Of King and Kubrick

With Halloween around the corner, my mind inevitably turns to movies of a sinister bent. It has become a ritual in my small corner of the world to watch The Shining and bask in its eerie magnificence. While I’ve done so for the past few years, each occasion still leaves me spooked to the core. Viewing it during the daytime — I have quite the active imagination and I live alone — does little to subdue the horror.     

The film, directed by Stanley Kubrick, may stray from the 1977 Stephen King book, but it’s a gripping experience nonetheless. Jack Torrance, a family man and would-be writer, takes a job as caretaker of the Overlook Hotel in the Rocky Mountains. He descends into madness while spending the winter in isolation with his wife and their young son, who possesses paranormal abilities.

‘Profoundly disturbing’

Though it was largely received with a mood of disappointment at the time, the tale has turned into a cult classic, thanks to Kubrick’s perfectionist style and indelible performances by Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall. Martin Scorsese has pointed out that The Shining is “essentially unclassifiable, endlessly provocative and profoundly disturbing.”

If the late Kubrick was a fan of the novel, calling it “one of the most ingenious and exciting stories of the genre I had read,” King wasn’t too pleased with the filmmaker’s adaptation. Since the big screen rendering debuted in 1980, the author has articulated his displeasure and even went on to write and produce his own TV mini-series version in 1997. “With Kubrick’s The Shining I felt that it was very cold, very ‘We’re looking at these people, but they’re like ants in an anthill, aren’t they doing interesting things, these little insects’,” he told the BBC.

Bones of the story

King came up with the bones of his chilling story in 1973. He and his wife stayed at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, a small town at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, when the place was due to shut down for the winter season. The couple were the only guests. (Oddly, the Stanley has also been used as a location site for Dumb and Dumber.)

Before I discovered that the exteriors of The Shining were shot at the Timberline Lodge in Oregon — Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire, England, provided the interiors — I assumed rather erroneously that it was filmed at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel. Built in 1888 as one of Canada’s grand railway hotels, it borrows from the Scottish baronial style, which in turn drew upon the towers and turrets of medieval castles. The resemblance to the snowbound Overlook is uncanny, so it was easy to conflate the two. One can imagine the tracking shots of Danny’s ride around the hotel hallways at the Banff Springs, which is also in the Rockies.

Tough act to follow

Stephen King’s canon is stocked with the supernatural, from Carrie and Children of the Corn to The Stand and Under The Dome. Doctor Sleep, his newest novel released last month, continues the tradition. The sequel pokes around in the ashes of the Overlook Hotel and follows the young boy who survived the horrific events of The Shining. Danny Torrance has grown up and so have his demons.

In an interview with Slate, King said that he fears that the memory of Danny and Wendy Torrance’s harrowing struggle for survival will have fermented into a brew more intoxicating than any new concoction could ever hope to be. Horror fans must be licking their lips in anticipation.

It’s a bit too early to speculate on a feature adaptation of Doctor Sleep, whether it be a television series or yet another movie. But directors looking to expand Danny Torrance’s narrative universe even further already have their work cut out for them. The Shining is a tough act to follow: Be as masterful as Stanley Kubrick, or do not do it at all.

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