Doctor Sleep By Stephen King

Doctor Sleep
By Stephen King
Copyright 2013

Apparently, Stephen King felt the end of The Shining was not the entire story of Danny Torrance. Danny was still very much with King after all these years and he decided to revisit the man who was the boy who survived the Overlook Hotel back in 1975.

Danny of the late 1980s is an alcoholic and drifter. He moves from town to town, drinking himself into oblivion and working as an orderly in convalescent homes until they eventually fire him. One morning, he wakes up in a strange apartment with a strange woman beside him. He decides to take her money and leave. As he’s doing this, a toddler walks out of his bedroom. Danny feels guilty about taking the money, but not guilty enough to put it back.

Meanwhile, a group of vagabonds known as the True Knot are criss-crossing the country in their collection of buses and RVs. They are ageless, timeless beings in human form that sustain themselves by feeding off of the energy of children who have the Shine. They are wealthy and ruthless. Danny doesn’t know of their existence.

Little Abra Stone is born and immediately her parents know there is something special about her. She can conjure Beatles tunes out of thin air as an infant. She can make things move and she can predict the future. As she grows older, her parents see these abilities shrink until they are almost gone. But Abra is hiding a secret. She is more powerful than ever. She’s also looking for a kindred soul. She finds one in Dan Torrance.

Danny lands in a New Hampshire town and meets a man who runs the town’s train tour. They become friends and Danny lands his first job there. It is through his boss that he finds Alcoholics Anonymous and gives up the booze. He later takes a job in the town’s hospice center and lives there as well.

At the hospice center, he’s known as Doctor Sleep. Danny has a special talent for helping the terminally ill pass over peacefully. He doesn’t kill them. He eases them into death with his mind.

Eventually Abra, now 12, makes contact with him by writing messages on his chalk board with her mind. The messages are casual and friendly until Abra senses the murder of a little boy in Iowa. There, the True Knot have taken a boy with a knack of knowing what the pitcher is going to pitch before the pitcher does, tortured him, and taken his “steam” to feed upon. She doesn’t know where this murder occurred until she sees a missing child bulletin with the boy’s picture on it. From that, she is able to find the location where he was murdered and buried.

She reaches out to Danny who reluctantly meets her and Abra lays out her story. If she can get her hands on the boy’s baseball glove, she can find the True Knot. She knows about them because their leader, Rose the Hat, sensed Abra and tried to enter her mind. But Abra sensed her first and put a mental hurting on Rose.

Meanwhile Rose is obsessing over how to get to Abra. Her steam could feed the True Knot indefinitely. She dispatches a team east from their campground, located high in the Rocky Mountains on the site where the Overlook Hotel once stood. But Abra and Dan know their coming. Transferring her conscience into Dan’s body, Dan lures the True Knot people into a trap and he and his friends kill them – all but one.

One guy goes to check out Abra’s house. There, he finds her walking home from a friend’s house. He grabs her and injects here with a sedative. He then steals the truck Dan’s friend was sitting in, watching over Abra, and they head west.

Once Abra is able to shake off the effects of the drug, Danny is able to enter her mind and outwit her kidnapper. Abra continues west to meet with Rose the Hat and the remnants of the True Knot to see who is most powerful with the Shine and to fight to the death and beyond.

My mind was set on hating this book. I really wanted to not like it. I thought The Shining was such an incredible novel and Danny Torrance such a well crafted character, I didn’t want anybody or anything to alter my perception of them. With bad memories of what Black House did to the character of Jacky Sawyer, I waded into this novel with a great deal of pessimism.

I ended up devouring this novel like I’ve not devoured a book in a long time. Four reading sessions later, I loved Danny Torrance (now Dan Torrance) even more.

I liked him because he was flawed. He had the same demons that his father had – alcoholism coupled with a bad temper. His theft from the young woman who he later found out was murdered really set up Dan Torrance as a flawed, but sympathetic character. This is precisely where King went wrong with Jack Sawyer, making him into a supercop and psychic extraordinaire.

Rose the Hat was an excellent embodiment of evil and the True Knot was a clever, well developed vehicle for evil. I loved the psychic vampire character and Rose was a vampire as well developed as Kurt Barlow and more menacing.

Abra also had just enough flaws to make her human. Danny Torrance was strong with the Shine and Abra Stone was stronger than Danny. But she also had a temper and sometimes used her powers to do mean things to people. King shows he hasn’t lost his knack for writing from a child’s point of view.

The whole “Doctor Sleep” angle was used just enough to remind us of Danny’s essential goodness. It would have been easy to overplay this early and often. King showed us this talent a few times, then employed it in the plot at just the right time with maximum effectiveness. It reminded me a little of John Coffey and how his talent brought about the climax of The Green Mile.

This wasn’t a white-knuckled gripping ghost story like The Shining. Like The Shining, it was a battle of innocence versus evil. This time, the battle was fought with minds across a continent. The pace was uneven, but in a good way. We lived Danny’s life as a recovering alcoholic as he developed as a character and the fight to bring an end to the True Knot was fast paced and exciting.

While it is a sequel to The Shining, King does not rehash the plot of that excellent novel, nor does he rely on its plot elements to drive this story. There are just enough references to The Overlook, its inhabitants, and the doomed Jack Torrance to remind us of that young boy with a power that tormented him into adulthood. This story, slightly altered, could have stood on its own without having been linked to The Shining at all.

The book was not without flaws. The whole “file drawers in the mind” device did not work in Dreamcatcher and I didn’t like it in this novel either. But that plot device did not figure prominently into Doctor Sleep as it did in Dreamcatcher and it did not reduce my enjoyment of the book.

I think we can close the book now on Dan Torrance. I know Stephen King loved the character and felt that there was a story in Danny’s adult years. But I know he’s wise enough not to publish a series of “The Adventures of Danny Torrance” stories.

So now we know what happened to that kid who brought down the Overlook Hotel and its evil minions by remembering what his dad forgot. As much as I didn’t want to like it; as much as I feared having The Shining and Danny Torrance ruined for me, I am glad that King chose to let us in on his life after The Overlook. Doctor Sleep was a fine novel.

Book to Movie: The Shining (1997)

Book to Movie: The Shining (1997)
Teleplay by Stephen King
Directed by Mick Garris
Based on the novel, The Shining by Stephen King

For years, Stephen King complained that Stanley Kubrick did not do his third novel justice when he made his 1980 movie. Forget that the movie is universally heralded as one of the finest horror films ever made. Forget that Jack Nicholson defined Jack Torrance as one of horror’s great villains with the classic line, “Here’s Johnny!” Forget that Stanley Kubrick was a Hollywood legend. King was going to have it his way eventually.

That he did in 1997 when he and Mick Garris teamed up for a three part television miniseries based on the novel.

King’s chief criticism of the Kubrick film was Jack Nicholson’s performance. The key to The Shining, according to King, was the slow deterioration of Jack Torrance from meek and mild recovering alcoholic to insane monster. To King, Nicholson started out the movie as an insane monster. Most horror fans think King ought to appreciate the genius that Kubrick applied in translating one of his great works to film. But it’s King’s book and King has the right and the pull to make it the way he wanted it. So he did.

King’s rendition of his book opens with Jack Torrance (played by everyman Steven Weber) in the boiler room, learning his new duties. Danny and Wendy are back at their low rent apartment in Boulder, Colorado. The audience learns of Jack’s run in with the student that cost him his job and Jack breaking Danny’s arm through flashbacks early in the movie.

King changes the relationship between Jack and Al Shockley for the movie. It appears that Al is merely his Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor. No other connection is demonstrated between them other than it is Al who got Jack the job.

Danny gets a visit from Tony as Jack is returning from the Overlook. Tony is an adolescent boy who is visible to Danny and to the audience. Tony tells him not to go to the Overlook Hotel.

King sticks close to his script otherwise. Jack has his mild confrontation with Victor Ullman about his prior drinking problem and the problem with the caretaker, Grady, the year prior. Shortly thereafter, The Torrance family moves into the Overlook.

Danny has his conversation with Dick Halloran whilst the maintenance man shows them around the kitchen. When demonstrating his shine, Danny not only gives Halloran a bloody nose, he busts the tail light on his vintage Cadillac.

Just as in the book, Halloran warns Danny away from Room 217 and from the topiaries. With that, Halloran departs, leaving the Torrances alone.

Events unfold almost precisely the way they did in the book. The chief departure comes in Jack’s break with reality. In the book, it comes after he finds the woman in room 217. In this movie, it seems to come after the interlude in the bar where Jack is talking to himself. In this movie, Jack goes downstairs and hears his father talking to him through the CB. This seems to be Jack’s snapping point here.

From then on up until the end, it’s Stephen King bringing his book – dialogue and all – to the small screen. There is a small departure from the text at the end when Jack returns to the basement to try to dump the boiler. Grady and the manager are there desperately pleading with him to get it done. He starts to release the steam, then gets a grip on himself one last time and closes the valve. Grady and the manager look on in horror as the boiler erupts.

It ends with Dick Halloran arriving late for Danny’s high school graduation. As Danny’s name is called and he walks across the stage, we see that Tony was really Danny all grown up. As Danny prepares to depart from the stage, Jack’s ghost is there to witness him graduating.

I’m not going to compare this film to the Kubrick film because there is no comparison. Stanley Kubrick’s vision was superior in every way. I will, however compare some of the performances.

Steven Weber is a lightweight. I don’t say that to denigrate his acting ability. He’s a fine comedic actor. But his personality doesn’t have the gravitas to carry off a monster. In the King version, Weber had to wear makeup to look evil. Nicholson did it with nothing but the face God gave him.

I was never that enamored with Shelley Duvall’s performance in Kubrick’s film. I thought it was the one weak element in an otherwise near perfect film. Rebecca DeMornay is dealt a weak hand with a weak script, but somehow elevates the part. She’s closer physically to how Wendy Torrance is described in the book. Duvall always seemed to whine or scream hysterically. DeMornay carried just an irritating (in a good way) hint of self righteousness that was part of what drove Jack crazy. If only DeMornay could have been in Kubrick’s film.

The script for this movie was just atrocious. King has done some good screenwriting with movies like Storm of the Century. This was not as bad as Maximum Overdrive or Rose Red, but it was still bad. The whole “kissin’ missin’” routine that played out between Danny and Jack was nauseating. King’ determination to stick to his text even when plot elements were not going to work as screen elements (the topiary attack being the prime example) debilitated the film by making the viewer groan at bad special effects.

King also chose the wrong medium for his movie. Everything about The Shining screamed “Rated R.” King had to tone down his story to get to a TV-14 rating. I don’t think it rated even that. TV-PG might have been more appropriate for this vanilla offering.

King fans love to berate Mick Garris. He should be berated for some of the poor products he has created from King’s work. In The Shining, I think Garris got maximum mileage out of the poor script, making what should have been a lousy movie into a acceptable one. He got as much as he could out of Weber and Courtland Mead who played Danny Torrance. Unfortunately, Mead was no Danny Lloyd who gave us that iconic creepy line, “Danny's not here Mrs. Torrance.”

The movie is overlong, it lacks the gravitas of the novel and the earlier movie. However, much, much worse movies have been made based on King’s work and the story is just good enough to carry this movie. It is watchable and mildly entertaining if you don’t mind the investment of more than three hours.

Book to movie: The Shining (1980)

Book to movie: The Shining (1980)
Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick and Diane Johnson
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Based on the novel, The Shining by Stephen King

Even though Stephen King had just five novels in publication by 1979, Hollywood already knew that his stories were money in the bank. A big screen adaptation of Carrie and a television miniseries based on 'Salem's Lot had done well. Legendary director Stanley Kubrick, who’d hit genre paydirt with such hits as A Clockwork Orange and 2001: A Space Odyssey, undertook his first major horror project in King’s bestseller, The Shining.

It’s clear from the opening scene that Kubrick has altered King’s tale. The movie opens with the same scene as King’s book – Jack interviewing for the job. Ullman however, is a good southern guy who says he’s got high recommendations for Jack from “our folks in Denver,” and is impressed with Jack himself. He's not the "officious prick" as Jack called him in the opening line of the novel.

Despite Stephen King’s decades of protest, I think Nicholson comes off as an everyman in the job interview.

Back in Boulder, Danny’s having his conversation with Tony. Danny verbalizes Tony’s reaction whilst moving his index finger. Tony is not confined to talking to Danny. Wendy has her own conversation with Tony about the prospects of moving into the overlook.

Jack and the family are soon on their way into the highest part of the Rocky Mountains to their winter destination. The camera work is stunning – showing not only the majesty of the mountains, but also the solitude. The seeds of claustrophobia are planted in the viewer’s mind.

The Torrances arrive. Jack gets his tour of his duties while Wendy gets hers. The boiler, so integral to the King story and the “other” movie doesn’t even come into play. We don’t go with Jack on his tour. Instead, we stay with Wendy (played by Shelley Duvall) and the cook, Dick Halloran (played by Scatman Crothers) as they tour the kitchen with Danny.

As in the book, Wendy picks up on Dick’s unexplained knowledge of Danny’s nickname. Dick brushes her off before mentally inviting Danny to stay for ice cream. Wendy joins Jack on a tour of the family quarters, leaving Danny in Dick Halloran’s care.

Dick explains “The Shining” to Danny and how the visions he may occasionally see are just pictures in a book that can be erased by closing the eyes. Danny’s already had a vision of blood flowing from the elevator, washing the furniture down the hallway like a flash flood. Halloran does not issue Danny the invitation to call for help as he does in the book.

It’s also apparent at this point that Jack’s alcoholism is going to be downplayed. It’s mentioned only in passing. Before heading to the Overlook, Wendy confides to a pediatrician that Jack had dislocated Danny’s arm after having too much to drink and that event made him stop. It only comes up in passing in one other scene later in the movie.

The Overlook staff departs and we flash forward one month. Danny is riding through the hallways of the Overlook on a Big Wheel. The cinematography here is similar to the cinematography of the drive up the mountain. A camera on a cart follows Danny through the twists and turns of the Overlook’s halls. The sound is ominous as the wheels rumble across the hardwood, then go silent as he hits an area rug. It’s a mood setter for the scene coming.

Danny rounds the bend and the two girls we know are the daughters of the former caretaker, Delbert Grady, are standing in the hallway holding hands. They hauntingly invite Danny to come play with them “…forever, and ever.” Kubrick cuts back and forth between the eerie girls standing before Danny and their massacred bodies lying in a hallway splattered with blood. Danny flees the scene.

Meanwhile, Jack is hammering away at his play. He’s set up writing shop in one of the ballrooms. We get our first clue that something is not quite right with Jack when Wendy walks in on him one day to see how he’s doing. Instead of greeting her warmly, or even tepidly, he berates and belittles her for disturbing him and tells her not to do it again.

At this point, nothing supernatural has happened to Jack. Unlike the book, he’s not developed a preoccupation with maintenance of the hotel nor has he discovered any of its hidden secrets. Kubrick is not going for the supernatural scare with Jack. He’s using claustrophobia as his fright mechanism. It’s apparent that cabin fever is developing in Jack.

On one of his daily journeys via Big Wheel around the Overlook, Danny comes to room 237 (not 217 as in the book). Tony has warned him about room 237. Danny arrives and the key is in the door and it is ajar. Danny pauses to look inside before losing his nerve and riding off. But later, he goes back. We don’t see what happens to Danny in room 237, but it’s bad.

Meanwhile, Jack has dozed off at his typewriter. He has a nightmare (to which the viewer is not privy) and begins screaming. Alarmed, Wendy runs from the family quarters to find Jack in a panic. She awakens him and tries to calm him. Jack tells her he had the worst nightmare of his life. He had killed Wendy and Danny and hacked them to pieces.

Just as Jack reveals this, Danny wanders into the room. Wendy calls out to him, but he does not respond. She crosses the room and sees the bruises on his neck. She screams at Jack, “You did this!” She takes Danny and runs to the family quarters. Jack is left dazed and scared, sitting alone at his typewriter.

Jack, now really feeling the strain of being isolated, wanders into the Gold Room lounge and sits down at a bar. He looks around at the empty room before addressing the bartender, Lloyd who is standing behind the bar. He orders Lloyd to put a glass, some ice, and a bottle of bourbon in front of him. He toasts, “Five months on the wagon and all the harm they did,” before hoisting the glass.

Jack is enjoying his apparently imaginary drink when Wendy comes running into the lounge to tell Jack that there’s a crazy woman in the hotel with them. Danny has told her he went into room 237 and found a woman there that tried to strangle him. She wants Jack to investigate.

Jack goes to room 237 and find the key in the door and the door open. He goes in and finds the room in order. However, he hears the shower running. He enters the bathroom and finds a voluptuous woman showering. The woman steps seductively from the shower and walks toward Jack. They embrace and kiss passionately. As he’s kissing her, Jack opens his eyes and looks into the mirror. He sees that he’s kissing a desiccated corpse. He backs away in horror. In his room, Danny is aware of what is happening to his dad and reliving his own horror in room 237, watching the corpse rise from the bathtub to pursue him.

Jack returns to the living quarters and tells Wendy there was nothing there. Thoroughly pissed off at her for accusing him of hurting their son and for suggesting they leave and abandon his job, he returns to the Gold Room.

Meanwhile, Dick Halloran is in his home watching the news. The weatherman is talking about the massive snow storm that is hitting the Rockies. He starts worrying about the Torrances. He tries to call the hotel, but the lines are down. He calls the ranger station and asks him to use their CB to contact the hotel. The ranger on duty promises to do so. He starts transmitting.

On his way to the lounge, Jack hears the call from the ranger’s station. He stops in the radio room and dismantles the radio, cutting them off from civilization. When Halloran calls back, the ranger tells him he can’t raise the Torrances. Halloran heads for Colorado.

Danny’s visit to room 237 has triggered something that has brought the Overlook’s ghosts to life because when Jack arrives at the lounge, the party is now in full swing. A band plays big band music as Jack saunters to the bar where he finds Lloyd working. He orders his bourbon.

Lloyd pours Jack’s drink and Jack gets the money out to pay for it. The bartender refuses the money and tells him his money is no good here – orders of the house. Jack, still not quite possessed by the hotel is suspicious and tells Lloyd he’s the kind of man who likes to know who’s buying his drinks. Lloyd says he will learn in good time.

Jack wanders from the bar to join the party. As he’s walking through the lounge, he collides with a waiter who spills drinks all over him. The waiter insists that Jack accompany him to the men’s room to tidy up. There, the waiter introduces himself as Delbert Grady. Jack recognizes the name. He tells Grady he used to be the caretaker, but he hacked his wife and daughters up before killing himself.

Grady at first says he does not remember this, but then gets frank with Jack. He tells Jack that his son is trying to bring an outside party into the matter – “a nigger cook.” He tells Jack that the boy must be corrected. Grady then relates that his daughters hated the Overlook. One even stole a pack of matches and tried to burn it down. So, he “corrected” her. When his wife tried to intervene, he “corrected” her as well. Jack promises to correct Danny.

Wendy, suspecting that Jack’s gone insane, goes to find him to tell him that she plans to take Danny in the Snow Cat and leave the Overlook. On her way out the door, she grabs a baseball bat.

She stops in the ballroom where Jack was working on his play. She looks at the pages and is horrified. Hundreds of pages bear the same sentence, “All work and no play make Jack a dull boy,” over and over again. Jack finds her there and asks her how she likes it.
They argue and Jack tells her that he’s going to bash her brains in. He slowly pursues her up the stairs. Wendy fends him off with the bat. Finally, Jack lunges for her and she whacks him on the head, knocking him unconscious.

She drags him to a walk in pantry and locks him in. She tells him she and Danny are leaving in the Snow Cat. Jack tells Wendy she’s in for a big surprise.

Wendy goes outside and finds that Jack has disabled the Snow Cat. She returns to her room and locks it. She tries to talk to Danny, but Tony tells her, “Danny’s not here Mrs. Torrance.” She puts Danny down to sleep and goes to her own bed and passes out.

Jack is in the pantry when Delbert comes to the door. He tells Jack that he’s not sure Jack’s heart is really in this. Jack insists that it is and Delbert frees him. Jack grabs a fire axe and heads for the living quarters.

Danny/Tony, sensing that Jack is on his way, starts mumbling, “redrum.” He says it over and over again and grabs a tube of lipstick. He writes on the inside of the door, redrum in awkward, backwards letters. He then begins shouting, “REDRUM!” maniacally, awakening Wendy. She’s trying to calm Danny when she looks in the mirror and sees the word, “MURDER” written on the door. Just then, the first axe blow falls on the door.

Wendy and Danny flee into the bathroom as Jack hacks down the door. He enters the apartment and starts hacking on the bathroom door. Wendy pushes Danny out of the window. He slides down a snow drift to the ground. He heads for the hedge maze on the hotel grounds.

Jack has hacked through the bathroom door. When he reaches in to open the door and Wendy cuts his hand with a knife. He’s just about to finish off the door when he hears the sound of a motor approaching the hotel. Dick Halloran has arrived. Jack leaves the apartment to deal with him.

Halloran enters the hotel and begins shouting for them. Jack surprises him with a fatal axe blow to the chest. He falls dead. Jack goes out to pursue Danny.
The chase through the hedge maze is some of Jack Nicholson’s finest work. He’s lurching along on a bum leg, toting an axe, screaming, “DANNY!” in a voice that’s full of malevolence. Danny is fleeing like a frightened rabbit.

Knowing that he can’t keep up the flight, Danny has an inspired idea. He carefully backtracks across his tracks in the snow and flees in a different direction, covering his tracks behind him. He then finds an exit from the hedge maze.

Wendy has left the living quarters. She encounters several ghosts as the Overlook’s never ending party rolls on. She arrives in the front lounge to find Halloran dead and the front door open. She goes outside just as Danny is running out of the maze. Wendy and Danny get into the Snow Cat that Halloran brought and leave. The movie then cuts to an image of Jack Torrance, frozen to death in the hedge maze, his face a rictus of rage.

As the movie closes it fades into a picture of a long ago party at the Overlook. As the focus draws closer, we see Jack Torrance at the head of the party. It is dated, July 4, 1921. Grady told him that he’d always been the caretaker. . .

I will say up front that this is my all time favorite horror movie. The tension never lets up. Nicholson, without costume or makeup is the most fearsome of monsters. Even in the expansive hotel, Kubrick’s cinematography makes the viewer feel claustrophobic. The movie’s climax with Jack hacking through the door, delivering witticisms such as, “Honey, I’m home!” and “Here’s Johnny!” are masterful. The dark, blue filtered lighting in the hedge maze is gripping and the pace of the scene has the viewer on the edge of his seat.

However, the movie is not without its faults. I may be writing heresy to some, but the story is not especially tight. Kubrick gives us enough clues to telegraph that, instead of an intelligent, malevolent, entity in the hotel, the cause of Jack’s insanity is cabin fever. But we don't know what the Overlook is all about other than being a haunted hotel.

We know that Danny’s abilities allow him to see past events in the hotel. What is not clear is Danny’s connection to the Overlook. We know this only from reading the novel. In the novel, the winding of the clock is the trigger that brings the Overlook and its “manager” to full power. It seems that Kubrick meant for Jack’s visit to room 238 to be that trigger, but we never understand why.

We also have no motivation for the ghosts that inhabit the Overlook. What do they want of Jack and what do they want of Danny? Grady hints of a “matter.” But we never learn what that matter is. Perhaps it was just a story of cabin fever run amok in a haunted hotel.

As much as I admired Jack Nicholson’s performance, and Danny Lloyd’s (who played Danny Torrance), I was underwhelmed by Shelley Duvall’s performance. King envisioned her as a somewhat willful harpy, always testing Jack and checking up on him to make sure he wasn’t drinking. This was part of Jack's insanity in the book. Duvall came across as mousy and wimpy. Yes, she did deliver the blow to Jack’s head. But before that, all she did was a lot of screaming and crying. Also, it seemed like she was working too hard to loose her native Texas drawl. It came out from time to time, making her dialogue inconsistent.

King’s complaints about this film are legend and he ought to give it up. He claims that his biggest problem was the casting of Jack Nicholson who he claims looked insane from the beginning. King’s tale was that of a man desperate for redemption and trying to rebuild his life who was overpowered by the force of the hotel.

Kubrick was apparently telling a different story. Kubrick was telling a story about a man already on the brink who let the natural phenomena of cabin fever get the better of him. Nicholson looked and acted the part of the common guy at the beginning of the movie. But there was that Nicholson persona we saw in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, lurking behind it. Jack Torrance as played by Jack Nicholson was a man who could have easily gone insane.

King ought to give it up because Kubrick made one hell of a scary movie out of King’s novel. Yes, King wrote one hell of a scary novel, but Kubrick made it work on the screen. Stanley Kubrick (to my knowledge) never told Stephen King how to write books. Stephen King ought not be telling Stanley Kubrick what makes a good movie.

King translated his own vision of how The Shining should play out on screen into the three part miniseries. The teleplay, penned by King, was abysmal. Great film location, some decent directing by Mick Garris, and a great performance by Rebecca DeMornay are all that saved it from being a complete disaster.

Sorry Mr. King. You wrote a great book. But Stanley Kubrick made a great movie. The two should have stood as testaments to your separate and different geniuses.

The Shining by Stephen King

The Shining
By Stephen King
Copyright 1977

Stephen King’s third book would cement his reputation as THE up and comer in the book industry in the 1970s. It was his first New York Times Bestseller. It was made into a hit movie that ranks as one of the truly great horror films of all time. As a book, it ranks as one of his finest works.

Jack Torrance is down on his luck. He’s been fired from the Vermont prep school where he taught English for assaulting a pupil. He’s a recovering alcoholic with a wife and a five year old son whose arm he broke in a drunken rage less than a year ago. The book opens with Jack interviewing for a job as the winter caretaker at the Overlook Hotel high in the mountains of Colorado.

The job was arranged for him by his friend, Al, who used to be a drinking buddy until they experienced a horrible scare one night. Al comes from a wealthy family and he sits on the board of directors of the Overlook.

Jack hopes to spend the winter repairing his marriage and finishing a play he is writing that he hopes will be the financial salvation for his family.

Jack and his family arrive on closing day. They are informed that they will be cut off from civilization other than a CB radio after November. Jack goes off to learn about the hotel’s boiler and his other responsibilities. Wife Wendy and son Danny get a tour of the kitchen from the Overlook cook, Dick Halloran. Halloran recognizes that young Danny Torrance, just five years old, has the gift of “The Shine.” He has precognition and is susceptible to the residual effects of prior horrible acts.

Halloran gets Danny alone and explains to him how he sometimes knows what people are thinking, knows where to find lost objects, and knows what people are thinking. Halloran shines as well, but not nearly as strongly as does Danny. He warns Danny that there are things in the hotel that he will see. Scary things. He tells Danny their not real; just pictures in a book. He warns Danny to avoid two places: Room 217 and the topiary shrubs. Those places, he says, are dangerous for people who shine.

The last of the hotel staff leaves and Jack Torrance shuts the door behind them. The Torrance family is alone in the Overlook Hotel. They settle in for the winter.

Things start to go bad with a seemingly un-supernatural event. Jack bug bombs a nest of hornets and places the nest with the (supposedly) dead hornets in Danny’s room as an ornament. One night, the hornets awaken and climb out of the nest, stinging Danny. Jack doesn’t understand it. He was confident he killed all of them.

Wendy takes Danny to a doctor in a nearby town before the snow flies. There’s no harm done by the wasps. Danny confides to the doctor that he has a secret friend named Tony. Tony shows Danny things. Sometimes Tony is wrong, but he’s often right like when he showed Danny where his father’s missing manuscript was located. He also tells the doctor that prior to coming to the Overlook, Danny showed him a mirror with the word, REDRUM written in red.

After examining Danny, the doctor talks to Wendy and delves into some 1970s pop psychology. He tells Wendy that Tony is a construct of Danny’s mind that helped him deal with the tension within Jack and Wendy’s marriage. Now that the tension has dissipated, Tony is fighting to remain relevant to Danny.

While Danny and Wendy are in town, Jack discovers a scrapbook in the basement of the Overlook. In it are clippings that reveal all of the sordid, horrible history of the hotel. Women committing suicide. Gangsters getting wiped out in gangland hits. Questionable ownership. It’s all there and is all fascinating to Jack Torrance.

Danny and Wendy return to the Overlook and the family settles in. One afternoon, Jack is out on the front lawn and notices that the topiary has moved. He watches it and hears another move. When he looks at that one, yet another one advances at him. Jack, like Danny, realizes that supernatural forces are at work at the Overlook. The fear spurs Jack's first strong urge to drink since coming to the Overlook.

Danny continues to see visions. He is obsessed with the old fashioned fire hoses in the hallways that he is certain are snakes. Room 217 and it secrets fascinate him as well although he has not yet entered. Danny is plenty scared and Wendy suspects it. She asks Danny if they should leave the Overlook. Danny, not wanting to be separated from his father, says they can’t leave him.

The Torrances make one last trip into town before the snow flies. Desperately wanting a drink and in a surly mood, Jack decides to call Ullman and tell him about the scrapbook. He calls Ullman and baits him into a heated argument by suggesting that he might write a book about the Overlook and its ugly past. The conversation ends with Jack feeling an unhappy self satisfaction in getting under Ullman’s skin.

The Torrances return to the Overlook and the snow begins to fly. They are snowed in and cut off from the world. It will be April before they see civilization again.

Time passes at the Overlook. Jack works on his play, does hotel maintenance, and spends hours in the basement, going over old receipts and studying the history of the storied Overlook Hotel. Danny continues to struggle with the hotel’s torments.

One day, curiosity gets the better of Danny and he grabs the pass key to room 217. He goes in and discovers the horror that lies within. It grabs him and shuts the door.

Hours later, Jack and Wendy find Danny in the hallway. He has bruises on his neck as if someone tried to strangle him. Wendy immediately accuses Jack of attacking Danny. She takes him back to their apartment and leaves Jack in a mental daze.

Angry, Jack wanders into the hotel bar which is dry. He has an imaginary conversation with the bartender, Lloyd, who sets up 19 imaginary martinis for Jack to knock back. As his fantasy plays out, Jack can hear the Big Band music of a bygone era playing in his head. In an imaginary drunken state, Jack takes a roque mallet and destroys the CB radio. Now the Torrances are completely isolated and alone.

He returns to the apartment to find Wendy has calmed down, but that Danny is in a nearly catatonic state. As they are arguing over whether or not to leave, Danny comes out of his fugue and screams, “It was her!” Jack turns to Wendy and looks suspiciously. Wendy is taken aback and Jack knows she wouldn’t harm Danny. Nonetheless, he feels some self satisfaction in watching Wendy’s shock when, instead of the accuser, she is the accused.

Jack gets the pass key and heads for 217. He is angry at Danny for going into a guest room which he knows is off limits. He’s also curious to see what’s in 217 because he’s read about the middle aged woman with fading beauty who checked into that room and left in a body bag – a victim of an appointment with a razor blade.

He arrives in 217 and finds it as it should be with just one exception: the bathmat is on the floor and is wet. His anger at Danny rises and he goes to pick up the bathmat. He smells soap. He looks into the tub and discovers the horror of room 217. He flees. He later tells Wendy that there was nothing there and admonishes Danny to stay out of forbidden areas.

That night, the Torrances are awakened by the sound of the elevators running. They go to check on them. Jack insists that it is just a short circuit. But when the elevator stops on their floor and the door opens, they find confetti and party favors on the elevator floor. The Overlook’s ghosts are starting to party.

Wendy wants to leave. She’s determined to do it and tells Jack to go to the maintenance shed to check on the snow mobile. Jack dutifully checks the snow mobile. For reasons he can’t fathom, he yanks the magneto from the snowmobile’s engine and throws it over the hill.

He returns to the Overlook and sits down before his unfinished play and decides it’s all crap. He can’t identify with the main character – a school boy abused by a school headmaster jealous of his privilege and his scholastic ability. He finds himself identifying more with the schoolmaster.

He pushes it aside and returns to the basement to delve into more old papers and receipts. He passes the hours there.

Meanwhile, Danny is in the lobby. He finds an old clock and winds it up. He is immediately sucked into a vortex where Tony is waiting for him. Tony shows him what his father has been up to and tells Danny that the hotel wants him – not his father. The hotel is using his father to get at Danny because Danny’s powers can bring the ghosts of the Overlook to life. Danny uses his shine to contact Dick Halloran and scream for help. Before departing, Tony tells Danny he will remember what his father forgot. He shows Danny the word REDRUM one more time before reversing the letters, so they spell MURDER.

Jack leaves the basement and heads for the bar. When he arrives, he finds the party has started and Lloyd is at his accustomed place behind the bar. The martinis are real and Jack downs many of them, getting fitfully drunk. As he watches the revelry, he is approached by the ghost of Delbert Grady, the former caretaker. Delbert tells Jack that his son has not been a good boy and has tried to bring outside parties (Halloran) into the mix. He goes on to say that his own children didn’t like the Overlook and one of them tried to burn it down. He “corrected” them. Jack must now “correct” his own family.

Wendy goes to find Jack and Jack is on the prowl to find Danny. They encounter each other in a hallway and Wendy manages to knock him unconscious. She and Danny drag him to the walk in refrigerator and lock him in.

But the hotel’s will will not be thwarted. The ghost of Delbert Grady unlocks the refrigerator and lets Jack out. Grady says the collective ghosts of the Overlook are beginning to doubt that Jack is of “managerial timber.” Jack sets out, roque mallet in hand, to prove them wrong.

Wendy is about the hotel, looking for Danny who is in hiding. Along the way, she encounters several of the party guests -- ghosts from a bygone era finding new life with the young boy who shines brightly for their benefit.

Meanwhile, Dick Halloran has come on the fly all the way from Florida and is making his way toward the Overlook. He battles the topiary animals and makes his way into the hotel. He is shouting for Danny when he is accosted by Jack who smacks him hard across the jaw with the mallet, knocking him unconscious. Jack heads for the apartment to “correct” Wendy.

Wendy sees him coming and tries to reason with him, but is forced to lock herself in the apartment. Jack has beaten her badly. As Jack is breaking down the door, she locks herself in the bathroom. As Jack is breaking down that door, Wendy grabs some razor blades from the medicine cabinet. When Jack reaches through the broken door to open it, she cuts him. Jack decides to seek out easier prey in Danny.

Jack wanders the hallways of the Overlook, his personality now completely dominated by the malevolent spirit of the Overlook. He screams for Danny to come out and take his medicine. He finally finds Danny and corners him. Precocious child that Danny is, he tells Jack that the hotel made him drink because it was the only way it could get at Jack and it simply wants Jack to kill Danny so he and his powers can join the ghosts of the hotel.

The last bit of what’s left of Jack’s personality surfaces and he tells Danny to run. But Danny remembers what his father forgot. Just as the hotel resumes its domination of Jack, Danny tells him he forgot to dump the boiler. Jack, in a panic, leaves Danny and heads for the basement, hoping against hope that it’s not too late to keep the hotel from exploding.

Danny and Wendy find each other and join Halloran who is beaten, but serviceable. They flee the hotel, get on the snow mobile and start down the mountain. Halloran stops at the maintenance shed to get some blankets and finds himself with the sudden urge to kill Danny and Wendy. He shakes it off and heads back to the snowmobile. Meanwhile, in the Overlook’s basement Jack is desperately trying to dump the boiler when it explodes. The Overlook burns as Danny, Wendy, and Dick head down the mountain.

The book flashes forward almost a year. Wendy is recovering from the beating Jack administered in the Overlook hallway. Danny is fishing in a Maine lake and Dick Halloran is working at a hotel in Maine. Wendy received $40,000 in life insurance and Jack’s old drinking buddy has offered her a lucrative job in Baltimore. They all promise to stay in touch. It's a bittersweet ending for Wendy and Danny Torrance.

The Shining was King’s third novel and ranks as one of his best. It’s top notch horror by any standard. The book incorporates elements of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, Poe’s Masque of the Red Death, and the more contemporary, Burnt Offerings by Robert Marasco. There are moments of creeping terror and long, action driven narratives that are exciting and thrilling.

In his third novel, we see King introduce a technique he would go on to employ often. In his narrative, King writes what is actually seen and/or heard. It is followed by a parenthetical phrase standing alone as a paragraph that serves as an almost subliminal message. For instance, as the ghosts of the long ago masquerade party scream, "Unmask!” King writes in lower case, just below the quote “(and the red death held sway).

While King's second book, ‘Salem’s Lot was an exceptional book and is heralded as a worthy modern revision of the classic vampire story, The Shining is a monumental step forward from that book in the development of Stephen King as a writer. The haunted house story is the cornerstone of horror. It’s been done thousands of times. Sometimes it’s excellent as in the case of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. Sometimes it’s entertaining if not exceptionally deep like Marasco’s novel, and often it is just a remix of old clichés and archetypes that offers nothing new (like the screenplay Rose Red which King would author more than 20 years later and stack every cliche in the genre in this poor effort).

The Shining has plenty of the things that go bump in the night. It incorporates total isolation which is not an uncommon ingredient in horror. King uses the archetypes but gives us the hotel itself as the malevolent force. The ghosts are its agents, but the hotel is the enemy.

Jack Torrance is a sympathetic character which makes him tragic rather than evil. He has a family he is trying desperately to support. He’s made a mess of his own life because of his addiction to alcohol. He is trying desperately to do right by them and to rebuild his own career and self esteem. Unfortunately, the demons in his head find allies in the demons that haunt the Overlook and he is overpowered. His death is not a victory. We are sad for Jack when he dies, his life unfulfilled.

Wendy is a complex character as well and not always sympathetic. She has stood by her man in bad times. But she can’t bring herself to trust him completely. No matter how hard she resists, she can’t help but sniff Jack’s breath for alcohol. When Danny is injured, she’s quick to blame Jack. As a character, she’s not a bad person, but serves to add to Jack’s torment because he so badly wants her trust, love, and respect and never gets it.

King perhaps makes Danny a little more mature than even the most precocious five year old. His understanding of complex events, of complicated adult emotions, and the supernatural nature of the Overlook is beyond what a five year old should be able to comprehend. This is perhaps the chief weakness in the novel, but it is minor. The compelling narrative carries you right past whatever weaknesses exist within Danny as a character.

The Shining established Stephen King as a major force in horror fiction and was an important factor in resurrecting the moribund genre in the mid 1970s. It was his first hardcover bestseller. Three years after its publication, legendary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick used it as the blueprint for a movie many regard as one of the finest horror movies ever made. That movie would establish Stephen King as a bankable asset in Hollywood.

In 1997, King would realize a long ambition to write a teleplay of his own based on The Shining. The result was a three part television miniseries that was much closer to King's vision than was Kubrick's. It was not bad, but not nearly the movie that Kubrick made. It's obvious that Stephen King knows how to write incredible fiction books and Stanley Kubrick makes incredible movies. King, despite how he felt about Kubrick's treatment of his novel, should have left it alone. Kubrick never tried to write a novel better than Stephen King. Stephen King should not have attempted to make a better movie than Stanley Kubrick.

The Shining is a must read for any fan of horror. It should be read by those who appreciate a good novel of any kind. While a large segment of literati still look down upon horror stories as dreck, they are closing their minds to a well crafted, well written story. Not only is The Shining a great horror story, it is a great novel.