Part 10

Another 10-minute slice where nothing has been cut or altered!

"I fear you'll have to deal with this matter in the harshest possible way, Mister Torrance", we hear Grady warily say, "I fear...that is the only thing to do".

Jack: "There's nothing I look forward to with greater pleasure, Mister Grady".

The bolt noisily slides across the lock, the pin is taken out, and the handle is pulled. The door is opened. And thus, the film's biggest mystery of them all: who lets Jack out? Is Grady simply a ghost or some supernatural entity that was able to accomplish that physically? Some people theorize that Danny is the one who did it. Again, I like how we don't know, and we aren't spoon-fed an answer to that.

As soon as that's happened, a SnowCat is noisily rolling toward the camera, down a rather narrow hallway of very tall pine trees. We dissolve to Hallorann in the cab, who is driving the SnowCat. Without the earlier scene of Hallorann on the phone with Durkin at his garage, we have absolutely no idea how or where he got it from.

That's another one of my favorite (though underrated) shots. Very closed-in feeling, almost claustrophobic in the cab, and you can practically feel the cold that Hallorann is plowing through as the SnowCat lumbers up the road. You almost have to go back to the beginning and watch Jack's ride to the Overlook again, and now imagine Hallorann taking the same roads, only now covered in a few feet of snow. That could not have been an easy journey.

Danny, meanwhile, is still in a trance, croaking the mystery word REDRUM over and over as he finds the big knife that Wendy has with her, as she's catching up on some badly-needed sleep. Danny slowly takes it, and then picks up a red lipstick from another drawer, wanders over to the bathroom door, and (watching from the side) scrawls the word REDRUM across the door, in a shot that has since become the stuff of legend (and memes).

Danny's voice begins to go back to normal, seeming to snap out of his trance as he begins hollering the word over and over, loudly, waking up Wendy. She tries to comfort him, but then has a horrifying revelation in the mirror of what the word means, and we realize that it's also a warning.

As soon as that's shown, Jack is outside the door, bashing in one of the door's panel with a fire axe.

Wendy grabs up Danny, they lock themselves in the bathroom, and Wendy begins an attempt for them both to go out the bathroom window. Danny gets help sliding out, and down a massive snowdrift against the hotel, but Wendy can't get out of the window, which doesn't open all the way. Jack, meanwhile is edging closer to the bathroom door.

We know the rest of the scene here. Nothing missing. Funny enough, during the TV edit, when the camera is on Wendy while Jack is bashing away at the bathroom door, the first three whacks have been scissored out; it picks up just after Wendy screams, "Jack!...Please!".

I try not to make a lot of comparisons to the original novel, but this is definitely one instance where the fireaxe and the knife are very well thought-out methods of (respectively) destruction and self-defense. The original scenario would not have worked and would really have looked silly with Jack breaking the door open with a wooden roque mallet, and Wendy fending him off with a teeny razor blade.

Much has been made about the missing second panel in the door, just after the legendary "Heeere's Johnny!" shot. If we look back at the TV trailer (above) at the 0:24 mark, we see that the other panel is being smashed into, in a scene that didn't make the final cut. Hard to tell if we were spared more trashing and screaming, but it is always rather jarring to see that second panel broken into and not see it happening, just after it shows Hallorann's SnowCat arriving at the back of the hotel.

Wendy is practically having a heart attack by now, and Jack is snorting like a bull, at being cut with the knife, and realizing who it is that is pulling up outside. I'm surprised she didn't holler out the window once the SnowCat came to a stop.

Danny is seen running down the service hallway, stops, and finds a hiding spot in one of the cookware cabinets. Jack is limping through the kitchen, the camera sliding alongside him, and we see him turning the axe in his hands, deciding whether to use the blade or spike end of it. Wendy is trying to pull herself together in the bathroom, realizes she must get out of there, and proceeds to whack away at the damaged door with the knife, although we don't see what the problem is, or what it is she's trying to accomplish there.

Hallorann walks across the backyard of the place, sees the door open and has to scrunch it open a little more through the piled-up snow to get himself in.

Jack, meanwhile, is limping through the hallways, on alert, looking around, waiting to see who's here, and ready to attack. Great shot of him going down the darkened hallway, trying to be quieter, and slowly going up a small flight of stairs that leads over to the lobby and surrounding area. Meanwhile, we hear Hallorann's voice echoing down the hallway: "Hello?......Anybody here?".