Overlook Hotel | Stephen King Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia Share The Overlook in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. The Overlook Hotel was a secluded hotel located in the Rocky Mountains. During its history it was the site of many unsavory activities, including suicides, gangland hits, and many suspicious changes of ownership, yet the hotel remained a luxurious destination known for its sumptuous grounds and spectacular mountain view. In the novel, The Shining , the Overlook was destroyed when the hotel's winter caretaker, Jack Torrance , allowed the outmoded boiler to go untended until it exploded, burning the Overlook to the ground. Jack's wife Wendy and his son Danny Torrance are the only two survivors. Years later, Andrew Pomeroy , an amateur painter, was employed by a magazine to sketch the ruins of the hotel. Pomeroy disappeared during the assignment. Later on in 1982, his body was found inside the ruins of the hotel, no one knowing how it was possible. In the film, Stanley Kubrick's The Shining , the Overlook Hotel's exterior is represented by Timberline Lodge at Mt. Hood in Oregon.

The interiors of the Overlook are based heavily on the Ahwahnee Hoteel at Yosemite. The film's Colorado Lounge is a near copy of the Grand Lounge at Ahwahnee. The elevators and Lobby of both are also nearly identical. It has been noticed that from scene to scene the layout of the Overlook changes. There are several impossible shots in the film. The Shining In The Shining, Jack Torrance, his wife Wendy Torrance and son Danny Torrance arrive at the Overlook Hotel just as everyone is checking out. They are given a grand tour by Mr Ullman. Danny is told by Halloran, the hotels chef, that the hotel has a bad history and warns him to stay out of Room 237. The Torrances watch everyone leave the hotel until the last person leaves and they are alone in the hotel. At first, the hotel seems to be a blessing to Wendy and Jack and Wendy claims this is the happiest she has ever been. But Danny is hiding dark secrets, and soon starts to see terrifying visions and ghosts. Danny enters Room 237 one day and finds a dead corpse in the bath, which smiles at him and captures him and strangles him.

He is found by Wendy, who blames Jack. However, Danny tells Wendy that it was Miss Massey and Jack enters the room. He finds nothing, but hears the footsteps of Miss Massey coming towards him. Jack flees the room, frightened, and the room is not entered again. Danny starts seeing more terrifying visions and the topiary animals come to life. Jack Torrance slowly starts to go crazy and the ghost of the previous caretaker convinced him to kill his wife and son so that the hotel can inherit Danny's power. Danny calls to Halloran for help with his Shining, and he comes. The hotel finally starts to show its evil power and the ghosts come alive around Wendy, Danny and Halloran. The hotel manages to murder Jack by brutally chopping his face off with the roque mallet. Wendy, Danny and Halloran escape the hotel just as the boiler explodes, destroying the hotel. The Shining Setting Where It All Goes Down The Overlook Hotel in Colorado, September 30 - December 3, 1975 The Overlook Hotel is one of the most famous and most scary fictional buildings ever, right up there with the Bates Motel .

The Overlook was inspired by the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. Stephen King actually began writing The Shining in its Room 217. If you go to Estes Park, be sure and indulge in one of the Stanley's popular " historical ghost tours ," which includes stops in Room 217, as well as complimentary hallucinated martinis and creepy cocktail nuts. Part of the Overlook's fame is due to the immense popularity of Stanley Kubrick's visually stunning film version of the novel. Some of the external settings of the adaptation were filmed in Montana and the internal settings at Elstree Studios in London . The 1997 adaptation of the novel, directed by Mick Garris and written by King himself, adheres much more closely to the novel, and was filmed at the Stanley. This film hasn't yet reached the iconic status of Kubrick's, but at least King gets a chance to set the record straight. Kubrick's film claims the Overlook is built on an "Indian burial ground," though this is only mentioned in passing. King's Pet Sematary (1983) does feature such a burial ground, but this novel does not.

We are given few hints to the root of the hotel's evil, if there is a root. King has suggested that the Overlook is a kind of extension of hell, or a pathway to it. By hell, we mean the idea of hell, whatever that means to you. It's definitely intimately involved with the hell of the mind and the idea of hell on earth. How precisely the Overlook came to be such a place, or how the problems might be connected to the land, are up for interpretation. The Overlook has a long history of violence and questionable deaths, beginning during the time the hotel was being built (1907-1909). It was built by Robert Townley Watson who had two sons. One of them died in a riding accident on the hotel property. Then his wife died of the flu. Watson and his remaining son sold the Overlook, but were later hired as caretakers. Watson died in the hotel. As Halloran tells the Torrances, "He plugged his finger into a light socket by mistake and that was the end of him" (10.80).

