Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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Knhrirl V?i;?^i.' ;... .*j'^?swii ;,^Nv^ - By David Baker < / tS^* Film Critic ' ?^gtt wanted to read Stephen < King's best-selling horror novel, 1 The Shining, two years ago, when a close friend told me it was the scariest book he had read in ages. I knew that Stanley Kubrick was at wwr vjii a uiiu veisiun, nuwever, so I refused to follow my friend's recommendation, afraid that any familiarity with the story would ruin what had the distinct possibility of becoming the most terrifying movie of the decade. When the picture opened in May and the early reviews revealed \ that Kubrick and co-scenarist Diane Johnson had thrown out 9() percent of King's book, I broke down and read it. Thank heavens I did,- for without the novel to flesh out and clarify what Kubrick has put onscreen, I'm afraid that I would nave left the theatre not knowing what The Shining was all about. The people who saw it with me certainly were lost without having read the book and, while leaving the theatre, I overheard no less than half-a-dozen couples in the lobby comparing the picture unfavorably with another recent thriller, Friday the 13th. I don't plan on going quite that far^fjft'this review - how anyone j could'" comoare Sean Cun ningham's low-budget bloodbath with a $15 million Kubrick gothic is beyond my realm of comprehension -- but the fact of the matter is The Shining is not very scary. The picture begins as Jack Torrance iJack Nicholson), a reformed alcoholic with a nasty temper, is driving up lo the Overlook Hotel, a massive old resort high in the Colorado Rookie?. It seems Jack has just been fired from a teaching job back east and, having a wife and . son to support, now wants the job j of winter caretaker at the Overlook. ] The minute Jack arrives, the ^ hotel manager, Stuart Ullman t (Barry Nelson), starts trying to v talk him out of the job. Come the v first snow, Ullman says, Jack and r his family will be cut off from the rest of the world with nnthino hi if v a CB radio and a snowmobile to fall j back on. That's fine, Jack says -- t he's writing a play and complete c isolation is exactly what he's r looking for. , Ullman continues, telling Jack ? the story of how a former ( Shelley Duvall is relui z micHii caretaker, a man named Grady, was siezed by an extreme case of cabin fever and, during the winter of 1970, chopped his wife and two daughters into tiny pieces with an ax, then blew his own brains out with a rifle. Jack only smiles, and the defeated Ullman responds by giving him the job. In a few days, Jack, Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and five-year-old Danny (Danny Lloyd) are moving into the Overlook, lock, stock and barrel. Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers), the hotel's cook, is ciuinP him a utiiHnH tnnr r?f thn O" * - - "O M vvv" V4 v"^ labyrinthine kitchen when he sees in the Danny the same psychic power that he has had since childhood. Hallorann's grandmother called the power "shining," but it's really - .IS " - * ' HEl $ I M^. ^P\$- ? JS iv* :: Good matured Jack Nicholson in advanced form of extra sensory perception; those who "shine" can ;ee the past and future, in addition o being able to read other people's houghts. Hallorann explains this o Danny, then leaves him with a varning about some of the strange 'isions he might see in certain ooms of the Overlook. Up to this point, the movie is rerv similar to the book, but after fallorann leaves for Florida and L ^ _ ??fi - 1 iic iunuin.es are leu aione, mosi >f the similarities end. Jack still joes crazy and tries to kill Wendy md Danny, but the topiary. inimals, the boiler that needs constant attention, the hotel's << S3 J9 ^B$jnSg :tant to answer the door in Kubi rprtpH * sordid history - virtually all of the things that made the book so frightening -- have been deleted from the film. And of the few creepy things that remain, Kubrick has distorted the majority of them, most for no reason. The crone in Room 217, for instance, has changed residences to Room 239, becoming much younger and prettier in the process. Tony, Danny's invisible , playmate, inexplicably talks I through Danny's index finger, and each of the hotel's apparitions appears in clothes from the 1920s, even though most of them died in the 1940s and 1960s. Even the two little girls who were killed in 1970 show up luoking like baby flappers. Kubrick makes a last ditch effort to explain this by rolling the end titles over a still photograph, supposedly taken in 1927, that has all of the film's characters (including Jack) attending a soiree in the Overlook ballroom. The photo doesn't come close to tying the picture's loose ends together, so the viewer comes away with a most unsatisfying feeling. This is not to say that The Shining is totally devoid of merit, but coming from a filmmaker with a reputation as overwhelming as Kubrick's, it's pretty damned disappointing. The master's touches are there in abundance -- a magnificent tracking shot of Danny riding his tricycle through the halls (with the soundtrack precisely registering now aiiierent the wheels sound on carpet than they do on bare floor), grotesque shadows falling on snow-covered hedges, chase sequences filmed (effectively) with a wide-angle lens, and Wendy thumbing through Jack's manuscript and finding that all he has written is "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" nvf>r anH r?