REVIEW DATE 1/16/99
Let me ask you, has Jack Nicholson ever been in a bad movie?
Well. . . Faster, Pussycat, Kill, Kill.
And maybe The Terror.
Come to think of it, Jack has done some bad movies. Thankfully, none of them were on cable this weekend.
In The Shining Jack plays Jack, Jack Torrance that is. In search of a job and a quiet place to write the great American novel, he takes a job as caretaker of the Overlook Hotel. The Overlook is a nice, quiet, scenic place located high in the Rocky mountains. Because it would cost a fortune to keep the roads clear of snow the Overlook must shut down ever winter. Jack and his family happily jump at the opportunity to take care of the old place for the winter. Who cares if the last caretaker went insane and chopped up his whole family with an ax, huh?
Before long though, Jack's son, Danny (Danny Lloyd) starts to have some weird visions. Two little girls who just happen to be the daughters of the last caretaker (ya know, the one he hacked to pieces) keep showing up around the hotel halls. Things get even worse when blood comes out of the elevator (funny, in all the hotels I've stayed in the blood gets off at the ground floor. . .). And the ultimate accurse when a naked woman lurches out of a bath tub and tries to kill Danny.
But
that's not all kiddies, oh no. While all this is happening Jack is slowly going insane.
First he's just a little on edge, then he's threatening his wife, until finally he has
conversations with ghostly bartenders and people who died in the 1920's. We all know where
this is going don't we?
Eventually Jack snaps like a two by four in a great white shark's mouth, grabs the nearest ax, and starts chasing his cry baby wife, Windy (Shelly Duvall) around the halls of the overlook.
Is there a person on this planet who hasn't seen this movie? What!? Then what the hell are you waiting for? I mean, this has Jack Nicholson doing what he does best: playing and honest to god psycho. What's different here from all the other psycho's he's played (with the exception of The Joker) is that those were all nice psychos, psychos you would want to bring home to your parents for dinner. Here the script written by Diane Johnson and Stan (Da Man) Kubrick, from a novel by Steven (Big Steve) King, lets Jack just cut loose and be a true psychotic genius.
Even Danny Lloyd manages to be more the the annoying six-year-old that his character could have been. Though he's not really playing Danny in some of his scenes, instead he's playing Tony, "The little boy that lives in my mouth," with a gruff, spooky voice. It's good to see one of these child actors actually acting for once.
The only real weak link in the cast would have to be the above mentioned cry baby, Shelly Duvall. Like other women in horror movies before or scenes she ether (a) runs around screaming (b) screams, or (c) occasionally whacks the psycho with a blunt object. I hate characters like this.
The only other problem I have with this movie is that, despite plenty of lead in time and build up, we just don't know our characters well. There is ample time for the script to give us some back story, but don't expect much. Most of the back story is Jack's along and there isn't even much time spent on that. Oh, well, I guess you can't win 'em all.
But don't get me wrong, this is still a darn good movie. Even if their back stories aren't fully explored we do know the characters by association at least. And because this movie is so well known it generates lots of suspense as we prepare for the inevitable. This is a truly good horror movie, to be enjoyed by all ages.
RATING (OUT OF A POSSIBLE FIVE)
THE AGES THAT DON'T MIND SEEING BLOOD COMING OUT OF ELEVATORS, THAT IS.
HOME VAULT RATINGS MISSION STATEMENT LINKS
GODZILLA TRADEMARK 1999, TOHO CO., LTD