I suppose that perhaps I am a particularly clueless rock headed straight guy, but I was surprised by how much gay subtext this guy found in the old Universal horror movies. Bram Stoker was gay? The gay subtext, or at least that of a misunderstood outsider is clear in “FRANKENSTEIN” and especially in “BRIDE of FRANKENSTEIN” But I never read that message into DRACULA or THE WOLFMAN.
I often thought that the Dracula story was a metaphor for anti semitism or anti immigration ( the scary mysterious stranger from eastern Europe with a spooky accent spreading disease…. he fears the cross…) but I never thought of as a metaphor for being in the closet ( in the coffin???… hmmmm…)
Theres many conspiracy theories about the alleged hidden meanings in Kubricks film THE SHINING.
Most are nonsense but some….. might have some merit.
Danny wears an Apollo 11 sweater.That and many other things alleged point to Kubrick hiding an admission that faked the real moon landings when he was making the film “2001”.
Baloney. Was Dannys sweater a reference to NASA and space travel? Of course it was. Kubrick spent many years researching and prepping “2001” so of course he was a NASA buff.So it was a “2001” easter egg. Did it mean anything more than that? I really doubt it. The numerology supposedly hidden in the film is nonsense.
Its really about the Native American “Holocaust”?Maybe, but even so thats more Stephen King than Kubrick. “This place was built over an ancient Indian burial ground”has been used in many many other horror stories. From “The Amityville Horror” to even the original “Poltergeist” ( “Ya sunnovab—ch you only moved the headstones and left the bodies!”*)
The fact that the “Colorado Lounge” is decorated in a Native American motif? Well, its in Colorado so of course its decorated with western US artifacts. A reference to the Native American bodies lying underneath the hotel?Maybe…. Probably.
When Wendy is talking to Dannys pediatrician, she is dressed in red and white, and off to the side is a Disney GOOFY doll dressed the same way was Wendy. Funny coincidence or is there other meaning?
I don’t think the fact that we don’t see the power cord of the TV playing “ Summer of 42” means anything other than the cord was in the back of the TV, unseen and plugged into the wall right behind it.
Up until Jack is released from the fridge locker… theres been nothing truly supernatural interacting with the natural wor’d. Most of the horror scenes could just be in Dannys imagination OR…… something Danny ( and or Jack) is “shining” / projecting out into the real word.
Do you think Jack had the Shining too?Did Wendy? ( unlikely but… who knows?)
The sequel “Dr Sleep” says that some who have the Shining can “eat” the energy of other Shine-ers to live longer, almost like energy vampires (?)Does the Overlook want to “eat” Jack and or Dannys energy? Does The Overlook want to drive Jack to kill Danny so they can eat his Shining energy?
Early in the film Jack says that Wendy is “ a horror film and ghost story addict” and at the end of the film Wendy sees imagery that seems straight out of a Hammer/Universal Horror movie and are very out of place with anything else going on in THIS movies universe.
Of course, Im swiping THIS idea ( and several others)from:
Young Danny “sees” the Grady Twins several time but he never heard Ullmans story about this, did he?Maybe he found the historical scrapbook described in the novel and vaguely hinted at in the film?Or maybe his Dad told him the story, like how his Dad told him the Innappropriate Donner party story?Is the Shining a Donner Party analogy? The group is trapped by the snow and start to “eat” each other?
By the way, Ullman told Jack the Ullman daughters were about 3 years apart didn’t he? IS that just the way Danny sees them but not what they were? Twins are odder and creepier looking than 2 regular girls.. is it just that? Kubrick liked the image of two twins ( swiped from a famous Dianne Arbus photo right?) .
I have heard that deliberately changed the ending from the novels fire/explosion to an icy end was probably Kubricks swipe at King ( or not? any confirmation of this) I really think the novels “ticking time bomb” feeling that we the audience ( readers) know that Wendy hasn’t checked the dangerous boiler all through the final “act” of the novel would have been better than just seeing Jack frozen…
(* OK , Poltergeists cemetery wasn’t Native American but its a similar idea)
I Saw ‘Countdown” it got terrible reviews. Well its not terrible, its just a “by the numbers” horror movie, the scary parts indistinguishable from a dozen other similar mediocre horror movies.
(SPOILERS)
The general premise is somewhat clever and new. Some young people download an app that will tell you when you’re going to die.
The opening scene is an annoyingly typical contemporary horror scene: a beer party of mutantly good looking teenagers……
One refreshing thing is that in the next thing it has a somewhat positive lesson about teen drinking and drunk driving (a teen girl refused to ride with her drunk boyfriend)…
Then something else refreshingly different happens.
We meet the lead character, a young woman, ( NOT a high schooler or college student… but presumably around 21 years old,) has just finished her nursing certification.
In a lot of horror movies, especially older ones, the women are screaming weakling victims… targets of violence or waiting for a man to save them.
This young woman is smart and strong willed.
Not to spoil the ending too much… but she defeats the bad guy not by luck, not by being saved by a man, but she uses her scientific nursing training to outwit the evil force.
