As most fans know, The Shining originally premiered in New York on May 23, 1980, and then went into wide release about a month later, mostly to mixed to negative reviews, the chief reason being that it strayed too much from Stephen King's original novel.
In the 237 Podcast interview, regarding the film's initial theatrical release, Dan Lloyd said that "it came and went". Funnily enough, the same could almost be said for its subsequent history on cable TV, starting with its premiere in September of 1981, disappearing for a while, becoming a cult classic, moving into "legendary" status, and most recently becoming an immortal piece of film history.
I have detailed my first viewing of the movie here, but I also wanted to add a few more things to it. Right after my first viewing of it, with my Dad, we were getting ready to go to bed, and he flipped onto another TV station for a few minutes before we turned the lights and everything else off. He'd switched onto one of the local channels, and I believe they were showing an episode of Chico & The Man, because who should be on it but Scatman Crothers! It felt a little weird seeing him on there, after seeing what had just happened to him in the movie that we had just watched, and I remember thinking, "How'd he get over there so fast???".
The next morning, the three of us wanted to "play" The Shining, which I
guess would be doing re-creations of scenes from the movie, as well as
there being some sort of object to the whole thing. Mitchell and I
argued for a while over who got to be Danny; since I was the smallest
and youngest of us three, I easily should have been Danny, but he
somehow got to be him instead. You can imagine that I was so miffed at
that, that I got to chase after him with an imaginary axe with a lot of glee.
We had some hedges and bushes at the apartment building on the corner, which served as the "hedge maze". And I remember seeing Angie running up this flight of stairs with an imaginary knife in her hand, just as Wendy did...only I can't imagine what Angie "saw" at the top of the stairs. To this day, whenever I go by the old place and see those stairs, I still remember that and have a chuckle about it.
I shouldn't say we forgot about it, but so many movies came out afterward that The Shining kind of got lost in the flow of them. We saw An American Werewolf In London and Poltergeist was a huge deal for a long time running; we also saw stuff like Friday The 13th, Halloween and their plethora of sequels, as well as a lot of forgettable and forgotten stuff that we somehow found ourselves watching at night. Angie and Mitchell thought they were great, but not me.There's even a recording of us from around that time talking about movies we'd seen recently, but I regret that it was mostly the aforementioned titles that got the most attention.
For all intents and purposes, the movie virtually disappeared from cable-TV airings, or at least I didn't see it on any of them for quite a while, which was a shame, as I really wanted to see it yet again, and we had the three main ones: Showtime, HBO, and then Cinemax.
The first showing of the edited-for-TV version was on ABC in May of 1983, as the Friday Night Movie. I remember being excited about seeing it again, but it was stretched out to three hours, due to inclusion of commercials during it. My sister and I watched it on the upstairs TV, although I don't remember if we finished it, as it ended way past our bedtime, but it was nice to see it again.
In May of 1984, we got this new electronic apparatus in the living room, underneath the TV, something called a Video Cassette Recorder, known as a VCR. We were the only ones on the whole block who had one of these things. In addition to taping things off of various cable and TV channels, Dad and I would visit different video-rental places in town, just to see what they had, and we'd often return home with two or three tapes to watch.
At one place called Video Village, I was poking around in the "Betamax" section, just seeing what they had in that similar but smaller format, and there it was...the green Warners "clamshell" box, with the legendary "Heeere's Johnny!" photo on the front. Wow!, I thought, holding it in my hands and instantly remembering scenes from it, I wanna see this again!. I remember we took the box up to the counter and asked the guy there if he had the movie in VHS format, but he regretfully said that that was the only copy and format he had it on. What a letdown!
In May of 1985, the movie was shown again on ABC, this time as the Sunday Night Movie. This time, we had a tape ready for record it, and I put myself in charge of cutting the commercials out while it went on, since Dad always had a habit of falling asleep while something was going on, and I didn't want any mess-ups during this. I was thoroughly enjoying it, but also watched it like a hawk, noticing that the picture would fade to black rather quickly, which was a cue to hit the "pause" button. I did so good with cutting out the commercials that it was hard to tell upon casual viewing. In fact, we would watch the movie with people, and they couldn't believe that I did it so well. I also racked up extra viewings while showing it to neighborhood friends who hadn't seen it, and they were blown away by it.
Here's the little opening trailer they cobbled together just before the movie began...
Then, something interesting happened. In the opening months of 1986, Showtime began showing it, as did Cinemax. But Cinemax also began showing a 7-minute featurette, showing some behind-the-scenes footage of the movie being filmed, noting that it was filmed by Stanley Kubrick's daughter Vivian, which also included some interview excerpts with the stars of the movie. I didn't know that this was from a 35-minute documentary that she made (more on that later), but seeing this was exciting, especially as this didn't get shown much afterward, so good thing we recorded it.
Our local TV station, KSTW-11, began showing it later on that year, sometime around November, and then it had a few airings after that in the next couple of years. It also began turning up on the USA Network, where it became a staple for a long time running. I think I saw it turn up on there more than any of the other pay-TV channels.
