REACTING to *The Shining (1980)* COMPLETELY DISTURBING!! (First Time Watching) Horror Movies 

Halloween(1978).

If you guys like the film I hope you'll watch the sequel as well because it's really really good! Oh and if ye do watch Doctor Sleep, the directors cut is the best version.

This is one of them. Definitely "Rosemary's Baby", "An American Werewolf In London", "Creepshow", "Carrie", the 1978 "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers", "Island Of Lost Souls" (early 30s), the original "King Kong", the original "Carnival Of Souls", "Eyes Without A Face", "Freaks" (if that's considered a horror movie), those come to mind. I don't consider "Jaws" or "Psycho" horror movies, but if you do, then you can add them to the list.

For me, it's a tie between A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and The Evil Dead (1981).

The Others, Dead Silence (the unrated version), The Shinning and The Exorcism of Emily Rose

Who cares....

That's super interesting!

During one take, on the back swing, Nicholson barely missed one of the crew. Oops. 💀

​@@fredtelloyou cared enough to reply

​@@fredtello you clearly do since you replied

I always thought it was Delebert Grady’s wife

She was chopped up with an axe.@@supremedream1764

I always wondered if she sexually assaulted Danny as well?

It's not explained in the film. The book and the movie are different animals.

It makes sense if you clock what Danny is actually in the same shot with. He's usually looking off camera at something alarming or horrific so Kubrick would have talked him through whatever reaction he needed without exposing him to the sight of dismembered little girls or decomposing bathing ladies or amorous furries or whatever. Not an uncommon thing when you're dealing with kids. I assume people conflate this movie with "Taxi Driver" where Jodie Foster's mother made sure her daughter knew what she was acting and what it meant. In preproduction Jodie and her mom shadowed a couple of underage prostitutes who were about the same age as the character that Jodie was going to portray so she could get a real life sense of what she was doing. Scorsese, De Niro and the production team were a lot more traumatized than Jodie ever was - they took an unusual amount of care for the time to make sure counselors were on hand making sure Jodie was coping okay and I don't think they ever stopped the production on account of her. It helped that Jodie was VERY interested in the nuts and bolts of movie making. She was a seasoned professional of dozens of movie and TV shoots by the time "Taxi Driver" happened but she had never done anything like this before. This came in handy when they shot the climactic action scene with all those blood and gore effects. It was a very hot summer and it was rather grueling resetting everything for subsequent takes but Jodie's interest and full-on geeking out over how they made all the bullet hits happen and stuff helped give the cast and crew a second and third wind as things dragged on. I seem to have digressed from "Shining" but "Taxi Driver" is the kid actor scenario that I have in my head that contrasts with it the most while still representing what seems to have been an equally happy and fulfilling experience for the young actors involved.

Kubrick was very protective of Danny Lloyd, and he wanted to make sure the kid wouldn't have any emotional baggage. So, he would shoot several takes for each scene, and he would have Danny act happy, sad, angry, and scared, then he'd use all of the scared takes. Garrett Brown the inventor of the Steadicam, has stated that this movie showed him how much his camera mount could be used in many different ways. Also, he realized that Danny Lloyd weight exactly as much as the camera that fit in the mount. So, he took out the camera, put in a child's seat, got Danny to sit in it, and took him for a ride on the mount; Danny must have felt like he was flying. From what I've heard, that kid had a BLAST making this movie.

​@@karlmortoniv2951 For a five-year-old child, the meaning of the word horror is beyond his grasp. So I thought he believed that the drama genre Kubrick referred to the film included scary things too he was confronted with during filming. 🙂

@@quietman71 It's a shame he couldn't watch the film with Kubrick years later. I don't know if Kubrick died before Danny watched it at fifteen or not. I didn't see the shinning until I was twenty. I was afraid of it for years and now it's my favorite horror classic. Even though there are problems with it.

@@johnnyfive4436 Danny was 5 when he made the movie, and it came out in 1980. So call it 1979 for production. Ten years later when Danny was 15 is 1989. Kubrick died in 1999.

But the two girls hired to play the parts were in fact twins. The manager gives incorrect facts to Jack during the interview. He even gets Grady's first name wrong.

@@Lethgar_Smith Yes, I'm saying it all contributes to the confusion. I mean, just because they were twins in real life, we assume they are on the screen.

