The Shining

The Shining (1980)

51 corrected entries

(19 votes)

Corrected entry: From the first shot to the last, Stanley Kubrick includes many references to special numbers. 12, 24, 21, 42 and 1, 2, 4 and 5 and it's multiples can be easily spotted close to 200 times. - - 1) We see Jack ax the bathroom door 12 times. 2) Wendy stops at line 21 on the page in Jack's typewriter. 3) We hear Wendy thumb through 24 pages of Jack's novel. 4) Wendy swings the bat 42 times. 5) Jack's locked up in storeroom C-1. 6) 2 girls, 2 elevators, 2 boilers, and 2 identical sides in Jack's vision of hedge maze. 7) Jack holds up 4 fingers in the last picture. 8) Jack says "5 months on the wagon" and The Overlook is closed between10/30 and 5/15. - - This is just the tip of an iceberg. Taken as time codes they point to shots in the movie and when the time code hits a :12 or :21 visions are seen (most almost exactly :24 seconds in duration). When the time code hits a :24 or :42 a cast member discovers something (durations end almost exactly with :12, :21, or :24 seconds). Just take a look at the vision in the very last shot of the movie (2:21) "Overlook Hotel July 4th Ball 1921" with a duration of :24 seconds, and you'll see what I mean. However, the timecode will only be accurate for NTSC versions of the film, as PAL versions are slightly sped up due to the differing frame rates. Go to the Forum-Mistakes-Check this out, for more examples.

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Correction: Unless it can be shown that the completely random and unrelated numbers 12, 24, 21, 42, and multiples of 1, 2, 4 and 5 (which narrows it down to, literally, infinite numbers) held some significance for Stanley Kubrick, or for anyone, this is not trivia. One could take those numbers (or any numbers) and find them in any film, if one is insane enough to actually search for and chronicle them.

Corrected entry: Stanley Kubrick makes use of color to indicate when certain characters are "Shining". Surroundings and possessions which are entirely yellow or red are obvious and have been noted by many but never fully understood. In the novel oranges were what Dick Hallorann smelled when he "Shined" and being that smell can not be adequately brought across to a theater audience Stanley Kubrick made the brilliant decision to use the two pigments a painter mixes together to make the color orange. Most commentators see these shots, as Jack in the yellow VolksWagon or with the red Calumet can behind his head in the storeroom, and still don't know what's going on. Red and yellow equals orange, "Shining", and all you have to do is, as the MM motto goes "open your eyes" and look at the movie to see this.

????

Correction: This cites no source for this information that can be considered authoritative. Without such, it is speculative at best, based purely on the occasional appearance of particular common colours. There is invariably a tendency to wish to read significance into aspects of films and this submitter has clearly taken it further than most; his assertation that most people simply fail to understand Kubrick's subtlety is at best pompous and at worst an indication that they are simply seeing significance in something that has none, a far better explanation as to why "most commentators" fail to pick up on such things.

Tailkinker

Corrected entry: When Jack, Danny and Wendy are living in The Overlook, (and even in Dick Halloran's house in Florida where the TV and lamps have no wires coming from them) Stanley Kubrick takes great care so that no appliance (coffee makers, radios, etc.) is seen plugged into a wall socket and that no TVs (the sets Wendy watches in the kitchen and with Danny in the lobby) have visible wires. This may be a deliberate choice to show that people (or places) that "Shine" emit enough psychic energy to power appliances. This is brilliant, but the problem is, certain wires were overlooked by the crew and can be seen coming from the lamps in Room 237 and in Wendy and Jack's apartment. If you look closely at the TV set in the kitchen where Wendy hears the forecast about the snowstorm, a tiny bit of that very well-hidden power wire can be seen under the table above the seat on the chair in the middle. (01:11:50 - 01:59:20)

????

Correction: How does "this may be a deliberate choice" turn into a fact? Unless Kubrick has stated he did this, I find it a gross assumption, and therefore the claimed mistake isn't any kind of mistake, either. Beyond this, wouldn't the characters notice the cords missing and wonder how the appliances were powered?

Bob Blumenfeld

Corrected entry: The texture of the carpet fabric decorating the Overlook Hotel,is the same as the carpet in the house of the evil child Sid in Disney's Toy Story (1995).

