of the joint. Meanwhile Danny, who is in the “games room” encounters the ghosts of the unsettling deceased twins (who Mr. Ullman describes as being 8 and 10 years of age, so twins they can not be, although people remember them as such), dressed alike, who say nothing and then leave the area. As a child, those girls scared the hell out of me. Before everyone clears out, an employee of the hotel “Mr. Hallorann” takes Danny for some ice cream in the kitchen. Mr. Hallorann has a special ability to communicate without using verbal speech, which Danny also has. “The Shining” is what Mr. Hallorann’s grandmother used to call it or so the story goes. Danny asks Mr. Hallorann about “Room 237, Your scared of room 237 aren’t ya” Danny tells him. Mr. Hallorann warns him to stay out of the room, without much more of an explanation than that. Coming from a man who can talk telepathically, Danny would be smart to take his advice on 237.
A Month Later:
With winter fast approaching, we find the Torrance’s settled in quiet nicely for the most part. Jack has taken to sleeping well into the morning and Danny cruises the hallways of the hotel on a big wheel. Wendy does her best to keep the machine moving, but you can feel the floor starting to become unsteady, perhaps weakened a bit. The bad moon is rising. Jack has been writing for a month, but no “good ideas” have shown up. Perhaps he never had any to begin with. Even so, he continues to insist on writing each day, dodging romantic walks with Wendy when ever possible. It’s during this time that Jack confesses to having strange feelings of deja-vu.
(Wikipedia: Deja vu is the feeling that one has lived through the present situation before. This is a French phrase that literally translates to “already seen”. Although many believe that this is paranormal in nature, mainstream scientists reject this. I find this rejection ridiculous. Just because someone doesn’t understand something or how it works, doesn’t discredit it’s meaning or purpose. Personally I don’t view most scientists as rock steady truth tellers and often feel like they do their best to discredit things they can’t explain away with “modern science”. In my own view, some things on Earth are older than books and maybe people, how foolish and arrogant to discredit something like that, with nothing more than a flimsy explanation. Sadly this type of thinking seems to work on lots of people, not me though.)
The slippery slope has finally arrived and Jack seems to slowly start to shift from functioning handyman (although he is never actually shown in the movie to fix anything) to troubled energy expulsions. For awhile he seems to pass the time throwing a tennis ball against the wall for kicks, but even the audience can realize that this type of entertainment is unhealthy.
I often wonder when I watch this scene if Jack had finally come to understand that he had trapped himself with his own devices, and that the ball game was just his way of rebelling against the walls that formed his prison? I believe that once Jack understood the enormous mistake of coming to the Overlook for an extended stay, trapped with his small family and the failures of his mind and past…he had no where to really go but crazy town. The decline is quick, as it should be I suppose. With so little stimulation in that environment and lack of intoxicants, there would be a laser focus on all that was wrong. Bringing Jack down quicker, than if there had been more distractions offered up in regular society. He was forced to confront the evil/bad head on and it wasn’t going to end well.
TUESDAY:
Wendy continues on like she had. Perhaps she didn’t require much to be happy, so the absolute dead crawl life at the Overlook was nothing more than scenery passing by on the highway for her. Danny breaks a cardinal rule when he comes dangerously close to room 237.
So much so, that he leaves the safety of his big wheel, in order to try the door handle. The music is unbelievably effective at raising the anxiety level, as if any moment, something absolutely terrible is going to happen. Jack passes the time, typing the last of his sanity away. He has a very ugly dialogue with Wendy, in which I think she realizes how bad off things have gotten. Jack is passing into the land behind the sun.
SATURDAY:
The cart is now officially out of control and the bad news is starting to speed up. Wendy is obviously worried about her safety, because for the first time she is starting to mess with the communication system. Only a subconscious knowing that help would be needed at some point would push her to mess with the radio. On the other side of the hotel, Danny is about to have a hair raising and mind searing encounter with the murdered Grady girls. This scene is over quickly, but it stuck with me for as long as I can remember. Truly scary things don’t need much time to leave lasting marks.
MONDAY:
As the snow continues to fall, sealing off the Overlook like a tomb, Wendy and Danny try to have a normal afternoon in the lobby. As Danny heads back to the hotel room for a small toy, he comes across his dad, who is suppose to be sleeping. Danny finds Jack staring aimlessly out the window, wide awake and a mental mess. The scene is uncomfortable because you can see that Jack is now a lost ship and the wheels are slowly turning behind his eyes. He’s “tired” and Danny asks him why he doesn’t go to sleep? Jack replies that he “can’t, because there is too much to do”. Danny asks Jack if he would ever hurt him and his mom, which upsets Jack. The music again plays a terrible frightening ditty, and the madness is dripping from Jack’s eyes.
WEDNESDAY:
Danny happens to find the door to room 237 wide open. The key is dangling from the lock. The horrors have finally arrived. As Wendy checks the boiler, she is startled by Jack’s screams at his desk. Nothing good is coming from this. Jack tells Wendy he had a horrible dream that he killed Wendy and Danny. If I was Wendy…the pit of my stomach would have dropped out, and I would have gently excused myself, before fleeing down the mountain with my kid. At probably the worst possible moment, Danny turns up in a total daze. He has been attacked. Wendy, is now confronted with two horrible ends burning on the candle. Her old man is fucking nuts and her son is comatose. Trapped between these two terrible peeks of mental trauma and sickness, Wendy turns on Jack, accusing him of the attack on Danny, which eventually starts the beginning of the end.
As far as collapses go, this is probably one of my favorites of all time though. Jack is mentally destroyed and looking for sanctuary. Perhaps being an alcoholic is what leads him to the safe place, where at least everyone knows his name (thank you Cheers). I suppose there would be no more appropriate place for him to end up, at least as far as what the Overlook was offering on that day. It’s true the bar had been emptied on closing day, but that doesn’t matter when the mind is no longer firing correctly. Jack utters the magic words “I’d give my god damn soul for just a glass of beer” and within moments of saying this, his prayers had been answered. Enter Lloyd…
Come back for the conclusion of ROX-TV’s night at the movies featuring the classic “The Shining” available Saturday.
Signing Off,
Mike Shepard
ROX-TV Head Writer
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