13 Nights of Hallowe'en 2010: Night #12 The Shining (1980)
The night before Hallowe'en, Devil's Night. Can you feel the excitement? Are you ready? Well if not then you should be after
tonight's movie. In a list of movies with infamously haunted places there is one name that towers over the others. It is called The Overlook Hotel, and it is not real, but most people will know the name nonetheless, even if they don't recall from where. The Overlook is based for the most part on a real hotel called The Stanley Hotel and is the creation of Stephen King in his novel The Shining. This is the first movie adaptation of that novel. The mastermind behind it is none other than Stanley Kubrick. Mind you some people aren't so sure on the mastermind part. This movie deviates from the novel on several levels. To me this makes for the more interesting of the two kind of novel to movie adaptations.Kubrick had his own vision for the story. It is both familiar and divergent. Starting off we have the cast. The movie stars Jack Nicholson,
Shelley Duvall, and young Danny Lloyd as a family maintaining The Overlook Hotel during the long and harsh winter. This is the same as King's story. It's not a spoiler, but the only thing I'll say here about the differences is that in Kubrick's movie the hotel has a hedge maze, and the novel--and remake mini-series--has hedge animals that come to life. As one might expect from a Kubrick movie there is a great attention to detail from sets to locations to the acting, and of course the direction. As for the haunting, the Shining has it in spades. Also, if you don't know, the shining is actually psychic ability, exemplified by Danny Lloyd's character and the cook played by Scatman Crothers.Mood: stoked.
Music: Halloween
by Helloween. MP3s
Labels: Devil's Night, directors, ghosts, Halloween, haunted, horror, hotel, movies, psychic ability, Stanley Kubrick, Stephen King, The Overlook Hotel, The Shining, The Stanley Hotel, thirteen
posted by Robert G. Male @ 2:08 PM
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stays in a particular room gets the full on haunting treatment. That room is 1408. John Cusack plays a paranormal debunker writing a book about haunted hotels and the Dolphin should prove to be crowning chapter. Cusack always seemed to skate just along the periphery of horror or other genre movie roles until recently, but he certainly stepped into it with 1408. This movie is something of an oddball and I almost didn't include it in the thirteen nights. There is so much more than a regular haunting going on in this movie. You'll just have to watch it to find out, if you haven't already seen it. I have only seen the theatrical version so far and cannot comment on the director's cut, which was included in the set that I bought.
Hollywood movies across all genres. Horror newcomer Mary McCormack plays Cusack's ex-wife. She doesn't have a lot of screen time, but it was probably a good gig in between TV shows. Tony Shalhoub has a spot too as Cusack's literary agent. I just have to point out that Shalhoub was also in the heavily haunted movie Thir13en Ghosts, though here he doesn't get in on any of the action. That movie's ghosts put me in mind of the ones 1408 a little bit. The 1408 ghosts aren't so over top or gruesome, but they are stylized, and honestly I was a little disappointed in that quality of the effects. I'd even compare them to back when The Lawnmower Man came out, but this is maybe all too much information. Don't let this dissuade you from watching 1408.
by Rob Zombie. 
