Product Description

?Heeeeere?s Johnny!? In a macabre masterpiece adapted from Stephen King?s novel, Jack Nicholson falls prey to forces haunting a snowbound mountain resort with a macabre history.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #372 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-10-23
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish
• Dubbed in: French, Spanish
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 142 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is less an adaptation of Stephen King's bestselling horror novel than a complete reimagining of it from the inside out. In King's book, the Overlook Hotel is a haunted place that takes possession of its off-season caretaker and provokes him to murderous rage against his wife and young son. Kubrick's movie is an existential Road Runner cartoon (his steadicam scurrying through the hotel's labyrinthine hallways), in which the cavernously empty spaces inside the Overlook mirror the emptiness in the soul of the blocked writer, who's settled in for a long winter's hibernation. As many have pointed out, King's protagonist goes mad, but Kubrick's Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) is Looney Tunes from the moment we meet him--all arching eyebrows and mischievous grin. (Both Nicholson and Shelley Duvall reach new levels of hysteria in their performances, driven to extremes by the director's fanatical demands for take after take after take.) The Shining is terrifying--but not in the way fans of the novel might expect. When it was redone as a TV miniseries (reportedly because of King's dissatisfaction with the Kubrick film), the famous topiary-animal attack (which was deemed impossible to film in 1980) was there--but the deeper horror was lost. Kubrick's The Shining gets under your skin and chills your bones; it stays with you, inhabits you, haunts you. And there's no place to hide... --Jim Emerson

Amazon.com
Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is less an adaptation of Stephen King's bestselling horror novel than a complete reimagining of it from the inside out. In King's book, the Overlook Hotel is a haunted place that takes possession of its off-season caretaker and provokes him to murderous rage against his wife and young son. Kubrick's movie is an existential Road Runner cartoon (his steadicam scurrying through the hotel's labyrinthine hallways), in which the cavernously empty spaces inside the Overlook mirror the emptiness in the soul of the blocked writer, who's settled in for a long winter's hibernation. As many have pointed out, King's protagonist goes mad, but Kubrick's Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) is Looney Tunes from the moment we meet him--all arching eyebrows and mischievous grin. (Both Nicholson and Shelley Duvall reach new levels of hysteria in their performances, driven to extremes by the director's fanatical demands for take after take after take.) The Shining is terrifying--but not in the way fans of the novel might expect. When it was redone as a TV miniseries (reportedly because of King's dissatisfaction with the Kubrick film), the famous topiary-animal attack (which was deemed impossible to film in 1980) was there--but the deeper horror was lost. Kubrick's The Shining gets under your skin and chills your bones; it stays with you, inhabits you, haunts you. And there's no place to hide... --Jim Emerson

Customer Reviews

the shining on blu-ray
It looks GREAT! After seeing it a million times on DVD, this is just beautiful. You won't believe how the hotel looks-at least when you use the PS3 to watch it.

"Come here, Wendy. I'm NOTTTT gonna hurt ya ....."
The Shining (1980) is in every way an epic horror classic that really just gets under your skin. It's not only one of the best horror films ever, but also one of the best noteworthy flicks of 1980. I won't get into the plot too much as I'm sure by now it is no mystery to anyone. But I will share my feelings on it and what the impact of watching it is like. The Shining could almost be called a cinematic perfect storm with so many factors combining together that worked out so advantageously.

The first is Stephen King's novella, which this adaptation is one of the few to actually do justice to, the second is director Stanley Kubrick's masterful vision and the third, of course, is Jack Nicholson's frighteningly intense, tour-de-force performance that will scare the S#*% out of you! Ordinarily in most of his movies, it's fun to watch the always larger-than-life Jack chew scenery, but here in The Shining it's much more likely to scare than amuse you. I can only imagine how unnerving it must have been the crew on set during filming with Jack when he was in character and if they were ever worried if he would know when to break it between takes! Also, the son's repeated, high-pitched screaming of redrum (murder spelled backwards, as we all know) is pretty disturbing and scary as well.

Thanks largely in part due to a very creepy musical score and a remote, snowbound Colorado location at the resort, an overall sensation of forlorn dread and isolation permeates this film, which only further amplifies the terror factor. All of this combined with nightmarish, haunted hotel imagery, ghoulish apparitions and setting make for a pretty damn scary cinematic experience. Almost 30 years later, this horror epic still packs a potent punch. Definitely one that stays with you and one you don't want to ideally watch by yourself!

Even as an adult, to this day and beyond, this movie still gives me the creeps.

Great film
I'm French, and I had to buy this DVD from the US, since it includes 30 minutes that do not appear in the European version. Great film. Nicholson is as scary as can be. Great shots. Kubrick really captured the creepy atmosphere of the place.

Love it.