As usual, it isn't clear how these initial incidences are connected with the Overlook's state when the Torrances move in for the winter. Now we can talk about the temporal setting of the novel. The present action is set in the fall and winter of 1975, a truly defining year in US and world history. 1975 marks the end of the Vietnam War, the birth of Microsoft, and as cultural analyst Jean Baudrillard, states in Simulations "the linkup in space of the two American and Soviet super-satellites." 1975 is the eve of a global technological and communication explosion you see before you today. We are on the brink of some extreme changes. Additionally, there is extreme post-war anxiety, mingled with the relief of the end of the unpopular fifteen-year war. To complicate this already complex time, King juxtaposes 1945 with 1975. 1945 is another intense year for the US and the world. It marks the end of another war, World War II, and the beginning of the Cold War.

1945 is a period of intense post-war energy, intense joy over the end of the war, and intense sadness over the Holocaust. In 1945 the horrific effects of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have not yet been fully revealed and examined. We don't quite realize the implications. (For an extensive look at these implications, we recommend Yale Law School's online resource , a part of the Avalon Project.) Also check out "Symbols, Imagery, and Allegory" for a bit more on how this is rather subtly worked into the novel. We say subtly because the novel barely touches up these wars. The focus is on the 1945 masquerade ball held to celebrate the Overlook's impending grand reopening. Interestingly, nothing murderous seems to have happened at the ball. We don't know if any of the masqueraders Jack sees are even dead. Harry Derwent, for example, seems to be quite alive. Whatever the case, the ball seems to be a crucial event in the Overlook's history, one which somehow cements the evil of the place. The temporal play doesn't stop with 1945 and 1975.

The Overlook operates on a time all its own, culminating in a merging of all its times together as one. Jack Torrance spells it out for us: All the hotel's eras are together now, all but the current one, the Torrance Era. And this would be together with the rest very soon now. That was good. That was very good. (43.5) The Torrance Era obviously includes the nightmarish aspects of Jack's not-so-distant past – his abusive alcoholic father and Jack's own alcoholism and destructive behavior. King strongly alludes to Edgar Allan Poe 's " The Masque of the Red Death " in the lengthy epigraph and throughout the novel, but doesn't it also remind you of the House of Usher in Poe's " The Fall of the House of Usher "? The Usher family (live and/or dead) are inextricably entwined with the Usher house, in an unwholesome fashion. This mind twisting ambiguity is similar to what's going on in The Shining. The people who die at the Overlook (and even some who don't) seem to become a part of it, and it part of them.

Like the Overlook, the House of Usher and the Ushers themselves perish at the end of the tale. Now, if you dare, join us on a tour of some of the Overlook's most intense sites. Room 217 This might be the scariest room in the house; its resident ghost can physically attack live people. Danny, Jack, Halloran, and the chambermaid Delores Vickery have all been in the room, and all have similar experiences, though only Danny sticks around long enough to be attacked. What is the room's strange pull? Well, there's just something fascinating about a naked dead lady in a bathtub (See Mrs. Massey's "Character Analysis" for more on said dead lady.) As far as we know, the Overlook's most recent death occurred in Room 217. The Presidential Suite The Presidential Suite is another site of intensity in the novel. As we learn from the scrapbook, it too is the site of relatively recent "redrum," the "gangland-style execution" (18.86) of two men with alleged organized crime connections.

Their known associate, a "reputed crime overlord" (18.84) was murdered elsewhere in the hotel the same day. When Danny is in the Presidential Suite, he sees the men's blood and brain matter on the wallpaper. He also sees the two bodies outside the door later on. The novel seems to be connecting supernatural evil with the idea of dirty money and crime in the world of "real things" (4.8). Just before Danny's confrontation with the Jack ,who's been taken over by the Overlook, Danny almost goes into the Presidential Suite. But, he's scared off by what opens the door and tells him to come in, "a decayed woman in a rotting silk gown […] [with] wasps crawl[ing] sluggishly over her face" (54.12). Is she someone who died in there? As with 217, we don't know the whole history of the room. As always, King challenges us to explore the possibility of evil in the highest spheres of influence. As you can see in "Allusions" real presidents stayed at the Overlook, in the Presidential Suite.

