Redrum reigns supreme in 'The Shining'

WILL RENICK
DM A & E Editor

EDITOR'S NOTE: Due to the exclusion of two classics, the Freaky Flicks countdown has been expanded to include Alpha and Omega -- the beginning and the end of horror.

Over-the-top in every aspect of the term, Stanley Kubrick creates a multi-faceted world where the dead host galas, elevators gush blood, kids ride tricycles around hotels and enormous gophers give oral pleasure to butlers. ("Wonderful party, isn't it?")

Former teacher Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) gets a job as the custodian of the Overlook Hotel, in the mountains of Colorado. Jack seems to think that this will give him the isolation he needs to write. When vicious snow storms block the Torrance family in the hotel, Jack's son Danny (Danny Lloyd) -- who has clairvoyance and telepathic powers -- discovers the hotel is haunted and that the spirits are driving Jack crazy. When Jack meets the ghost of Mr. Grady (Philip Stone), the former hotel custodian who murdered his wife and his two daughters with an ax, things begin to get nasty. Not gory nasty, but a nastiness beyond your wildest imagination.

Kubrick created a timeless horror masterpiece that puts recent genre movies to shame; one that many directors should do study closely. It still hasn«t been equaled. You are completely absorbed into the environment of the Overlook Hotel, thanks to the superb camera-work, cinematography (It was entirely built on a sound stage), acting, and very importantly - the use of contemporary classical music. The blood-spewing elevator accompanied by Penderecki's "The Dream of Jacob" is an unforgettable masterstroke. Kubrick«s adaption of the book has been criticized but I believe he actually made it better. It's more abstract than King's original story but scarier because of it.

I know King fans who hate this movie. They say Kubrick changed too many plot points and ruined it. I say there's more than one way to tell a good story. King did it very well, and so did Kubrick...just in a different way, like he always does.

The pacing of the movie is equally brilliant. It goes from slow to lightspeed to slow to insane. Timecards illustrate the pacing as if an ominous countdown to the destruction of the Torrance family.

"The Shining" can be taken as either a typical haunted house movie or just a portrait of a decent into madness. The imagery present is so abstract that it makes the viewer actually wonder is he or she is going insane themselves! The pathology of the Overlook Hotel is enough to overpower even the viewer with the strongest psyche. Needless to say, I was reduced to a babbling vegetable. You will be too.