There was a pair of sisters in my school like that. Identical, but 2 years apart in age.

My sısters looked lıke twıns at that age but they were 15 months apart. Our mom dressed us all alike alot of the time because she made our clothes and it was just cheaper to buy the same material and make several dresses. And I've known a lot of kids that looked like twins but were a year or so apart. I've also known a lot who look nothing alike but are full siblings. Genetics are weird like that.

They are twins....saw them as recent as 2015 at a ComicCon/Horror Con.

Jack's always been the caretaker, and the ending is perfect.

About 2 years ago a VHS copy of this movie went on auction that was from the personal archives of one of the crew members (I don't remember which one). There are rumors that it had the only surviving copy of the original ending, but this has yet to surface.

I'm 5 days late to the party, but another good S.K. movie is Misery with the famous line "I'm your #1 fan".

I think Kubrick always edited his films after previews. That's most of why I think of _Eyes Wide Shut_ as unfinished; he surely would have made edits and worked more on the sound before it was released.

@@Theomite I'm sure on a RU-vid video there are still images of the scene. Unless I'm remembering incorrectly.

Kubrick was a perfectionist of a filmmaker.

It's criminal how badly Kubrick treated Shelly Duvall. She never really recovered from the trauma.

I mean… juice

Nicholson looks a bit insane in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Next, a movie they should also see. I just watched LOTRs with my Dad and in all these decades, I never looked up the actor who played Grima, and my Dad pointed out that he was Billy in Cuckoo's Nest and I lost my sh*t!

He didn't change the ending before it was in theaters. He changed it 10 days after it had already premiered. It was a flaw that Warner Bros. had carelessly ignored.

And that's just the start lol. Kubrick wasn't the genius he was made out to be. A lot of his work had no depth in my opinion, and he was an egomaniac by all accounts. Unforgivable what he did to Shelley Duvall.

The filming was literally hell for everyone, especially Duval. A lot of those scenes where she was crying and upset are so authentic because she really was crying and upset.

@@susieautrey6112I feel sorry for her in general, she’s an actress but is only viewed as “terrible.” She’s not an attractive woman at all 🫤 the only other “big role” she’s known for besides this one is Olive Oyl in the Popeye movie with Robin Williams

Poor Shelley Duval. I've always respected Kubrick's final products, but some of the stuff he did to his actors in order to get the perfect scene was downright sadistic. He tortured Duval on set, and told the other actors to ignore and gaslight her so she'd have nowhere and no one to turn to, all because he wanted her fear and panic to look more authentic.

And the book mentions that she was...overly fond of little boys. So she almost certainly tried to kiss Danny too.

Hellraiser and definitely Hellraiser 2

they need to do all the scream movies

yeah I would love for you to reacts to all the screams

Before scream they have some light homework to do first, cause spoilers.

@Average_Sociopath no, 4 is one of the best ones lol

Hmm, that take reminds me a lot of the _Haunting of Hill House_ series. If you haven't seen it, I recommend it very highly.

Ain't no way the novel is 1000 pages. Maybe half that.

@@trhansen3244 - You're almost right! I have the mass market paperback here beside me, and it's 659 pages. That's a _little_ more than half of a thousand, but that's pretty darn close for a figure you pulled from thin air. Very good guesstimate! OP must have mixed it up with _The Stand_ that's the _real_ doorstop among King's early books. ;)

@@ShinyAvalon It wasn't thin air. It was thick air. Stop trying to make things up!

@@trhansen3244 - Ha! It was thinner than a very, very thin thing, and your guess was still amazing! So there!

Agreed that the book is a definite must read! It explains details of the movie so much. Kubrick’s version of this story is a confusing mess through most of it. All style and not enough substance to the story. The book is infinitely better.

Eh, that movie was typical of modern 'horror'. Boring boring boring.

@@trhansen3244 Stephen King isn't for everyone I guess.

@@TimSeraphiel His early works are awesome. After about 1986, his works are mostly pure crap.

​@TimSeraphiel eh well I wouldn't say the sequel was a true sequel (at least not to Kubrick's adaption). This is a case where the adaption is a different animal than the book and has earned its independence from its source material. I don't regard Dr. Sleep to be a true sequel to the world of Kubricks interpretation of the book. That would require Kubrick himself and his film had no use for a sequel.

