FEATURE: A Stephen King Halloween!...The Shining

3. The Shining

(Stanley Kubrick, 1980)

Dear God, I am not a son of a bitch.  Please.

The Long and Short of It

Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall), and their son Danny (Danny Lloyd) are now stewards of the enormous Overlook Hotel.  Snowbound for months, with little to do, it makes sense that they might go a little stir-crazy...

Adaptation Decay

Controversariffic.  Stanley Kubrick adheres to the overall premise of King's book, but he upends much of the tone.  King's book was a thinly-disguised look at his own struggles with alcoholism, and the book gives off a heartfelt quality.  Kubrick has no time for such things.  In the con column, his version of Wendy Torrance is more passive and abused, and his version of Danny is too mannered a performance, and significantly overshadowed by Jack Nicholson's work as Jack Torrance, which is either totemic or too much too fast.  In the plus column?  The novel goes for a happy ending, while the movie adds a disturbing, eerie coda.  Additionally, the novel assumes what's happening is real, while Kubrick's treatment adds a healthy splash of unreality.  Finally, Kubrick ditches King's hedge monsters and opts for a hedge maze, which smartly parallels the ominous hotel hallways.  It ultimately comes down to preference.

Forget All That - How's the Movie?

Taken on its own, The Shining is an iconic entry in the horror canon, unforgettable images cascading from it like so much blood from an elevator.  The dog-man.  The twins.  The woman in the bathtub.  Jack grinning through a broken door.  Remember how the shots are always perfectly centered, and how often they tunnel into the frame?  How Kubrick's 4:3 aspect ratio literally boxes the people in?  Or the sound of Danny's trike whirrrrring on carpet and thunking on wood floor?  In a way, the film plays like a horrific version of 2001, so confident and ambiguous that that it pulls you into its mysteries.  Indeed, the film's so ambiguous that a new documentary called Room 237 features five different ideas about just what in the hell the film's saying.  The first time I saw the film, ten years ago, I disliked its deviations from King's work, but my respect has grown, both begrudgingly and respectfully (it helps to see more of Kubrick's films).  Over the years, it's become clear to me that Kubrick's film, while a somewhat dishonest adaptation, vibrates with its own peculiar energy.  Taken together, the two works bristle; they feel irreconcilable.  Separated, they're fantastic.

Alright, but Is It a Good Halloween Flick?

Only if you like things that are scary.

Kingwatch 2012

No coy intrusions, but the original novel came from a very honest place.  King did take a job like this, he did battle with alcoholism (it expanded in the eighties to drug use), and he did injure his son, although not to the degree Torrance hurt his child prior to visiting the Overlook.  The book is both a work of serious horror and a quiet confession.

But You Know What Sucks?

3. The Langoliers

(Tom Holland, 1995)

(for maximum effect, please read in Stefon's voice)

If you're in the mood for good family fun, look no further - Stephen King's hottest new story is called The Langoliers.  Filmed on a dare by peeping Dutchman Tom Holland, this movie has everything!  Missing pilots, northern lights, blind psychic girls, buzzsaw Pac-men, and is that a jacked-up homeless man on the tarmac?  No, it's Bronson Pinchot, and he's late for a business meeting!

(okay, back to normal)

This TV movie exposes the problem with Stephen King's less successful sci-fi tales: King is an intuitive writer, and he doesn't jive with heavily plotted stories.  With something simple like The Mist or "The Jaunt," he's in good shape.  With The Langoliers?  Hoo boyah.  Holland's film is a disaster, with its floodlit non-atmosphere, its bizarrely chipper cast, and its awful CG effects, but it's not like he botched Hamlet.  Besides, I have questions, dammit.  Why does this rip only take sleeping passengers?  If the people are walking around on a past day, isn't it the present to them?  Why would the universe shed human days?  Isn't that a little arrogant of certain Earthbound authors?  The plot in The Langoliers is so difficult to sort out that King basically writes himself into the story as mystery author Bob Jenkins.  It's on Jenkins to mumble vague crap like "Now we know what happens to yesterday!"  Forget yesterday.  I wanna know what happened to the last three hours.  Because I could've sworn I saw Balki outracing flying turds.