I love Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Everything about the film is poetry, and I’ve likely seen it more than 40 times. This many viewings combined with getting older has robbed the movie of some of its scares, but the power of this free adaptation of Stephen King’s original novel always affects me, because more than anything supernatural it’s a powerful depiction of madness and the deterioration of a family. The film also makes me nostalgic for an evening from my childhood, where I experienced the kind of fear that in the moment you’re sure you’ll never recover from.
When I was in 5th grade, I told my mother that I felt I was too old to go trick-or-treating with my younger brother and sister, and that I’d feel like an idiot going door to door in a costume asking strangers for candy. Though she initially balked at my request to stay home, she eventually gave in and let me hang out with my Dad while she took the other kids out.
Halloween night was on a Saturday that year. Dad and I grabbed dinner early in the evening, and when we got home we settled in front of the television. KPHO-TV 5, the kind of local independent TV station that doesn’t exist like it used to, was showing horror movies to celebrate the holiday, and to start with they were screening The Shining, which Dad reacted to with excitement. It was settled, we were watching this movie.
Dad and I sat on opposite sides of the room, he in his eggplant-colored vinyl recliner and me on the sectional sofa. Fifteen minutes into the movie he was so thrilled about, Dad fell asleep, which unfortunately was what usually happened when he had a moment to himself on a weekend night. I was now ostensibly alone. The living room light was on, but with Dad being unavailable, I was a 10-year-old kid watching a movie I had no business watching.
Dad faded right as Danny Torrance (Danny Lloyd) was standing on the stool to brush his teeth. Looking in the mirror, the child begins a strange conversation with his imaginary friend Tony, whose physical presence is represented by Danny wagging his index finger and affecting a scratchy, guttural voice. “Why don’t you want to go to The Overlook, Tony?”, Danny asks.
Tony answers forcefully through Danny in the alternate voice: “I don’t know, I just don’t.” Tony then shows Danny a vision of just what it is he’s so afraid of: blood rushing out of two closed elevators, filling a hotel lobby. It’s easy to see that whatever is in that hotel is terrifying and best left alone. It is then that Danny blacks out, and Tony “runs away”.
The shot of the blood river emerging from the two elevators into a freshly waxed lobby in a fancy, Old World hotel is breathtaking Cinema. But it’s made for adults who understand life. One must appreciate the vulnerability of a 10-year-old seeing his first real horror film by himself, with no available exit. Over the course of the next two hours, I was subjected to calamitous terror; and much of this was because amazingly, the venerable KPHO, to the best of my recollection anyway, presented the film without censorship and limited commercial interruption. I don’t remember any breaks after the first half hour, and as desirable as such a scenario is for a cinephile, a frightened child can’t appreciate a TV station treating a movie with respect.
I often feel like I have total recall on the foundational moments of my childhood, but as easy as it is for me to summon details about this night, there are gaps. At least an hour passes between when Danny faints and the next sequence I’ll describe. The film offers plenty of exchanges to be scared of, many of them involving the tragic effects of alcoholism, as well as the threat of child and spousal abuse. But as horrible and difficult to reconcile as those things are for someone of any age, I don’t recall my fear truly ratcheting up until somewhere toward the middle of the movie.
Danny’s father Jack Torrance, (Jack Nicholson), goes to investigate room 237. Jack pushes open the door and slowly walks into the suite where Danny was allegedly “strangled by a crazy lady”, according to Danny’s mother Wendy, (Shelly Duvall). The camera enters the room, and Jack spies through the open bathroom door an attractive woman luxuriating in the tub.
At this age, I was just starting to understand sexuality, and here I was watching a scene this charged when I barely understood anything about the world. Nicholson’s trademark malevolent grin is somehow friendlier, more sympathetic than we’re used to. He’s disheveled, but in a handsome and more acceptable way. The naked woman stands up in the tub and exits, her hair slicked to the scalp and giving him an unwavering stare. It’s a sexual invitation, and this man is more than willing to sacrifice his marriage for the opportunity.