Doctor Sleep was boring and ran off the rails if it claims to be a sequel. I did a reaction to it but was so bored that I didn't publish it.

King went on record saying that during a bout of sobriety before he got clean he realized that when he wrote The Shining he was writing about his own worst fear of his addiction issues causing him to hurt his children. With that context the idea of an adaptation of a work that is personal to you removing the main emotional core of the characters to just turn him into a hateful and abusive monster? Yeah I can understand why King for years disowned this movie

@@CapitalExpression - Kubrick pretty much took the characters and scenery, and threw out King's coherent overall explanation. King was writing a horror story, Kubrick made a movie about madness. Not making sense makes it worse.

It's been a long time since I read the book, I think I remember another scene in which Jack is chasing Danny with a hammer. Jack has a moment of clarity and starts beating his head with the hammer. I really like both the film and the movie for different reasons but King's work creating complex characters really adds to the emotional weight of the final climax in a way that I don't think the film pulls off

@@loupgarou-dj3tm King didn't like Kubrick's movie. King has said that his story worked because of Jack Torrance's transition from loving father to maniac, and then back at the end when he redeems himself by sacrificing himself for Danny. He pointed out that with Nicholson, he seemed crazy and menacing from Minute One, so there was no real horror, no transition.

King has since softened his stance on the movie, though he still approaches them as different properties. That being said, I don't agree that Kubrick just made Jack a boogeyman from beginning to end. There's a lot of subtext in the movie and stuff that you infer through dialogue, tone, mise en scene, etc. It's true that you don't get all the subtlety that was in the novel, but then that's true of all book-to-movie adaptations because they're different mediums. Books are internal, movies are external. I do think that Kubrick leaned into Jack being someone who was already troubled and not a great guy even before the Overlook-not a monster but not a "good guy"-but that also feeds into why the hotel sees him as the weak link, the one it can use to get to Danny. He's corruptible (and has a slightly weaker "shine"). The hotel works constantly to lead him down that garden path of compromising himself with the alcohol, the opportunity to cheat, etc, etc. The more he gives in to the hotel's temptations, the stronger the hotel's grip on him becomes and the more we see it asserting itself. One of the few clunkers is the slightly too on-the-nose line (imo) where Jack says he'd sell his soul for a beer, followed immediately by Lloyd the demon... er, I mean, bartender... showing up to accept his offer by giving him alcohol, after which all drinks are "on the house," Jack's "credit is good," and Jack's money "is no good here." That line sticks out like a sore thumb to me as a little tropey, though, to be fair, I don't think I've ever heard a reactor catch it or mention it. The reason everyone feels Jack is creepy right from the beginning comes down to two things: (1) Those eyebrows. Jack Nicholson looks a certain way and that look has a hint of cruelness to it, even when it isn't always supposed to. It's not that he CAN'T pull off a softer character, just that it's always going to be an uphill battle bc of his features. But, when it comes time for "crazy Jack Torrance," Nicholson can't be beat. And (2) people who are watching this movie today are going into it with the background noise of pop culture and are already expecting him to be a creep, therefore, even when he's acting like just a dude, the anticipation of what memes have already told you he becomes colors your interpretation of him. Yeah, you could complain that he didn't have that redemption arc by the end but, tbh, I kind of like it without. I like the fact that the movie has him so lost in the hotel's sauce that he's desperate to "do his job" and please the hotel and, when he fails, the hotel abandons him to die in the maze. It's tragic. His animal noises as he's reduced to lunatic desperation, lost in the maze and abandoned by his benefactors, are way more effective, imo, than him having a schmaltzy "I'm sorry, Danny" moment at the end. Fortunately for fans of either or both, the book and novel both exist so you can have your cake and watch it adapted too. As for Kubrick turning down Stephen King's offer to write the screenplay, that's not particularly surprising. I love Stephen King as a writer (though he struggles with the endings of his novels, which is why I usually prefer his short stories) but he's not exactly known for being an auteur filmmaker. And many of the movies he's had a direct hand in have not exactly become classics. He's generally been better off handing his IP over to someone else to adapt and letting them do what they do best bc, let's face it, movies are not his forte. And, anyway, novelists tend to have a hard time adapting their books for the screen because (1) they're too close to it, and (2) they don't always understand the difference between internal and external storytelling. That may be less true today when so many more people are TV and movie savvy, but back then? Novelists weren't always considered the best people to adapt their own works. Another thing about Stephen King: Not everything he writes that sounds good on a page translates well to the screen. It reminds me of how comic book superheroes can get away with ridiculous spandex outfits on a comics page but if you put that same outfit, faithfully recreated, onto the screen, it looks ridiculous. Same with King. There are so many places where I've read stuff in his books that goes so far over the top that it becomes legit cartoony. If you were to put it on the screen, it would be laughable. E.g. I loved "The Stand" but, partway through the book, the antagonist lost any scariness he might've had when King had him get angry and wrote that actual steam was coming out of his ears, like a cartoon character. Not a metaphor. Actual steam shooting out of his ears because he was angry. He took this shadowy, demonic character that was shaping up to be an interesting, creepy Big Bad and turned it into Daffy Duck. Or - and ymmv here - the end of "Pet Sematary" [MILD SPOILERS]: The closing scenes with Gage were super creepy in the movie because they kept him subtle and little kid like, saying creepy things in a little kid's voice and manner of speaking. In the book, King has him roaring in a demonic monster voice and transforming into this super over-the-top cartoon that would've been too much and lost what made the filmed scene the classic bit that it was. King is great but let's not get it twisted: His ideas of "what works" on screen are not necessarily on the same level as people who do that for a living (and do it to the level that they're considered auteurs and classic filmmakers). Would "The Shining" have been the enduring classic that it is if Kubrick hadn't made the movie? Would we still be talking about it 50 years later if King had written and/or directed it himself? Doubtful. I mean, I don't see a lot of movie reactions talking about "Maximum Overdrive." Nor do I see people dissecting the subtleties of "Creepshow." And where are all the documentaries (or even conversations) about the made-for-TV "Shining" that King preferred? King and a certain percentage of book-purists might like it but most other people don't care or put it in anywhere near the same league as Kubrick's adaptation. Kubrick changed stuff, sure, but what he did obviously was effective and worked for a LOT of people. I assume most people here are not watching reactions to "The Shining" because they think it's garbage. And I'm not even a Kubrick fanboy. I find a number of his movies to be a little self-indulgent and boring. Plus, from the stories, he sounds like kind of a dick. But i think he knocked it way out of the park with "The Shining," Stephen King's butthurt notwithstanding. I don't know that an absolutely faithful recreation of the book would've hit the same.

