The Shining (of the Slasher's Spotlight)

"How are things going, Mr. Torrance?"

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Ah yes, The Shining. Stanley Kubrick’s “masterpiece of modern horror,” while also among Stephen King’s least favorite adaptations of his many, many stories. The Shining is an interesting film to discuss both in relation to Clover’s writing and to consumers of the horror genre in general.Many people like to dismiss slasher pictures likeThe Texas Chain Saw Massacre as lower class works of film, while acceptingThe Shining to be amongst the best films, regardless of genre, ever made.What is it that makes The Shining stand above most other horror films?The intricate design of the Overlook? That almost constant eerie music?The attachment of Kubrick’s name? Or maybe all the extreme close-ups of Jack Nicholson’s series of crazy facial expressions?It is probably a combination of all of these things, although I do wonder how much the film would retain if the music and all of the shots of Nicholson’s face were removed.

Yet for all of these defining characteristics, The Shining still maintains many of the shared traits of the “less meaningful” slasher film. One of the ways is does this is with the location. The Overlook Hotel is as much as a character as anyone else is in the film. The hotel has a vast abundance of “what makes these houses terrible is not just their Victorian de­ crepitude, but the terrible families… that occupy them” (Clover, 30). All of the supernatural beings that inhabit the hotel are what make up the “terrible families,” along with Jack by the end of the film. It may not have the Victorian aesthetic that the mansion in Psycho displays, but the carefully weaved patterns of the carpet that Danny races around on is unsettling nonetheless. In fact, the hallways of this film can be seen as the “terrible tunnels” of the film, since they seemingly make up a never ending labyrinth of horror.

Another reason that The Shining follows in the conventions of the slasher film is its treatment toward women, both in terms of story and production. This film continues Hitchcock’s direction to “torture the women” as he did in many of his films. While Jack is the one who goes crazy, his wife Wendy that suffers the real psychological pain. Even before his murderous turn, Jack antagonized and verbally abused Wendy. What makes this whole thing more upsetting is the fact that Wendy’s treatment is really reflection of how Stanley Kubrick treated Shelley Duvall on set. He continuously isolated her from everyone else so she could feel the effect of the Overlook and made her shoot retakes numerous times. When she is trembling with the bat toward the end of the film, she is not even acting anymore, Duvall simply could barely keep a hold on the bat because of how many times Kubrick made her shoot the scene. Duvall gives a great and very underrated performance in this film, as well as surviving a shoot that lasted over a year with a horrible actor-director relationship.

There are other more obvious ways that The Shining connects to slasher films, like the whole ordeal with Jack and his ax (as well as the infamous bathroom scene to go with it), but I think two I mentioned are more interesting, especially with a set as iconic as the Overlook. None of this was meant to knock on The Shining, I think it is a great film. I also think Texas Chain Saw and other slashers are great films. Perhaps slashers represent more than just bottom of the barrel entertainment.