The Shining/Nightmare Fuel

Come play with us, Danny...

It might be just the second work by Stephen King to get its own Nightmare Fuel page, but there is no way this could make the movie any less shit-pants-scary.

If you want more Stephen King insanity, this other page has a lot more than you can shake a stick at.

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• Who wouldn't be terrified by that scene where Jack Nicholson goes absolutely insane?
• The point where Wendy, finally able to see the ghosts, runs into Grady with his skull visibly split.
  • This lovely moment. Wendy, half-insane after her husband trying to kill her and all the other crazy shit she's seen that night, stumbles upon a dude in a bear suit blowing a well-dressed middle-aged man. And that horribly spooky music just sends chills of me spine. If you walked in on that couple in real life, living or ghosts, and they gave you that look, like you were the depraved one, chances are you would run the fuck outta there. Not to mention, in the book the man in the dog/bear suit is wearing said suit and performing the favor because the man in the tuxedo manipulated and broke him through psychological abuse.
• Ten words: All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
  • Not only does this make Wendy realize that Jack is insane, but it shows that he has been insane for a very long time now.
• The encounter with the woman in Room 237 who turns out to be dead and decaying... after Jack lustily embraces her.
• Hell, the basic premise that someone you love and trust could go batshit insane and try to kill you is damned freaky enough on its own without all the ghostly trappings.
• "Come play with us, Danny. Forever. And ever. And ever." (That you can't quite see what their dead bodies look like makes it worse.)
• Shelley Duvall in and of herself is pretty freaking scary. Shelley Duvall contorting her face in terror? Almost unbearable. Probably because Duvall was probably not acting. Kubrick worked on making her as unnerved and on-edge as possible while filming the movie.
• Scatman Crothers spends the entire movie traveling across the country to investigate a hunch. He gets an axe in the chest as soon as he walks in the door. Try watching this movie as a ten-year-old.
  • Even worse, Stanley Kubrick, being an obsessed perfectionist, had Nicholson & Crothers shoot the scene 42 times. Crothers eventually broke down, sobbing his eyes out, and screamed at Kubrick, "WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!?!"
• The music, especially the opening theme. You know you have one hell of a scary ride ahead when just the opening theme makes you want to watch this with the lights on.
  • Hector Berlioz' "Dies Irae" from "Symphonie Fantastique", electronicized by Wendy Carlos.
  • The native American chanting and/or screaming in certain scenes (like when Wendy runs up the stairs just before stumbling upon Dogsuit Man and Derwent), and the weird ululating noises in the opening scene.
• The novel was scary in its own right, especially those moving topiary animals and Jack being haunted by his father.
• And, of course, at the end of it all, when all of a sudden, the face of Jack completely frozen with a terrifying grim face, eyes completely open and dead, and teeth out. The music makes it all worse, as its one hell of a Scare Chord coming from out of nowhere, along the image. Just when you thought it all ended, the movie just won't let you go without a last laugh.

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