I'd go with Stand By Me. Maybe "IT." An oddball one I like is "Silver Bullet," but I think I like that one purely for the cheese factor. ;p Oh, and Firestarter.

The '89 Pet Semetary is one of my favorites. Not the greatest movie but it has some undoubtedly creeeeeeepy scenes

Carrie and The Dead Zone adaptations should be at the top of the list.

@123haninhk character DRIVEN is right ! i get the reference 😉 just for that reason it's a classic and it has a great cast of character actors as well.

@@synical13 Well, Stephen King and James Janisse once said it was more about character driven than horror, so 😜

My old car was called Christine lol

Christine is better than it should be. The novel is one of King's best. He hasn't written a really good novel since around 1985 or so.

@@123haninhkbeing more of one thing doesn’t exclude it from being the other. You just repeat what people say without thinking about it?

All of the creepy vignettes in the climax of the movie and in Room 237 refer to specific former guests and staff of the Overlook, explained in some detail in the book, but left to the audience's imagination on screen.

I think you’ll like a similar horror classic called Posession (1981). It has metaphors for divorce except the metaphors in that movie are more obvious

Ummmmm no IT IS about abusive relationships 🤣😮‍💨🙄 Christ you couldnt look that UP? Or just an attempt at lookin smart? It’s not working.

@@6Haunted-Days why so sour dear?... "That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one's own soul" said Oscar Wilde (yes I looked that up)

@@6Haunted-Days Christ you couldn't look up that it's about the Native American genocide? Maybe you should stop pretending you're smart and use it to be an asshole.

@@6Haunted-Daysthis comment made you look even dumber…

My favorite Stephen King adaption is Stand by Me.

