Search - The Shining on DVD

Special Features

M. Maloney | Savannah, GA United States | 08/23/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This disc will feature an enhanced audio/video track for the feature film. Other features include commentary by Garrett Brown and John Baxter. There will be the same old "Making of the Shining" documentary that was featured on the old disc, but there are also three new featurettes: View from The Overlook: Crafting the Shining, The Visions of Stanley Kubrick, and Wendy Carlos, Composer. All in all, I'd make the purchase based on the video quality and enhanced sound alone."

Classic horror versus fine analysis of alcoholism

M. Maloney | 02/14/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"In 1975 King stayed with his family in a hotel in the Colorado mountains, and there "The Shining" was conceived, to be published two years later. Already famous, with this book King entered the hall of fame where he resides to this day. In 1980 Stanley Kubrick directed a bone-chilling silver screen adaptation of "The Shining", starring Jack Nicholson. A breakthrough in cinematography, the film defined the modern horror as it was. Strangely, it does not diverge from the book as much as the author claims it does. With one slight irrelevant exception of an ending, there was only one issue that enraged King, and created animosity between the two giants ever after. Whereas Kubrick put emphasis on madness, King wanted the film to have dealt more with the alcoholism and the wreckage of personality. Therefore in 1997 we had a chance to see the TV miniseries directed by Mick Garris, "Stephen King's The Shining", which appeared to be a complete failure compared to its silver screen predecessor, although produced in cooperation with the author, and slavishly faithful to the novel. In my humble opinion, the infinitely longer King's version didn't create anything close to a frightening, suffocating atmosphere of Kubrick's version. Moreover, I can't possibly imagine anyone coming ever so close to Nicholson's interpretation of Jack Torrance, the haunted alcoholic from the novel. Nicholson was born to play such roles, and certainly, if you have seen this film at least once, you won't be able to forget it ever. I also claim that the wretched fate of a failed man, an alcoholic, was adequately and sufficiently portrayed in the original film version. The book is slightly repetitive in this respect, and the great virtue of Kubrick's vision is that he was able to get rid of the redundancy apparent in King's novel. In the mid-seventies, "The Shining" must have been a lightning of prophecy. A rich novel, which combined fantastic storytelling, and portrayal of alcoholism and hopelessness of the young marriage - "The Shining" was an instant success. Of course it might be a flagship example of an intelligent horror novel, but there are better accounts of haunted houses out there. Second, after a third novel crossing the genre territory, King was pigeonholed as a horror writer, and thus ever after his works were ignored and ridiculed as not worth reading. I agree that half of the time his books do not deserve mentioning and fall well into usual, categories, there are volumes to which there is more than it appears at a glance. The Shining is a best example of a novel where horror is used as a starting point for good old storytelling, where the crucial element has little in common with the supernatural, and much to do with mainstream portrait of the society and ordinary individuals faced with extraordinary circumstances.It's worth to read the book, and then see Kubrick's and King's film versions. This way, you will be able to approach the same grand story from three different angles, and none of them weak, quite to the contrary."