The Shining
My husband and I belong to Blockbuster Online, where for $18 a month, we get three movies at a time mailed to us. When we return one, another from our queue is mailed. About half the DVDs in our queue are Mark’s choices and half are mine. Mark’s choices tend toward newer releases packed with action, like Hostage with Bruce Willis, or stupid action comedies, like The Man with Eugene Levy and Samuel L. Jackson. “Boy movies” as I call them.
I do enjoy the smart, stupid, or even bordering-on-juvenile comedies, and “40 Year Old Virgin” is one of the best I’ve seen recently, up there with “The Full Monty,” which I saw twice in the theater I liked it so much. But most of my DVD selections are classics I didn’t see when I was young; I never was much for going out to the movies. This weekend Mark and I watched The Shining with the exceptionally creepy Jack Nicholson and the wonderfully meek and screamy Shelly Duvall.
We waited until it was nearly dark outside before we started the movie, in order to set the mood. Before we started the DVD, I had a little bowl of cereal so that my growling stomach wouldn’t interrupt the show. The first bite was unusually acidy. I removed the spoon from my mouth and saw that I’d bitten an ant in half. I screamed so that Mark startled. The scream wasn’t loud, but it was long. Mark stared, frightened for me, asking “What?! What?!...WHAT?!”
“I ate an ant!”
“Oh, I thought you broke a tooth or something.”
I threw the bowl and the box of cereal away and grabbed something else to satisfy before settling into my comfy corner. The mood was really set now: I’d had a pre-scream.
Jack (Nicholson’s character’s name) was growing insane in that huge resort that he shared with his wife and son. When Wendy (Duvall’s character) discovered her husband’s manuscript, about 300 typed pages with the same sentence repeated over and over and over, she (and we) knew Jack was beyond his senses, not to be returning.
“All work and no play make Jack a dull boy.” He was anything but dull for the rest of the movie.
The most memorable scene for me was the one where Jack enters room #237, looking for a woman who supposedly roughed up his young son. The boy claimed she was in the bathtub, and Jack said that was impossible since they were in the resort alone, were the off-season caretakers. Yet Wendy implored him to investigate. Upon stepping into the bathroom, Jack could see a figure behind the shower curtain. A voluptuous young woman pulled back the curtain to reveal her nakedness, and Jack was quite pleased. (One can understand his pleasure since the only other woman he had seen for months was the skinny Ms. Duvall [Olive Oyl in the Popeye movie]).
This beauty stepped out of the tub, approached Jack, and wordlessly, they fell into a kissy embrace. After ten seconds or so of fondling, Jack opened his eyes to see the woman’s back reflected to him in the mirror; she’s all saggy and scabbed over with sores running with pus. The camera gives us a view of the bathwater she had just emerged from, and it was full of mold patches and scabs like those on the woman’s back.
“EEEEEEEuw! EEEEEEEEEuw! EEEEEuw! Ohhhh. EEuw!” I was glad I was watching from home so that I could express my total disgust freely; Mark didn’t care, people in a theater might.
Steven King is one sick writer. I’d like to know, What purpose did that scene serve? Another time when Wendy is fleeing her gone-berserk husband, she runs upstairs and unexpectedly encounters a guy in a bunny suit on his knees engaged with a man in a business suit. The Bunny stops his business and both men look at Wendy; they don’t seem angry or embarrassed but are rather expressionless. Again, What significance did that brief episode hold?
Any thoughts, anybody?
I do enjoy the smart, stupid, or even bordering-on-juvenile comedies, and “40 Year Old Virgin” is one of the best I’ve seen recently, up there with “The Full Monty,” which I saw twice in the theater I liked it so much. But most of my DVD selections are classics I didn’t see when I was young; I never was much for going out to the movies. This weekend Mark and I watched The Shining with the exceptionally creepy Jack Nicholson and the wonderfully meek and screamy Shelly Duvall.
We waited until it was nearly dark outside before we started the movie, in order to set the mood. Before we started the DVD, I had a little bowl of cereal so that my growling stomach wouldn’t interrupt the show. The first bite was unusually acidy. I removed the spoon from my mouth and saw that I’d bitten an ant in half. I screamed so that Mark startled. The scream wasn’t loud, but it was long. Mark stared, frightened for me, asking “What?! What?!...WHAT?!”
“I ate an ant!”
“Oh, I thought you broke a tooth or something.”
I threw the bowl and the box of cereal away and grabbed something else to satisfy before settling into my comfy corner. The mood was really set now: I’d had a pre-scream.
Jack (Nicholson’s character’s name) was growing insane in that huge resort that he shared with his wife and son. When Wendy (Duvall’s character) discovered her husband’s manuscript, about 300 typed pages with the same sentence repeated over and over and over, she (and we) knew Jack was beyond his senses, not to be returning.
“All work and no play make Jack a dull boy.” He was anything but dull for the rest of the movie.
The most memorable scene for me was the one where Jack enters room #237, looking for a woman who supposedly roughed up his young son. The boy claimed she was in the bathtub, and Jack said that was impossible since they were in the resort alone, were the off-season caretakers. Yet Wendy implored him to investigate. Upon stepping into the bathroom, Jack could see a figure behind the shower curtain. A voluptuous young woman pulled back the curtain to reveal her nakedness, and Jack was quite pleased. (One can understand his pleasure since the only other woman he had seen for months was the skinny Ms. Duvall [Olive Oyl in the Popeye movie]).
This beauty stepped out of the tub, approached Jack, and wordlessly, they fell into a kissy embrace. After ten seconds or so of fondling, Jack opened his eyes to see the woman’s back reflected to him in the mirror; she’s all saggy and scabbed over with sores running with pus. The camera gives us a view of the bathwater she had just emerged from, and it was full of mold patches and scabs like those on the woman’s back.
“EEEEEEEuw! EEEEEEEEEuw! EEEEEuw! Ohhhh. EEuw!” I was glad I was watching from home so that I could express my total disgust freely; Mark didn’t care, people in a theater might.
Steven King is one sick writer. I’d like to know, What purpose did that scene serve? Another time when Wendy is fleeing her gone-berserk husband, she runs upstairs and unexpectedly encounters a guy in a bunny suit on his knees engaged with a man in a business suit. The Bunny stops his business and both men look at Wendy; they don’t seem angry or embarrassed but are rather expressionless. Again, What significance did that brief episode hold?
Any thoughts, anybody?
posted by Elizabeth Evans Fryer at 11:06 AM
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