\/f>r anrl Aimr Knt V , v,? V?I.V* V* V? UIIV4 VY VI UUl therein lies the problem; they're touches and nothing more. One gets the feeling that in an effort to make every detail so exact, Kubrick forgot to consider the overall effect the picture would have. Thus, the movie's only overall effect is boredom. The thing that really sinks The Shining, though, is the acting. Nicholson is sunrmcpH ? nchnw hnm vv/ unv/n I*UV* the growing strain of isolation can lead to madness. But with his rolling eyes, arching brows and ever-present grin, Nicholson's Jack Torrance is certifiably looney 20 minutes into the picture. As Wendy, Duvall takes mousiness to ick's 'The Shining' The Sh new heights. We don't believe that Jack would put up with such a twit for a minute, so how can we be surprised when he tries to kill her? Only Crothers manages to turn in a believable performance and Kubrick rewards him by unnecessarily killing him off. If it was Kubrick's intention to make a horror film that would poini oui me weaKnesses and tne Things Vm gt clocks wi i Editors note: Lehman's nine mo last Thursday. For all of us here colleague. Sorrowful sentimentalizi would approve of. His wit was quici an aggressive, productive nature, o issue with reviews and commentary from editing to writing, it was hi character. The following is a favoi the world does a 20-year-old have to I Some people say that I'm too y ; this. What in the world does a 21 about? Well, I'm not going to communicative before I start b Were; I'm going to do it while I'm You know, of course, what I'n velous takeover of our timekeepii It seemed to happen overnight terrifying They decided that ro passe. Timekeeping must mo\ I everything else. So suddenly w space devices on people's wrists. It was easy to dismiss this a: digital watch is tenacious; it hang ensure survival of the fittest. It lo ; would become obsolete because it j thing if the day was even mildly way for us radicals to attack the S bud, what time is it?" we woi 1 executive standing in blazing sur everything short of constructinj would whimper, "I can't tell." But now the things are made sc j furnace, if necessary. So we have What is the fascination with di^ a person with a digital watch wh with something like, "nine fort} might as well have said, "Boop-b is a room number, or a flight nuir a quarter to ten" is a time. The only people who say time 1 I and since trains don't run on tin mean, how many times have you I seven? My God, I thought it was i something vitally important lil 1 A O uiuuysi: That's the most insidious feati; entirely new field of psychologic ; vaguely disturbing about a devic< is all the time. That's fine for tl don't want anything near me v losing only one second in ten thoui Clocks and watches with fact i homey. Look at the terms: what "hands?" Certainly not "LIGH sounds like a secret weapon devel Which would you rather have "grandfather clock" or a 1 CHRONOMETER?" Maybe it's all symptomatic culture. In the past, it was cute what's it mean when Mickey's . twelve?" Now kids ask, "Momm stomach says '10:29?" The most disturbing thing, timepieces you can't see the otl watch or clock, you can see the < hands moving towards them ar hands have been. With a digiti suddenly NOW! is gone; it's not; the mysterious electronic humi numbers. Personally, I want toki Maybe I'm being too complaii standing in the way of Progress, how we find out what time it is? \ it as a defense of the old fashion people just haven't thought about Or maybe I'm just behind the tii linino' incongruities of the genre, he has succeeded grandly, but if he was trying to make something that would impress us, either by scaring us silly or making us care for the people in danger, he has failed miserably. The Shining is as monumentally stupid as his last misfired effort, Barry Lyndon, was boring. Avoid it like you would the plague. Jiny iu muss: \ th faces nth battle with bone cancer ended , it is a loss of both a friend and ng would not be something Lehman I?. His activity on this paper was of ften he would completely carry an . But for all of Lehman's activities, s satire that best personified his rite, posing the question; "What in )e nostalgic about?" oung to be starting a series like : [)-year-old have to be nostaligic > wait until I'm old and un itching about the Way Things i young and at my bitchy peak, l talking about here: the marlg devices by digital numerals. : while you were asleep, the | und clocks and watches were '.e into the Future along with \ e began to see strange, outer- j 5 another passing fad, but the I is on and has actually evolved to i ?un.w<u 1 -t urvcu cia iuuu?ii mc UlglUll waitll was nigh impossible to read the j sunny. At first, this was good pride of digital wearers. "Hey, ild ask cruelly of some young llight at a bus stop. After doing ? a sundial, the poor schnook i that they can be read in a blast lost even that thin advantage. ;ital timekeeping, anyway? Ask at time it is and he will respond '-seven." For my purposes, he oop-be-doop!" Nine-forty-seven iber, or an address.Now, "about ike "9:47" are in train stations, le anyway, what's the point? I | leard someone say, "Nine fortynine forty four!" and rush off to I te an appointment with their ire of digital time: it creates an :al terrors. There is something 2 that knows exactly what time it le big clock in Greenwich, but I i nth the Nazi-like perfection of sand years. es and hands are friendly and could be nicer than "faces" and T-EMITTING DIODES," which loped by the foes of James Bond. j in your bedroom, a kindly old 'COM PU VISUAL MARK VII ; of something wrong with our when little kids said, "Mommy, hands are pointing to four and y, what's it mean when Mickey's however, is that with digital ler times. On an old-fashioned >ther numbers; you can see the id you can imagine where the il readout, it's only NOW! and just in the past, it's gone, lost in ming behind the pretty green now where my past is. ling about all this; maybe I'm What difference does it make Well, maybe; 1 prefer to think of ed clocks and watches. Maybe what they're giving up. nies.