As in Poe's " The Masque of the Red Death ," questions of morality, power, and class collide with the theme of isolation. The Cellar and The Boiler Room The cellar is a rather confusing domain. It's the most subterranean part of the Overlook, and it holds the Overlook's paper history, its files. It's also where Jack finds the scrapbook of the Overlook since 1945, the invitation to the 1945 masquerade ball, and the Overlook's history of involvement with organized crime. Since the boiler room holds the history, it's like a container for the Overlook's memories. It's not coincidental that Jack becomes haunted by his history with his abusive father while exploring the Overlook's haunted history. If the rest of the hotel is the Overlook's conscious life, the cellar, being under it, is the Overlook's subconscious, that seething pool of desires and fears. It's not coincidental the Jack's subconscious is activated by the Overlook's. The boiler room holds the power over the Overlook's life or death, because it contains the boiler. The boiler is an agent of transformation.

It brings enough heat to the Overlook to let it survive the winter, but when neglected it brings too much heat and destroys the den of evil. It's also an agent of forgetting. When the boiler blows, it blows up the Overlook's history. The big irony of course is that the memory of the Overlook will live on, at least in the minds of the living people who have experienced it, especially Danny, Wendy, and Halloran. The boiler room also reminds us of the cellar in Edgar Allan Poe's " The Black Cat ," another tale of domestic abuse. In that story, the alcoholic narrator murders his wife with an axe in the cellar. There is some speculation that the abused cat (or cats) in the story is a metaphor for an abused child. As here, the cellar is a place that activates the subconscious and induces "redrum." Cellars are common in the world or horror – they make sense as places where evil occurs because they are hidden away from the rest of the world. They're good places to store victims, alive and dead. We're just glad Danny never goes down there! When Wendy does it makes us really nervous and we have flashbacks of Poe's ultracreepy short story.

The Topiary The topiary, the collection of hedge animals, are the guardians of the entrance and exit to the Overlook. They can't go on the porch, so they can't actually go into the hotel and run amuck. These spine-tingling beasts also call attention to the novel's supernatural naturalism. The literary tradition of naturalism often features a human-against-nature theme. Here the conflict is between humans, nature, and supernature! Like the wasps (see "Symbols, Imagery, Allegory") we can trace the topiary back to King's own childhood. On the first page of his book, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, he says: [My childhood] is a fogged-out landscape from which occasional memories appear like isolated trees…the kind that look as if they might like to grab you and eat you. Yeah, Danny's too, thanks to you Mr. King. The topiary, we think, is also a little more proof that Jack shines (see "Characters" for more on that). As with Danny and Halloran, Jack is able to see the hedge animals move.

He sees them move after slipping into a state not unlike the states Danny slips into before he has one of his episodes. The Equipment Shed This is one of the most evil parts of the hotel and one of the strongest. It makes sense that its powerful, because it guards the snowmobile, the Torrance's best means of escape. The scene where Jack wrestles with himself over whether to get the snowmobile working is psychologically intense. We aren't sure how much of Jack's desire to stay is based on his feelings that the Overlook is his final opportunity to get himself together, and how much is based on the Overlook's evil influence. Halloran is almost overcome by desire to murder Danny when he's in the equipment shed, just before he, Wendy, and Danny flee the Overlook. This gives us a taste of the shed's true power. Halloran can barely resist it – adding some more sympathy to Jack's struggle. Of course, the shed might have gotten stronger since it's becomes the last chance for the Overlook to get Danny. The shed is also where Jack first tries out the roque mallet.

The Ballroom We talk about the ball and the ballroom in "What's Up With the Epigraph?" and in "Symbols, Imagery, and Allegory." The Quarters Families, it seems, are especially vulnerable at the Overlook, at least caretaker's families. The quarters itself doesn't seem to be a powerfully haunted domain. After all, this is where Halloran lives during the season, and he hasn't seen anything funny. We don't know precisely where Delbert Grady, the winter 1970 caretaker, murders his family and kills himself, but it doesn't seem to have been in the quarters. Jack and Danny both have dreams and episodes, but nothing bad actually happens there. Well, there is Wendy slashing Jack with the razor blade, Danny's vision of redrum, and the coming alive of the dead wasps in the decorative wasps' nest gift from Jack to Danny. At the Overlook, however, these things are like a pleasant day at the beach. The destruction of the room by Jack is foreshadowed from the begging of the novel in Danny's visions.