Correction: Pointing out that another film contains an homage to this one is not valid trivia for this film, but for the one that contains the homage. The makers of this film had nothing to do with it.

Tailkinker

Corrected entry: The shot of Dick Hallorann in the jet is not right. If you look at the drink in front of the woman sitting next to him it's motionless. Anyone who has flown in an airplane knows that any liquid in an open glass vibrates. (01:36:05)

????

Correction: Nonsense, I've flown in many many airplanes and that isn't always the case.

tw_stuart

Corrected entry: People who "Shine" are able to see the past, present, and future through visions, yet Dick Hallorann is not able to see the trouble waiting for him at The Overlook. (02:05:15)

????

Correction: They don't see the entire future. It's not a given that they'd see everything that will happen to them.

CocoCami

Corrected entry: When the blood spills from the elevator the editors try to make it look like the whole room is filled with blood by just putting a red screen over the camera,but you can see that the blood is only filled half way in the room. (01:45:35)

ilikepie00

Correction: They put a red filter on to give the illusion that the blood has splashed over the "eyes of the viewer". It's merely a stylistic choice and not necessarily meant to suggest the room was completely filled.

Floyd1977

Corrected entry: In the scene after Danny goes to room 227, Jack is typing, but you can tell by the group of typewriter keys he hits that he isn't typing "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. But later after Wendy leaves the room, he is typing that phrase. (00:43:00 - 00:45:00)

????

Correction: Your sequencing is off - the scene where Jack is typing, and then is interrupted, and then types again, happens *before* Danny goes to room 237 [not 227]. He is seen typing when Wendy interrupts him after Danny has gone to room 237, but he does not go back to typing - he sits at his typewriter staring blankly into space. So the scene you describe does not exist. And even if the scene did exist the way you describe it, it's not a mistake for him to change what he's typing - it could be said that this was the beginning of his madness.

Corrected entry: It was 8:20AM when his plane landed and when Dick Hallorann calls his friend Larry at the garage the clock on the wall reads 9:07. When Larry asks him how long it will take to get there he says about five hours but in the next scene where we see him driving to Durkin's garage, it's obviously the middle of the night. (01:39:00)

????

Correction: So he was wrong about how long it would take him - not uncommon in a snowstorm.

Corrected entry: As both she and Jack hear the Snow cat engine quite there's no reason whatsoever why Wendy doesn't scream out the bathroom window to Dick Halloran as he parks right outside it, like she yelled to Danny several shots before. This decision definitely benefits the plot despite making no sense. (02:05:25)

????

Correction: ##There indeed are several reasons why she doesn't call out for help when she hears the Snow Cat: a) she is standing near the door, not the window, and is still concerned about fending off Jack at the door; b) once Jack moves away and doesn't become a threat, she could call out, but she's still in shock and not thinking straight; and c) she would probably figure out she might not be heard over the roar of the engine.

Corrected entry: As Jack talks to Delbert Grady in the bathroom he says, "You chopped your wife and daughter into little bits," yet we have been told that he had two daughters by himself and Mr. Ullman, and we see two in all of Danny's visions. (01:27:25)

????

Correction: Character mistake - Jack misremembers and thinks Grady only had one daughter.

Twotall

Corrected entry: In the first scene which Danny rides around the hotel on his tricycle, he frequently rides over both the floor and carpets. However, the sounds made by his tricycle do not change at the exact time he passes over from one surface to the other.

Correction: I just watched the famous Steadicam shot over and over, just to see if this is true. The 'mistake' is one of faulty observation - while the rear wheels of Tommy's trike are on carpet making little noise the front wheel hits the polished wood floor and makes the loud sound - but the front wheel is often obscured by the tricycle itself. It's all perfectly in sync (and since it was recorded live, there is no reason why it wouldn't be). Not a mistake.

Corrected entry: When Jack has a nightmare and Wendy comes to the rescue. Jack spits on the camera when he wakes up.

Correction: In this scene, Jack salivates when he wakes up from his nightmare, but he does not spit at the camera - he spits on the floor.

Corrected entry: When Jack is at the ball and the waiter spills on him, he has a stain on his right pant leg, mid thigh. When the waiter attempts to clean him up, the spot disappears without the waiter touching the area.

eeyore0101

Correction: It is very questionable how "real" the scene is. Jack is delirious with cabin fever and alcoholism, so he might be imagining many of these scenes, and the other people at the party are all ghosts. Either way, the stain is not really there, but the spilling of Advocaat was necessary to make Grady and Jack connect and have a conversation. Once the hotel has achieved this purpose, the stain is no longer needed and can disappear.

Twotall

Corrected entry: When Wendy tells Danny's doctor the story of when Jack accidentally dislocated Danny's shoulder, she says it happened five months ago. But when Jack tells Lloyd the story, he says it happened three years ago. (00:16:25 - 01:08:10)

Correction: He's drunk and at a bar. Perhaps he's just lying to the bartender to not seem as dangerous. Everyone looks for the bartender's sympathetic ear.

Corrected entry: In the scene where Ullmann is interviewing Jack Torrance for the caretaker's position, he refers to the former caretaker as Charles Grady. Later in the film, when Torrance meets up with Grady in a bathroom, the name changes to Delbert Grady.

Correction: This is not a mistake. The film is about people existing in different time frames. Charles Grady was the caretaker in 1970. Delbert was a waiter years before that. There was some sort of weird force at work that drew Charles (who is Delbert in a different time frame) to the hotel in the 70's and caused him to kill his family. This is being repeated now as Jack is drawn to the hotel and attempts to do the same. It is at the end of the film that we learn that Jack too has previously been at the hotel in a different time frame (in the photo with the date on it). This is why Delbert says both he and Jack have always been there when they talk in the bathroom.

Corrected entry: After Wendy has locked Jack in the freezer, he escapes because his hallucination of the butler lets him out. A hallucination would not actually be able to unlock a door.

Correction: His hallucinations are products of actual ghosts that haunt the hotel. The whole film centers around this. This is not the only thing that the ghosts do for him (for example, the famous instance of his paper mysteriously being loaded into the typewriter).

Corrected entry: Three separate hotels can each lay claim to being the real-life Overlook. The film was shot at the Timberline Lodge in Mt. Hood, Oregon. The back story comes from the supposedly haunted Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado (The 1997 TV remake was filmed there as well). And the name was taken from the Overlook Mountain House in Woodstock, NY.

Correction: The film was shot entirely at Elstree Film Studios in the UK, except the helicopter fly past at the start and any long distance shots. The exterior of the Overlook and the Maze was built on the back lot, the interior scenes were shot on stage, Kubrick had two stages knocked into one for bigger spaces. The snow scenes were all shot in the summer get the right light, it was mainly salt and polystyrene with air pads to keep it fluffed, the cameramen even wore snow blowing fans on their backs. A windy day resulted in a "blizzard" that blocked the High Street in Borehamwood one summer afternoon, much to the amusement of the locals.

Corrected entry: When Jack and his family arrive at the Overlook, the hotel manager Mr. Ullman asks Jack, "has your luggage been brought in?" and the camera shot shows a large pile of suitcases and belongings, which would definitely not have fitted in their VW Beetle.

Correction: I believe the luggage was from the final departing guests, not the Torrances.

Correction: It is Torrance's luggage indeed, you can see the tricycle too.

Corrected entry: In the scene where Wendy is confronting Jack about the bruises on Danny's neck, and she carries Danny away, take a look at "Danny" in her arms. She picks up a real little boy, but then after a cut away, in the next shot she is very obviously carrying a dummy (you can see his stiff body and cloth hand).

Correction: She is carrying a real boy the whole time - you can see Danny's thumb move while she is walking away and then once she is completely walking away, Danny's arm starts to raise.

The Shining mistake picture

Continuity mistake: While breaking down the bathroom door with the axe, Jack repeatedly strikes and damages the right hand panel, but as he turns away from the door (when he hears the snow-cat) both left and right panels have been damaged.

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Trivia: The line "Here's Johnny" originated on the The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, where Ed McMahon always introduced him with that phrase. Nicholson improvised the line during the shooting; Kubrick liked it and left it in.

moviedude345

More trivia for The Shining

Question: Who were all the skeletons that the Mother sees toward the end of the film? It's never explained. Also, what room was that?

Answer: It was The Gold Room. The skeletons are simply those of past guests: we never learn their identities.

Not the Gold Room. It's the lobby area you see earlier in the movie when they first get there and Jack is sitting in a chair reading a magazine.

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