chiller blog

Posted Oct 31, 08 02:04 PM

“ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY. ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY. ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY.”

Certain films have that power, no matter how many times you've seen them.

You run across one on cable. Your thumb relaxes off the remote as you find yourself rewatching. First, it's a moment. Before long, a few scenes have gone by. Then twenty minutes. Then…

The Shining is not simply that affectionate experience for me. It's the one film where each repeat viewing keeps deepening the discovery. No other movie has succeeded in sub textually infusing so many aspects of its production with theme – that being a maze, spiraling without end. I come away excited to go back in – every time. Yes, it's my all-time favorite film. It's the Citizen Kane of horror cinema.

But even Citizen Kane didn't get its due in it's day. Likewise, scores of reviewers trashed the original release of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. The Wizard of Oz flopped, as did It's a Wonderful Life. At least The New York Times forced their fossilized critic, Bosley Crowther, to retire over his scathing review of another new classic, Bonnie and Clyde.

In 1980, few "got" director Stanley Kubrick's vision, already marketed on its release as "a masterpiece in modern horror." Audiences flocked to the opening weekend, likely anticipating a conventional, obvious terror piece. Attendance quickly dropped off, confounded snob critics weighed in, and Stephen King devotees cried foul over vast rewrites (by Kubrick and co-scripter Diane Johnson) of the original novel. Even the Golden Raspberry Awards got it all wrong, nominating Kubrick as Worst Director and Shelly Duvall (who's sensational) as Worst Actress.

But time did the rest. Second looks. New appreciation. Validation. Momentum. Redemption. Modern classic status.

For space constraints, I'll assume many of you are familiar with the plot. Quickly: "recovering" alcoholic writer wannabe Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) takes a job as winter caretaker of the remote Overlook Hotel. Legend has it that the Overlook was built on Indian burial ground, but a more immediate legend is fact: the previous caretaker went mad and turned an axe on his family.

Unfazed, Torrance moves his awkward wife Wendy (Duvall) and shy son Danny (Danny Lloyd) in for the off-season as the Overlook's lone residents. Danny possesses the ability to "shine" – telepathy that includes seeing events from the past and those yet to come. He shares this power discreetly with the outgoing Halloran (Scatman Crothers), the Overlook's maintenance man. As the snow falls and the weeks pass, the isolation and monotony build. Jack becomes unglued. The hotel's dark secrets emerge…

Discussing the movie's interpretation over coffee can be as astonishing as watching the movie. Much has been written about the perplexing narrative, whether or not scenes are taking place in the present, past, dreams, or as foreshadowing omens – and from whose point of view. Is Jack Torrance integrating back into the hotel? Are supernatural forces literally able to cross over, unlocking doors into our reality? (That one gives me the heebie-jeebies.)

There's even a numerology angle. Danny is warned by Halloran not to go into room 237. The numbers add up to 12, which add up to 3. The same goes for the New Year's Ball photo that ends the film, inscribed with the date "1912." Add those numbers together and you get… yes, 3. Like the 3 of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the alignment of two planetary bodies and the monolith. But I digress. I don't know anything about numerology, per se, but it sounds fascinating, doesn't it?

Personally, my eyes hawk in detective mode on The Shining's spiraling maze patterns, right down to the endless designs of the carpets and drapes. Trace John Alcott's acrobatic Steadicam's directions – from tracking Danny's Playwheels bike through the corridors to the climactic chase through the hedge maze. See what designs you're drawing. Even the soundtrack flips on us at the finale as a Black Mass underscores Jack's descent into murderous insanity.

The movie astounds in profoundly different ways. Socially, The Shining was the first film to break ground in America's secret shame of domestic violence. The family unit depicted here never quite seems right – often in a perversely funny way. (I love the one-take scene in the car, driving up to the Overlook. Each actor's delivery is about half a beat behind, rendering banal dialogue strangely sinister.)

On that note, I recently saw The Shining with a sold-out theater. The audience laughed often and raucously in the first hour – where awkward, weird pauses coupled with Nicholson's over-the-top-and-keep-going performance clashed beautifully with Duvall's not-quite Everywoman. But they were silently tense for the last hour and a half.

On repeat viewings in great horror, crucial scenes work both ways. Dark comedy often comes to the surface when shock is replaced by familiarity (as in Night of the Living Dead, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre – even Halloween). How scared were you the first time Nicholson stalked a baseball bat-swinging Duval up the staircase, intoning, "Wendy, darling… light of my life…"? How many times have you heard it as a punchline since?

Astonishingly, for the world's (yet) lone horror epic, the onscreen violence is – think about this – completely minimal. Yes, we get quick flashbacks through Danny's eyes of the carnage that the old caretaker had waged on his family. Yes, the vision of the elevator doors keeps affronting us, blood flooding out of the doors. But in truth, the film contains the physical depiction of one onscreen death in two hours and twenty-two minutes. Think about it. And that's only one more than Poltergeist.

The original release ran two hours and twenty-six minutes. Should anyone have a copy of those excised four minutes, don't hesitate to introduce yourself.

The Shining airs on Chiller Saturday, November 1st at 10 p.m. (Eastern and Pacific). Damn. If that means I'm up, channel surfing, then… uhhhhohhhh no!!!