When it finally happens near the end of the story, we are given the signal that the reality of the Torrances as a family is officially over. The Playground and The Concrete Rings According to Halloran, kids never want to play on the Overlook's playground. Danny doesn't either, a point not missed by Wendy and Jack, though they reckon it's because he doesn't have any playmates. At a midpoint in the novel, he decides to snowshoe down there. While in the playground he decides, in typical horror story character fashion, to do one of the most dangerous things possible, play in a snow covered concrete tunnel. After escaping, he thinks he sees the story's only visible child ghost, which Danny thinks is a lonely boy looking for an eternal playmate. At one point, we learn that a little girl suffered an epileptic seizure while playing in the tunnels, but this seems to be different from the "boy-thing" (55.78). This aspect of the setting points to the perversity of the Overlook – if children aren't even safe in its playground, how do you suppose they will fare inside?

It also reflects Jack's (and to some degree Danny's) childhood, where things that are supposed to be fun and playful can quickly become nightmares. Glen Mazzara to Write THE SHINING Prequel THE OVERLOOK HOTEL | Collider SHARE TWEET 0 It appears that Stephen King’s beloved novel The Shining is all the rage at the moment. King is set to release his sequel novel Doctor Sleep later this fall and the Shining-centric documentary Room 237 recently hit theaters, but now it appears that the story is headed to the big screen once again by way of a prequel. Glen Mazzara—who previously took over for Frank Darabont as showrunner on AMC’s The Walking Dead before being forced out of the position halfway through the most recent season—has been tapped to write the screenplay for the Warner Bros. prequel film The Overlook Hotel. Hit the jump for more. Word first broke that Warner Bros. was considering a prequel to The Shining last summer , when it was reported that writer/producers Laeta Kalogridis (Shutter Island) and James Vanderbilt (Zodiac) were developing the film alongside producing partner Bradley Fischer (Black Swan).

It appears that the trio has settled on a story that they believe warrants a full film, as Deadline now reports that Glen Mazzara has been hired to pen the screenplay for The Overlook Hotel. No further details for the film are given, but it’s reasonable to assume that the story will involve the haunted goings-on at the titular hotel prior to The Torrence’s arrival. Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining is a masterpiece so Mazzara certainly has some big shoes to fill, but it’ll be interesting to see if he strikes a tone similar to Kubrick’s film or if his take falls more in line with King’s original novel. Mazzara did some solid work on the first half of The Walking Dead season three, but the show took a bit of a creative nosedive in the back half. He reportedly exited the showrunner position due to a difference of opinion over the show’s direction in season four. His other TV writing credits include The Shield, Hawthorne, and the Starz series Crash, which he created. What do you think, readers? Is a Shining prequel necessary? What would you like to see from the film?

Related Content Stephen King - the Overlook - the Stanley Hotel and Ghosts Most folks have either seen the movie, THE SHINING or read Stephen King's book of the same title (one of King's best and scariest books!). The story takes place in a very haunted hotel named "The OverLook". I knew Stephen King and his wife, Tabitha, had stayed at a similar hotel in Colorado where he got the inspiration for his book but the name of this hotel was hard to find. While channel hopping one morning, I found a show called "Haunted Hotels" and it featured THE STANLEY HOTEL in Colorado which is where the Kings stayed. The Travel Channel show included a tour of the 4th floor where servants and employees stayed which had halls looking a lot like the Torrance family quarters at "The Overlook" in the movie. King stayed in room 217 which showed up in his book (and the movie) as the "haunted" room. Supposedly King wrote most of THE SHINING in room 217.

Unlike "The Overlook" which had been past its prime (although still had seasonal guests), the Stanley is a thriving hotel, made even more famous by its reputation for ghosts which while not the chilling variety of "the Overlook" still intrigue guests. The stories of ghosts are NOT on their website: But the history of it being built by Stanley of Stanley Steamer who had tuberculosis and was advised by his doctor to "move West" is on the website and intriguing. I found plenty of information about the alleged hauntings at the hotel: >>>>The Stanley Hotel Haunting: The ghosts in the Stanley Hotel aren't evil as in the book. Room 418 seems to have the most ghostly activity reported. In fact, the entire fourth floor of the Stanley Hotel (formerly the servants quarters) is quite active. Often, the sound of children playing in the halls of the Stanley can be heard, even when no children are present. The Stanleys: The Stanley Hotel's original owners, F.O. and Flora Stanley, are said to haunt the hotel as well.

