The Overview

It was in 1987, when I was in the fifth grade and saw this mail-order catalog in the house. I don't remember the name of it, but it was not unlike Fingerhut (remember them?), with things like clothes, chair-covers, little household appliances, and then toward the end, it had music, books and videotapes. I saw that The Shining was available from them on videotape, complete with the Warner Brothers VHS "clamshell" case.

But what caught my eye was something in the description. It said something like Features 25 minutes of footage not seen in the theatrical release!. That piqued my interest. I knew the uncut version ran 144 minutes, and the TV edit was around the same,  though maybe a little less due to some shortened scenes. Did that mean the 144-minute version was now longer? Since we already had both cuts on videotape already, getting this didn't sound like it was going to be an option.

A few years later, reading one of Leonard Maltin's movie-review books, where he gave his review of the movie, he mentioned that it was edited down to just under two hours for its theatrical release in Britain and Europe. Oh, so that's what that long-ago catalog meant by that!

That filled my head with questions:

• What was cut from it?
• Was there anything different in it?
• Were there any alternate scenes or takes in this version?
• What was it going to be like at under two hours?

And the most pressing question...

• How am I going to get my greedy little hands on it?

When I began buying and selling things on eBay in 2011, that was one of the first things I thought of, and began a search for it. It wasn't hard at all, really, as there was one on there for a decent price. With shipping included, it came to around 15 bucks. I sent for it!

It showed up after about a week and a half, in a thick, plastic snap-box, with the famous Saul Bass logo shaded red, and with a black background.

But here's the thing...it was on a PAL videotape, which is incompatible with standard VHS machines. It went into the machine and it played, but due to line-resolution differences, there was no picture. I contacted a guy from whom I'd bought various music-video things from over a number of years, sent it to him, and for a small fee, I got it transferred onto DVD.

When I finally got it, I watched it, and as it went on...wow, it sure had a lot of edits to it! If it were cut into three parts, I'd say the vast majority of them occur in the first and third sections.

On YouTube, I've seen where someone has uploaded various scenes from the movie under the banner of "deleted scene", but the threads get bombarded with questions and accusations about "This isn't a deleted scene!" by those who aren't in the know, and so that angle doesn't quite work on this side of the big pond.

There are some who are familiar with the shorter version of it, and when they see the 144-minute cut, they say that a lot of it is superfluous, and that the 119-minute cut is the better of the two. I guess you'd have to have grown up with it, since (to me) it seems very cut-up and moves things along way too quickly.

What I'm going to do over the course of these pages is to take a look at the British version of the movie, ten minutes at a time, and take a look at what's missing, using my observations, notations and humor. Hopefully, you'll have as much fun reading these pages as much as I've had fun watching this version of the movie, and sharing it with fellow fans out there.

Before we get started, this is the TV trailer, made for British TV...

With a trailer like this, how could you not want to go and see such a film?

All shots in the trailer seem to be alternate takes, but none appear in the movie.

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NOTE:

Before we begin, however, I must say that I'm not criticizing the movie in any way, just having a bit of fun with this lesser-known version of it, inasmuch as I'm letting fans know what is missing from this version. Let me tell you, it's hardly the same movie we all know and love.

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Special thanks to Suzen Tekla Kruglnska's 237 Podcast for inspiring this project. She has done a wonderful job looking at the film, having diced it into blocks of 2 minutes and 37 seconds apiece, often with special guests. Quite daring and original.

Special thanks also to Dan Lloyd, Lee Unkrich and his Overlook Hotel page, Howie Berry, Lisa & Louise Burns, and many others who've become treasured acquaintances on Twitter, not to mention answering many inquiries on there, as well as sharing memories and anecdotes. Thanks for tolerating my posts on there, and I hope you like what I've written here.

And also like to thank the rest of the cast and crew of such a legendary and ever-studied film that has outlasted and gone beyond the "horror" genre (for me, the film is more haunting than anything else), and countless more will discover it as time goes on; for Stephen King, for getting the ball rolling, regardless of how he feels about it; for Diane Johnson, who co-wrote the movie.

And then to the man himself, whose work dazzled me at a young age, and still inspires me.