Theres what we might think is a throwaway scene of her saving someone with a certain medical technique. Then an almost identical technique is used at the end of the movie.
Set up… Pay off…
Again, this isn’t a great movie, or even a really good one. But this aspect of it, the smart women using her brains to resolve the situation…. seems to be a refreshing move in the right direction.
CGI recreation of Cielo Drive Home that was the scene of the Tate Labianca Murders. Committed (allegedly) by members of the “Manson Family” but not, (contrary to popular belief), directly involving Charlie Manson himself.
Animation made in Adobe Photoshop and Adobe After Effects.
The “Happy Halloween from MattKProVideo” lettering was done in Adobe Animate (Flash) and composited in Adobe Animate. I added the old film plug in in After Effects.
WOW! This guy put a LOT of thought into this. Maybe even more than Stanley Kubrick or maybe even Stephen King themselves did!
He makes many intriguing points. I respectfully disagree with him on some big issues, but theres no denying he has many fascinating theories that, from his point of view, seem to make some sense.
When wendy looks down at her husbands stack of typed pages she sees
” All Work and No Play makes Jack a Dull Boy” and…. I never noticed before, a few times the words “make Jack adult boy”
For you younguns that grew up with computers always around, the sentence
” All Work and No Play makes Jack a Dull Boy” is an exercise you would often do in High School typing class to learn the keys. ( Do they still teach old school typing? It still works for word processing doesn’t it?) And of course ” The Quick Brown Fox Jumped over the Lazy Dog” ( it has every letter in the alpha bet).
Theres a documentary on the making of the film that discusses how a production assistant had to type up all of those hundreds ( or maybe thousands of pages) AND that that person had to RE type them up repeatedly in different languages. “A dull boy” and “adult boy” fit into his thesis. But not in other languages. And did Kubrick tell his typist ” make most of the lines ‘ dull boy’ but every so often type ‘ adult boy’ “?
The elevator isn’t a geyser of blood, its a geyser of “liquid irresponsibility” ???
I don’t buy it. Early in the film Jack tells Grady ” My wife Wendy is a confirmed horror film addict” and the lobby full or cob web-bey skeletons- purely the type of B movie horror image that would be in Wendys head?
Part of me thinks some of it doesn’t mean anything. Like Luis Bunuels “Un Chien Andalou” and ( I suspect) a lot of David Lynch’s work, weird imagery that one might assume must MEAN something…. but perhaps really doesn’t. In the 1980s there was a LOT of “short art films” made for MTV. They’re called “music videos” ( duh!). The directors of all of those videos had to keep trying to come up with unique imagery. You had to show the band and make them look sexy and exciting. You also had to have what MTVs demographic audience ( teen boys) wanted: sexy girls, cool cars, some violence and explosions. You would think the video would tell the same “story” as the song, but music videos didn’t always do that. They had to put in any odd exciting images they could, and I doubt they always “meant something.”
One would have a right to think that ALL of the odd imagery in THE SHINING means something. It tells the story, it tells us something about the characters and why they behave the way they do.
Theres many essays and even video documentaries on Kubrick’s hidden meaning of the number “237”
I don’t think it means anything.
In the book the evil room is “217” in the movie it is 237.
The not so special meaning behind the change is that the real hotel the story is based on HAS a room 217, and they asked the evil room to be renamed to a room they didn’t have.
They thought guests would be afraid to stay in a room with a bad reputation.
Although these days I think a lot of weirdo tourists would specifically ASK to be in the haunted room. ( I would and I bet you would too!).
One problem with that theory? WHAT hotel asked them to change the number? The hotel in the book was based on the Stanley Hotel. But in the movie its all a set constructed in England. WHO would complain?
In the Timberline Lodge, where they filmed the exterior shots of the hotel, there was a room 217. The hotel managers were afraid that if they used 217 in the film, guests would be too afraid to stay in that room in the future. There was no Room 237 in the hotel, so Stanley Kubrick agreed to use 237 instead.
Ironically, since the movie came out, 217 is the most requested room at the Timberline Lodge.
HA! I knew it!
The maze IN the hotels hallways and the outside hedgerow maze. Sorry the inside ISN’T a maze and the outside maze was created because the filmmakers couldn’t figure out how to make the books hedgerow sculpture animals ( 1980s stop motion would look goofy and not at all scarey) When they did the TV remake they used CGI to make the hedge animals. At the time I thought they looked real but in hindsight, when I watch the remake now the CGI looks terrible:
Dad jack is envious of his sons lack of responsibility? Maybe.
All of the Native American artifacts in the hotel means the hotel is built over a haunted “indian burial ground” ( a very beat to death cliche in contemporary horror)? Maybe. But more likely, Kubrick and his set dressers looked at real Colorado hotels and saw that THAT is how a Colorado hotel would look like. A British hotel would have lots of British stuff in it, a Japanese hotel would have lots of Japanese stuff in it, a Hotel in Mexico would look Mexican… etc… And not all American hotels look the same. A New York City hotel would look very different than on in Arizona- or at least in a movie you would need to show that. Its a Colorado hotel that LOOKS very Colorado- I think thats about it.
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