Mr Stanley plays the piano in the music room, and frequents the billards room and the lobby.<<<< According to the TV show I watched, it was MRS Stanley who plays the piano - apparently some guests have heard music and described standing at the threshold of the music room and seeing the piano keys moving but when they enter the room, the playing stops. Also, interviewed hotel employees told about 2 couples leaving the hotel before they were scheduled to leave - they had rooms on the 4th floor and said they could not sleep at night because of the children playing there - but no children had been registered. Apparently the ABC miniseries, THE SHINING was filmed at the Stanley Hotel. However the movie, THE SHINING was filmed at Mt Hood Lodge in Oregon. Not filming the movie at The Stanley had, according to one site, annoyed Stephen King and this had been the part of the motivation for ABC's refilming of the story! Another website tells of more ghosts: >>>>There are several rooms in the hotel that seem to be particularly haunted. One is Room 407, which is said to sometimes be occupied by Lord Dunraven, who owned the land prior to F.O. Stanley.

Reportedly, he likes to stand in the corner of the room near the bathroom door. On one such account, witnesses reported that a light in that corner kept turning on and off. While the light was off, they told the ghost that they knew that he was there, they would only be staying two nights, and would he please turn the light back on. The light turned back on. However, later when the lights were turned off and they were trying to sleep, noises were constantly heard from the nearby elevator during a time when the elevator was not in use. At other times, a ghost has been reported to be looking out the window of Room 407, when the room is not booked.<<<< Apparently Lord Dunraven was the one from whom Stanley bought the land - Dunraven had unsuccessfully tried to build a hunting lodge there. >>> Tour guides tell a story of the ghost of a small child who has been seen by many of the staff in various areas of the old hotel. Reportedly, Steven King also saw the child, who was calling out to his nanny on the second floor. Other past employees report footsteps and apparitions seen throughout the building.

Unlike the Overlook, the Stanley is open all year 'round: In an interesting article carried in "The Coloradoan" written by someone who had stayed at the Stanley and experienced the ghosts wrote that apparently, 75 percent of the staff had claimed they experienced "ghost sightings". This article is likely available from their archives. It was in the 9/27/2003 issue and entitled "Stanley Hotel". What I did NOT find in my research was what were the stories BEHIND the ghosts. I suspect if there ARE such stories, the hotel doesn't want to make THAT part available to the public. Stephen King told his own stories - for example, the children were the children of a Winter caretaker (before central heating, the hotel was not open in the Winter) who got "cabin fever" and went insane. (King claims to have seen one of the ghost children at the Stanley) One site stated there had been "no documented murders" at the Stanley. The keyword in that phrase might be DOCUMENTED - according to ghost lore, it's the UNDOCUMENTED ones, the unsolved ones which can bring back the ghosts to haunt!

Interest in ghosts has helped business for the Stanley Hotel which offers weekly "ghost tours" (in the evening of course) for an admission fee of $10. Sue Joan Colorado Hotel | Estes Park Hotel & Lodging | The Stanley Hotel Historic Colorado Hotel The Stanley Hotel, known for its architecture, magnificent setting, and famous visitors, may possibly be best known today for its inspirational role in the Stephen King's novel, "The Shining." This Colorado hotel has been featured as one of America's most haunted hotels and with the numerous stories from visitors and staff, The Stanley Hotel continues to "shine" today, as it did in 1909 when first opened. Forced by poor health to move West, F.O. Stanley and his famous Steamer arrived in Estes Park in 1903. Finding the town lacking in amenities, F.O. set out to change the local economy. On the 160 acres he purchased from Lord Dunraven, Stanley first built the main building of the hotel, one of 11 buildings in the original complex. Many of those original buildings remain in use today on the remaining 55 acres.