Jack embraces the woman and passionately kisses her. He then opens his eyes and glimpses the two of them in the mirror directly behind her. The look on his face is one of nausea, as the woman in his arms has morphed into a toothless old woman, with gangrenous sores and a loud, appalling laugh. As the woman continues taunting him, she keeps moving toward the camera as Jack stumbles and chokes back his disgust. The camera switches from Jack back to the woman lurching toward him, to the woman again laying in the tub.
My blood froze and I was paralyzed with fear. Now associating sexual ecstasy with revulsion, I stupidly continued to watch the film, and found myself unable to be anything but scared no matter what I saw on the screen. This movie features scenes without horror, but because the horror I’d seen was so visceral I couldn’t react appropriately to anything depicting normal life. But in addition to all the macabre things a child should never see, there were even heavy adult-themed exchanges like the one that took place between Jack and the previous caretaker Delbert Grady (Philip Stone).
The men discuss how Jack can and must rid himself of his wife and son for the good of the haunted hotel, just as Grady had done decades prior. Grady also warns Jack in flagrantly racist terms about Halloran, (Scatman Crothers), a man who like Danny, possesses telepathic ability, and what must be done to keep Halloran from entering the hotel. Watching a scene where two white men plot to murder a black man, as well as their whole families, is hard enough to get through as an adult. I wasn’t the first child seeing this film or any other with this subject matter but hearing about such things at this age while also still reeling from the room 237 horror now filled me with dread about ordinary people, as well as what was hiding in the closet.
What finally gave me the energy to physically escape this movie is a bizarre scene that still baffles even hardcore fans. Wendy, desperate to protect her son from Jack and every other horror she’s encountered in this place, has momentarily escaped her husband, and is now running through the various rooms and staircases of the gigantic hotel, trying in vain to find a way out. She ascends one of the staircases and sees an open hotel room door.
Two men are in the room. One is sitting on the bed, clad in 1920’s nightclub finery, with his trousers at his ankles. The other man is wearing a furry animal costume, with his head buried between the well-dressed man’s legs. Wendy loses her grip on reality as both men look directly into the camera, and the score hits an ominous note.
I don’t know exactly why this scene was the last thing I could take, because other than depicting two ghosts, it’s less scary than other images Wendy encounters in the next few minutes. But I leapt from the couch with the last trickle of energy I had and unplugged the TV. I then sprinted down the hallway to my parent’s empty bedroom, doing a pratfall over their dresser. I found myself on the floor both with a sore left shin, and an overwhelming sense of dread. I quickly felt my way through the darkness, snaking behind my parent’s bed, where I crouched and was alone in the dark with my terror.
Because I was raised very religiously, I sought refuge the only way I knew how at the time and began to pray. About half an hour later, I heard the garage door opening, which meant my Mom was finally home. I heard the doors of the minivan open and shut, as well as the comforting laughter of my siblings. Knowing life would normalize again was an awesome relief. Mom began to call my name throughout the house, and when she found me, I was still crying hard.
Sometime later my Dad was woken up, and he had to answer for my condition. I slept on the floor of my parents’ room that night, and in the morning we all went to church without incident. When you’re lucky enough to grow up in a comparatively normal home, you’re able to bounce back quickly. But being exposed to this subject matter still has a negative effect, and I found myself more cautious and suspicious about the rest of the world. Looking around the church sanctuary that morning I studied the faces of the whole congregation, and they all now seemed capable of the same kind of evil I’d witnessed in the film.
Regardless of the ordeal I suffered through, if you’re reading this you’ve likely listened to our podcast, so you can see how even such a fearful experience could lead to something as positive as a love of film that’s been the best part of my life. It was a terrifying encounter, but I can joke about it now and it was my first real experience of the power of Cinema. I don’t know that I ever want to be that scared by a movie again, because if such powerful fear occurred in adulthood, something terrible has happened. But opening yourself up and allowing movies to affect you can yield joy and celebration of life with the same intensity as fear. It’s what I’ve based my adult life upon, and I never want it to end.
