I vaguely remember the first time I watched this movie. High school, maybe? I remember more that I wasn’t really understanding the “classic” of it, and knew very little about Kubrick. I didn’t even think it was scary, ahem. It was several years later, maybe 10, that I watched it again. And then I watched it again. And then I was ordering from Amazon.com, and watching it again, and so on. There is just something about this movie that got my attention, and hasn’t let go, since then. How to describe this… The story is definitely original, and sinister, and innocent. I couldn’t help think Jack Torrence was a little bananas from the very start. That just fed into the madness as the movie progressed. There isn’t a lot of gore, or a super amount of suspense. I’d say there was just enough of both, and everything else. The combination of all things came together to make this movie one of my all time top 10 ratings. If you get it, you love it. If you don’t, you don’t
On a side note… I actually had the honor of meeting Joe Turkel, who played the bartender at the Overlook Hotel. He was also in a number of other films; Blade Runner, for example. He is one of the nicest, most humble, funny, gracious extroverts I have ever met.
Update: Since writing the original post, I’ve read the book, by Stephen King (in case you live under a rock). The movie is only marginally similar in parts, but mostly a completely different story, altogether.
10 out of 5 skulls