Estes Park is the gateway to the Rocky Mountain National Park full of lush forests, thriving wildlife, and over 300 miles of hiking trails. From horseback riding to mountain biking, there is no shortage of outdoor activities to keep everyone in the family entertained. Enjoy the majestic scenery of the Rockies and the unique Colorado lodging The Stanley offers. There is no hotel in Estes Park more appealing and mysterious. Book your reservation today or contact The Stanley Hotel for more information by calling (800) 976-1377. The Stanley Hotel Here’s a Super Hi-res Shot of Pennywise From ‘It’ QueenofScream666 I am so tired of remakes, sequels, and prequels included. There needs to be more originality in the horror world. PLEASE. Corvix That was my first thought when reading this as well. The industry needs fresh inputs. They need to stop putting out shit that stains classic movies. Taboo Same thing I was thinking! I’m no fan of the original so meh. rg_lovecraft Unless Stephen King is involved, I’m very leery of this project.

Although, I’m very glad that they’re focusing on the story of the Overlook, as opposed to the Torrance’s. The book was always about the hotel, the Torrance family were simply players in the hotel’s grand scheme. Darkness69 I must say I’m rather interested in this project. The Overlook Hotel is one of the best “characters” in King’s novels. I don’t see any point whatsoever in exploring the Torrances when Overlook offers such a rich playground, so I’m with you there, Evan! JADAMA I say go for it. If they can match the detail, design, and elements to Kubrick’s and add some of King’s backstory that is mentioned in the book then It’ll be interesting! lovezoid ‘If they can match the detail, design, and elements to Kubrick’s…’ See, there’s your problem right there. JADAMA I only said that so that this film would flow into the only other feature film of this story… yes? WB has no intention of following the novel’s back story from what I read so I was only implying how great it would be… Regardless, if this doesn’t match the vision Kubrick then it will fail a FILM prequel.

🙂 Is that a problem to you? JADAMA I know the film completely inside and out and adore it. I Know the novel inside and out… and adore it. I have no problem lovezoid Sorry didn’t mean to sound snide…I read this news not long after seeing ‘Room 237’ so am a bit in awe of Kubrick’s skills at the moment. I’m just not sure anyone can emulate the characteristics that made the original so effective. I’d probably rather see a prequel to the mini-series and explore King’s world a little more, as you say. Zombie-Killa I’ll watch it, but I’m not foaming at the mouth to see this. I dunno. The Shining just seems like one of those “one and done” films, and the The Shining has built up this INCREDIBLE legacy over the years, so besides the obvious goal of making more money, why would you take a chance of tarnishing Kubrick’s classic?

And if the prequel sucks, EVERY TIME we mention or remember The Shining it’s going to end like this: “Yeah, Kubrick’s film is a classic, but the prequel…..” IMO, they should just leave it alone, but yeah, I would at least give it a try first. Canucklehead Think I will ask Groundskeeper Willie to his “shin” and stop this. Zombie-Killa HAHAHAHA! One of the best spoofs in The Simpsons Halloween series ever! Homer playing Jack’s role was just PERFECT. And if I remember correctly, that’s the Halloween episode, where Willie died in every single skit, after he tried to help save someone. lol. BUT I did enjoy the one with Willie as Freddy in the Nightmare On Elm Street spoof. Aaron Emery No need for this, no need at all. ‘The Shining’ was total film making genius. It cannot possibly be expanded on without Kubrick. I haven’t read the book but from what I understand it was quite different and King himself still does not approve of it, to me meaning even Kings involvement couldn’t possibly help.

The book and the film have become two completely different beasts and have their own completely distant legacies. I have no idea if that makes any sense to anyone except me, feel free to bash me : ) I’m not usually one to complain about remakes, sequels, prequels and reboots because, well, shit happens. This is one property that can in no way be added to. *’The Shining’ was the best part of the movie ‘Twister’* DeadEndMike With the Shining you have two very different stories. You have the book and you have the Kubrick film. No one will be able to capture Kubrick’s Overlook. One of the most terrifying things about his film is not knowing all about the hotel. Just giving hints at the true terror of it all. Cracking the door open just enough for a glimpse. I say leave it alone. death_by_kebab All this talk of staining The Shining’s legacy is hogswash. That’s your own mind doing that one. The original is still there and as perfect as always – well, depending on who you ask – so nothing will harm it.

I’m interested that Glen is doing it and being the curious horror geek that I am, I’ll probably check it out with a shrug. Then there’s the part of me that just wants to leave the mystery shrouded in fog. We don’t need to see how any of these ghosts came to be a part of the history of the overlook. Such a thing should be left to the imagination and the unknown, which is far more scarier. Also, the studio should put their money and work elsewhere. Mr.Mirage … If they want to remake The Shining (prequel? Seriously?), then take it to Focus Films… give it to the people that made 9 or Coraline or ParaNorman… make it a strong R and leave the face bashing scene in for the ending. Prequel? Why? WHY? StephenKing.com - The Shining The Shining Formats: Hardcover / Paperback / Trade / Kindle / Audio / Movie / TV Miniseries / DVD First Edition Release Date:1977 Synopsis: Jack Torrance, his wife Wendy, and their young son Danny move into the Overlook Hotel, where Jack has been hired as the winter caretaker.

Cut off from civilization for months, Jack hopes to battle alcoholism and uncontrolled rage while writing a play. Evil forces residing in the Overlook – which has a long and violent history – covet young Danny for his precognitive powers and exploit Jack’s weaknesses to try to claim the boy. Iconic set design: The Shining's Overlook | Den of Geek Search Iconic set design: The Shining's Overlook The Shining's Overlook hotel remains one of the most disturbing locations in horror. Here's its history, and how it tells Kubrick's story... j Cinema is full of set designs so beautiful, you almost wish you they were real. Fritz Lang had vast chunks of city built for Metropolis. Joseph Mankiewicz nearly brought 20th Century Fox to its knees, so huge and sumptuous were his sets for 1963’s Cleopatra. Thinking back over the course of movie history, how many films can you think of where the set itself is as big a star as the actors that emote within it? In Alien or Blade Runner, perhaps. The impossibly creepy motel and Victorian house of horrors in Psycho, maybe.

The set in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, I’d argue, towers over all these. In no other film has an interior felt so mundane and yet so palpably evil – Jack Nicholson may rant and rave spectacularly as unhinged writer Jack Torrance, and Shelley Duval may act convincingly exhausted and terrified as his beleaguered wife, but it’s production designer Roy Walker’s set design that constantly dazzles. Credit must also go, of course, to John Alcott’s prowling cinematography, aided Garrett Brown and his wonder invention, the Steadicam, which allowed Stanley Kubrick, ever the technician, to pull off some of the most striking long takes in all cinema. Nevertheless, it’s the Overlook Hotel, at the time the biggest indoor set ever built, that bears so much of the film’s dramatic weight. This is partially because The Shining has such a simple story to tell. Pared back even by the standards of Stephen King’s source novel, the movie contains none of the rampaging elephant-shaped hedges or infernos of the original book. Instead, Kubrick’s film presents us with little more than embittered, failed writer, Jack, slowly growing crazy in a remote hotel.

His wife Wendy (Duvall) and telepathic son Danny (Danny Lloyd) can do little more than look on in horror. At first glance, Kubrick and Walker appear to have created the perfect fusion between exterior and interior shots. At the start of the film, the outside of the Overlook we see is actually the Timberline Lodge, located in Oregon. The rest of the film's exteriors and interiors, meanwhile, were immaculately constructed back at Elstree Studios in the UK. A world away from the dusty, peeling interiors usually seen in horror movies, the hotel interior envisioned by Kubrick is spacious and modern. The set generates tension not through claustrophobia and dark spaces, but with high ceilings and lonely expanses. Characters are frequently dwarfed by gigantic columns or huge windows. Even the carpets accentuate the how small and vulnerable Danny and his mother are; one shot shows the little boy playing on a carpet whose huge geometric patterns surround him like a cage. As he did in 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick uses violent contrasts of colour to heighten the feeling of unease.

There’s a key moment, where Grady (Philip Stone) ushers Jack into a bathroom and urges him, rather unsubtly, to “correct” his family. The acting in this scene is so intense that it’s easy to miss just how striking the actors’ surroundings are; unlike the warm, boozy golds of the ballroom Jack was drinking in seconds before, the bathroom is bathed in stark artificial light. The pure white ceiling and floor merely accentuate the startling crimson of the walls. The room is utterly unlike any other in the hotel – it’s as though it’s a direct projection of Jack’s violent mind, which it almost certainly is. It’s but one example of how Kubrick uses colour and design to reflect the mood of his characters. As an example of how The Shining’s set takes us through those moods, take a look at the manager’s room, where Jack is interviewed at the beginning of the film – it’s a typical 70s office, its ugly salmon-coloured walls festooned with framed pictures. It’s vastly different from the supernatural ballroom or evil-looking bathroom seen in the film’s final act.

When Walker set about designing the film’s rooms, he took inspiration from real hotel rooms from around America, and went all over the country photographing different interiors. On his returm, Kubrick leafed through the pictures, chose the ones he liked, and had his production team construct rooms that looked exactly the same. The director described the process of designing the film’s sets in an interview with writer Michel Ciment. “We wanted the hotel to look authentic rather than like a traditionally spooky movie hotel,” Kubrick said. “The hotel's labyrinthine layout and huge rooms, I believed, would alone provide an eerie enough atmosphere. This realistic approach was also followed in the lighting, and in every aspect of the decor it seemed to me that the perfect guide for this approach could be found in Kafka's writing style. His stories are fantastic and allegorical, but his writing is simple and straightforward, almost journalistic.” Writer Rob Ager made an exhaustive and brilliant examination of The Shining’s set design, and suggested that Kubrick deliberately built anomalies into the hotel’s layout in order to confuse the viewer’s spatial awareness.

(It’s a fascinating piece of work, and you can read it, and watch an accompanying video, here .) From a plan view, as one might see in an architect’s drawing, the Overlook’s layout doesn’t make any sense; hotel rooms open out straight onto balconies; what should be internal windows appear to have light coming from outside; corridors lead to abrupt dead ends. Not everyone agrees with Ager’s thesis, but I’d argue it’s too plausible to dismiss entirely. While it’s possible that Kubrick and his designers may have cut a few corners to cram their already enormous sets into the space available at Elstree, it’s unlikely that a director as meticulous and obsessed with minor detail as Kubrick would make so many glaring errors. Besides, Kubrick makes it obvious from the outset that the hotel’s architecture is vital to his story. His use of Steadicam isn’t merely a gimmicky use of new technology – it allows him to lead us around this weird interior landscape, across horrid carpets, polished floors and rugs, through its sprawling kitchen and storage rooms. He wants us to know how gigantic and dehumanising this place is – before the psychological wargames begin, he shows us the battleground on which they'll take place.

In the Overlook, Kubrick created a hotel that acts as a kind of psychological torture chamber, trapping its victims in a labyrinth of impossible corridors and rooms. Its design mirrors that of the hedge maze outside, cunningly built from a wood and wire mesh frame, with foliage threaded through it. This maze, with its eight-foot high walls, was complex enough for the crew to get lost in. Kubrick’s daughter Vivian shot a candid documentary of The Shining’s making, and the director and his crew are seen consulting maps of the maze’s layout. It’s been said that, at one point in The Shining’s year-long shoot, Kubrick had the maze walls rearranged, without telling certain members of the crew. When they became lost in its new layout, their cries for help were met with peals of laughter from Kubrick – laughter that, disconcertingly, seemed to becoming from all directions at once. The Shining is the perfect example of the use of set design to enhance a narrative. Combined with its cinematography, the viewer is left with the impression of a building that isn’t merely haunted, but alive, and actively observing its occupants’ every move.

No other set in cinema is quite so oppressive, or so convincingly depicted – we barely notice the spatial anomalies that Ager points out, but it’s likely that on some subconscious level, our brain notices, and shudders. The Shining’s shoot was long and arduous. In his quest for perfection, Kubrick went through take after take. Scatman Crothers and Shelly Duvall clashed with the director. The latter even collapsed, exhausted, which was caught on camera by Vivian Kubrick. The film’s extraordinarily realistic lighting also took its toll: the pale sun shining through the vast windows in the main room was achieved with a bank of powerful studio lights – so powerful were these, the set eventually caught fire. Rather than work with the footage he’d already shot, Kubrick, perfectionist to the last, had the set rebuilt from scratch. Kubrick’s maniacal approach to filmmaking resulted in one of the most unusual entries in the horror canon. Its performances are desperate and sometimes bizarre, its images wavering violently between the starkly real and the surreal. And then there’s the Overlook itself, watching, waiting – it's entirely unforgettable, and perhaps the most striking haunted house in all cinema.

Question: Which King novel was set at the Overlook Hotel?
Answer: The Shining