The last-minute change Stanley Kubrick made to ‘The Shining’
Fear of the unknown is one of the greatest tools any horror filmmaker can utilise. Just look at how Steven Spielberg used this with the lesser-spotted shark during his 1975 creature feature Jaws or how John Carpenter kept the visual identity of Michael Myers secret in the pioneering 1978 slasher movie Halloween. Still, no film quite captures the eerie fear of the baffling unknown than Stanley Kubrick’s iconic 1980 horror film, The Shining.
Adapting the tale from Stephen King’s 1977 novel of the same name, The Shining takes place at the fictional Overlook Hotel in the Rocky Mountains, an impressive, desolate building that Jack Torrance has agreed to look after over the winter with his family. Though, as they steadily spend more and more time at the hotel, Jack begins to lose his grip on reality, possessed by the many spirits lurking in the building’s ancient walls.
Starring Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall and Danny Lloyd, the movie is considered a classic of horror cinema, largely for its inherent mystery, with fans of the 1980 horror still trying to answer its curious questions to this very day. One such question is what to make of the ending, in which we see Jack’s wife, Wendy, and his son, Danny, flee the house and Jack’s demented grasp, with the final shot showing the dead protagonist immortalised in an old hotel picture.
But, this was not always the movie’s ending, with Kubrick cutting an entire scene from the finale.
The moment, which was hastily cut by Kubrick, took place weeks after the final chase around the hedge maze of the Overlook Hotel, being set in a hospital where Stuart Ullman, the hotel manager, visits Danny and Wendy, who are recovering from their injuries. Confirming that the two characters managed to fully escape from Jack through the thick snow, the scene continues when Ullman explains that no evidence of a supernatural phenomenon has been discovered in the hotel.
Shortly before the scene ends, Ullman throws Danny a yellow ball, alluding to the same coloured ball that was rolled to him from outside Room 237 during the film.
As the filmmaker and longtime Shining admirer, Lee Unkrich, states on The Overlook Hotel: “Kubrick decided to remove the scene very shortly after the U.S. opening, dispatching assistants to excise the scene from the dozens of prints showing in Los Angeles and New York City. All known copies of the scene were reportedly destroyed, although it is rumoured that one surviving copy may exist”.
Almost all copies of the ending scene are thought to be destroyed, with Unkrich stating: “Very little remains of the hospital epilogue beyond some continuity polaroids, costumes, and 35mm film trims housed in the Stanley Kubrick Archive”. Still, Unkrich teases audiences by adding: “it is rumoured that one surviving copy may exist”.
Take a look at the current ending to Kubrick’s The Shining below.