Also, that same year, Warners reissued the movie in the slip-case boxes, getting rid of the "clamshell" boxes, and it was always visible in the rental places we went to. It was also available on Betamax (though I began seeing that format less and less), as well as LaserDisc...and as the years went on, it turned up on a new format called a DVD. And now (currently!) Blu-Ray. And it's soon to be on 4K UHD format...and no telling what other future formats that haven't been invented yet!
As the '80s came to a close, more and more people were getting cable, including various channels, such as Showtime and HBO. More and more people at school were now seeing it for the first time, and I remember a few middle-school acquaintances raving to me about this Jack Nicholson movie that they saw a couple of nights ago, where he goes crazy in a big hotel. I could only smile and nod, knowing full well what they'd seen, and proud that they'd experienced it for themselves. To be honest, I don't think I'd ever heard anything bad or negative about it from anyone who braved watching it!
Sometime in 1999, after the great director was gone, the movie was re-packaged as part of a boxed set with a number of his other movies, and was also available on its own with new packaging. But what grabbed me was that it also included the aforementioned documentary. Man, I grabbed that tape and practically ran to the cash register with it, and couldn't wait to get it home. It was a fascinating look at the filming of many scenes from the movie, as well as interview clips with the players, although these were presented as they originally were. Jack was being the total comedian throughout the whole thing, hamming it up for Vivian's camera. It was great to see Danny smiling and laughing in his clips, which was something we didn't see in the movie. I also liked the closing montage with quick shots of things being filmed, Jack juggling small cereal boxes, and the luckless crew members who had to swab up all of the fake blood that had poured out of the elevator doors.
Between the original liner notes on the back of the VHS slipcase and reading many Stanley Kubrick biographies, finding out that the Overlook Hotel wasn't exactly real was almost like finding out that neither were Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. A huge letdown, yes...but then you realize that this is spectacular Hollywood magic, and it wasn't even filmed in Hollywood! I was shocked to learn that the majority of it was filmed in England, and I initially thought that Kubrick himself was British, since A Clockwork Orange is such a quintessentially British movie. Imagine my surprise to learn that he was from New York!
As for the players...well, I think we all know what became of Jack. This newspaper clipping from the film's 1980 release came to light recently. When producer Michael Uslan was first thinking about how to bring a darker version of Batman to the big screen, he saw a photo of Jack from The Shining in the newspaper — and he started drawing on it. Uslan turned Jack’s famous “Heeere’s Johnny!” face into the Clown Prince of Crime. Without even knowing it, he created another future legendary role for Jack. Many more would follow. And although I actually first saw him in the 1975 adaptation of The Who's Tommy as "The Specialist", this movie was my first real introduction to Jack.
I have always resented the fact that Shelley Duvall was always regarded as nothing but a "scream queen" due to her role in this movie, as there was so much more to her than just that here, and in subsequent productions right afterward. I enjoyed her "Fairie Tale Theatre" show that she produced for the Showtime channel in the '80s, and seeing her in a few other things like Popeye, Time Bandits and Roxanne with Steve Martin. She always seemed very genuine and likable. She became less visible as the years went by; the last thing I remember seeing her in was a small role in a forgettable horror film called The 4th Floor. I won't go into the subsequent stories that we've all heard about her, and how Stanley Kubrick is solely is to blame for it while making the movie.
And Danny Lloyd? Wow....considering that I was the same age as he was on the screen upon my first viewing, I pretty much considered him the star of the movie. I remember Angie, Mitchell and I wished he lived in the neighborhood so that we could all hang out and get in trouble together. I didn't see him in anything else afterward, and then didn't really think about it until watching the ABC Sunday Night Movie airing, and it made me think, "Wow...whatever happened to Danny?". As the years went on, and whenever I'd see the movie, I'd still think, "I wonder where he is now and what he's doing?", which later led to "Well, whatever he's doing these days, I hope he's doing okay!".
Turns out, we needn't have worried. I think we all know now what he's been doing in the years since then, and much respect to that.
And how does the movie stand up? To be honest, it stands way above the usual stuff that it gets lumped in with. Lots of people like to regard it as "a great Halloween film", but it's almost more surreal to watch it when it's dark and snowing outside; it makes you feel as if you're in the movie with everyone else. Also, it's great to put the movie on just as the sun is setting outside, but don't turn on any lights as the movie goes on...trust me, it just works the best that way!
Recently, in November of 2018, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Not much more needs to be added to that.
Lastly, about the UK/Euro edit of the movie. It was last in print around the time that "The Stanley Kubrick Collection" reissue series was released in the late '90s and early 2000's (I've seen an Australian VHS copy of the short version on eBay), but with recent DVD releases, and the upcoming 4K UHD version coming out, all of them adhere to the 144-minute cut, so I think that has been the "standard" and "definitive" version that will serve. There are some who swear by the shorter version, and then there are those who aren't aware of it, almost not believing that such a thing exists. Well, it does, and once did. Hopefully, it will see a restored release someday, if only for completist's sake.
Well, that's it for me. Thank you for coming along with me, and reading all of this.
For everyone involved in and with the movie...Thank You.
And as Wendy would say, "It's been real nice talking to you. 'Bye. Over and out".
