Stanley Kubrick's ‘The Shining' Turns 40

The 40th anniversary of Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” was this past Saturday. The 1980 masterpiece, adapted from Stephen King’s popular novel, was bashed by critics upon release. Hell, it won Kubrick a Razzie for Worst Director. The loosely distancing adaptation even got King so upset that he famously derided the Kubrick’s movie as “misogynistic” and “cold.” While, Roger Ebert’s initially dismissive two-star review of the film in 1980 ultimately had the famous Chicago-based critic admitting to a 180-degree opinion reversal and granting it a four-star Great Movies review in 2006.

I’ve come to laughingly shrug King’s over-the-top hatred of the film, especially since Kubrick seems to have had the last laugh in this fight. King’s close to four-decade-long barrage of dismissals of the film seems to revolve around Kubrick betraying his vision. Of course, to say that Kubrick’s movie was a faithful adaptation of King’s novel would be a major lie. What Kubrick did was turn King’s creation over its head, filming what could have been a very dry adaptation into the most Kubrick-ian horror movie imaginable. Gone was the paint-by-numbers narrative with which King’s novels seemed to revel in and entering the fray was the coldly detached visual storytelling for which Kubrick built an entire career on.

King hated Kubrick’s film so much that he ended up directing his own version of “The Shining” for ABC, back in 1997. He was adamant at having his vision be filmed, but the final result was underwhelming. Kubrick’s shadow loomed all over King’s version — quite simply put, the famous author had further dug himself into a hole by attempting to adapt a novel which was now more connected to Kubrick than to his own novel.

And yet, here we are, 40 years later, and the film is now regarded as one of the most influential and important horror movies ever made. I wrote about” The Shining” back in 2019 when it made my “10 Best Horror Movies of All-Time” list:

“Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece was met with lukewarm reviews upon its release nearly 38 years ago, now it's considered an essential addition to his canon of films. Who can forget little Danny Torrance uttering REDRUM or a frighteningly possessed Jack Nicholson huffing and puffing his way into the bathroom door with an ax and delivering a menacing "Here's Johnny!" "The Shining" not only refused to play by the rules of the genre, it just refused to play by the rules. Based on a Stephen King novel, the film has Jack Nicholson's besieged writer, and off-season caretaker of a hotel, being filled with malevolent spirits. His descent into demonic madness isn't just horrifying, it's hypnotic, especially when he goes over the edge and attempts to kill his wife and, possibly telepathic, son. Kubrick went so far as to design the sets in the hotel to take advantage of the potential of his new favorite toy: The Steadicam. The heavy usage here of the then-experimental camera has a smooth, calculatingly precise and steady focus - it would be used even more extensively in his later two films ("Full Metal Jacket" and "Eyes Wide Shut") and, ultimately, by thousands upon thousands of filmmakers in the next 4 decades of moviemaking.

Here’s a sampling of some of the scathing negative reviews The Shining received back in 1980 from some of America’s top movie critics:

“Though we may admire the effects, we’re never drawn in by them, mesmerized. When we see a flash of bloody cadavers or observe a torrent of blood pouring from an elevator, we’re not frightened, because Kubrick’s absorption in film technology distances us.” - Pauline Kael, The New Yorker

“I can’t help thinking that the Stephen King original, with its spook-ridden, other-worldly junketings, gets in the way of Kubrick’s grim vision, finally cheapening and distorting it,” — The Guardian, Derek Malcolm

“The crazier Nicholson gets, the more idiotic he looks. Shelley Duvall transforms the warm sympathetic wife of the book into a simpering, semi-retarded hysteric.” - Variety

“Kubrick is after a cool, sunlit vision of hell, born in the bosom of the nuclear family, but his imagery — with its compulsive symmetry and brightness — is too banal to sustain interest, while the incredibly slack narrative line forestalls suspense.” - Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader.

“I can’t recall a more elaborately ineffective scare movie. You might say that ‘The Shining,’ opening today at area theaters, has no peers: Few directors achieve the treacherous luxury of spending five years (and $12 million-$15 million) on such a peerlessly wrongheaded finished product.” - The Washington Post

“There are moments so visually stunning only a Kubrick could pull them off, yet the film is too grandiose to be the jolter that horror pictures are expected to be. Both those expecting significance from Kubrick and those merely looking for a good scare may be equally disappointed.” - Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times: