The Shining

The Shining, motion picture about a man hired to maintain a haunted hotel during its off-season closure, based on the novel by Stephen King. Released in 1980, this box-office hit was directed by Stanley Kubrick. Writer Jack Torrence (played by Jack Nicholson) brings his family to the Overlook hotel for the winter, hoping to find peace and quiet for his work. Jack’s young son Danny encounters the ghostly inhabitants of the hotel, who tell him he has a power called “shining,” which enables him to see visions of the future, including rivers of blood and dead bodies. Meanwhile, Jack becomes possessed by the Overlook’s former caretaker, a homicidal maniac. This story was remade into a film for television in 1997.

Director

• Stanley Kubrick

Cast

• Jack Nicholson (Jack Torrence)
• Shelley Duvall (Wendy Torrence)
• Danny Lloyd (Danny Torrence)
• Scatman Crothers (Dick Hallorann)
• Barry Nelson (Stuart Ullman)
• Joe Turkel (Lloyd)
• Anne Jackson (Doctor)

Trivia

• The Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood in Oregon was used for the exterior shots in this film, and the Timberline management requested that the director not use room 217 (as specified in the book) as the evil room written in the book, fearing that nobody would want to stay in that room afterward. The fictional room number 237 was substituted instead.
• Perfectionistic director Kubrick demanded 127 takes from actor Shelley Duvall in one scene.
• This was one of the first films to use the Steadicam, a device developed to allow a cinematographer to move quickly with a hand-held camera while eliminating the bumps and jerks normally associated with hand-held camera work. The device is now standard in motion picture and television production.

Quotes

• Danny (seemingly talking gibberish): “Redrum … Redrum.”