I've seen an interviewer decades later say to him "You can say I worked on an Oscar-winning movie with Stanley Kubrick and Jack Nicholson when I was five, and then I retired".

What creeps you out in this film is why Joe Biden loves this film. He wants to play with them. Forever and ever and ever and ever. Or at least sniff their hair.

That's not true. All you have to do is Google it. They were played by real life twins and there are pictures of them of what they look like today.

In the book, halloran doesn't die. There's a follow-up book called Dr Sleep that follows Danny's relationship with Halloran but they eventually lose touch and it's sometime later before Danny finds out that Halloran died.

Also, Stephen King and his wife spent some time in Colorado while he was writing one of his books and wanted to get away so he would have solitude and I think that's when he saw or heard about the big hotel and it gave him the idea for the shining.

Hell ya ,Great Par tay

Not just Jack's.

@@carlossaraiva8213ok no fair enough wendys actor too, but hack is my fav

He's the only good thing about this movie

As he should’ve… Nicholson paved the way for actors to play the Joker today. Even though he technically wasn’t the first actor to play him

@@nsasupporter7557 Cesar Romero shall always be respected.

@@TheGundamsword Batman 1989 was a phenomenal masterpiece, it was such a hit that it paved the way for comic book movies and it had alot to do with Nicholson’s performance as the Joker

@@nsasupporter7557 it's my favorite by far. The best depiction of Batman and Bruce Wayne, as well as the best depiction of Gotham City.

@@TheGundamsword did you know that Nicholson turned down the role at first, so in order to get him to accept it they teased Robin Williams with the role?

@besupaaa I 've heard consistently how Kubrick did this to many actors and crew alike with grueling demands with the actors it was take after take after bloody take !! he was not one take KUBRICK that's for sure !🎬

I feel sorry for Shelley Duvall anyway, first all she’s definitely not an attractive woman 😳🫤 Secondly she only plays small roles. The only other “famous role” she played besides this one was Olive Oyl in the Popeye movie with Robin Williams

@@nsasupporter7557 "not an attractive woman"? Speak for yourself mate. In film she was for sure a character actor who was mostly a supporting player but she had a strong Television career with her self created Fairy Tale and Classics series of shows.

@@CapitalExpression so you actually thinks she’s attractive?? 😳🙄 You might have the worst taste in women that I’ve ever heard

@@CapitalExpression let me tell you something else… if you’ve seen her recently and still think she’s attractive, there’s something seriously wrong with you! 😳 you need to have your eyes examined. She looks a billion times worse than she did in 1980 when she was in this movie

The hotel wasn’t built in the 1920’s but in 1906-1907 unless it was just in this movie and in the book it’s in the 1920’s.

Agreed. That's why people are still talking about The Shining, The Exorcist, The Omen and Psycho decades later.

YES, Rosemary's Baby is brilliant, and so is Carrie, in very different ways about the horrors of being a woman and a teenage girl, but also, just incredible well written and well thought out movies!

2 years since and 5 months sobriety just means he hasn't had a drink in 5 months. He may have slipped a few times before that or only started sobriety 5 months before. I don't see what is so weird about that. It would be common for someone like that to slip and have a beer or more every so often before he totally committed to it.

It was 5 months when they went to the hotel. Then a month passes before he drinks.

In the book, Jack finds the entire history of the Overlook in paperwork stored next to an unreliable boiler. In the film, Wendy competently does all the work that Jack was hired to do.

@@stevetheduck1425 the moment she does Jack's work is so brief. The importance of the boiler maintenance isn't even mentioned. That's why the Miniseries is a little better in some way. Including the whole "Tony" thing.

Apparently it's a closer adaptation to Stephen King's book. In the miniseries, it seems like Jack actually likes his son whereas Jack in the movie clearly always wanted to kill his family. I actually like the miniseries version more, even though it's missing Kubrick's artistry, because I can't take the movie seriously. I saw the Simpsons parody so many times before I actually saw the movie that the movie was robbed of all its gravitas, except for the scene in Room 237.

Popeye was Duvall's next movie right after The Shining. She also had a small cameo in the movie Time Bandits.

@@looneytoon76 Her other notable achievement was her TV series Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre, which she hosted and served as executive producer, and featured a host of stars.