Wheeeere’s Johnny? Nearly 40 years ago Jack Nicholson went berserk in a snowbound Rockies hotel, smashing an axe through a bathroom door behind which a pop-eyed Shelley Duvall cowered in terror. It is one of cinema’s truly iconic scenes, once voted the most petrifying in movie history.
Now award yourself points if you remember that the family in The Shining were called Torrance. They had a son, Danny, a psychic little boy haunted by apparitions as he pedalled on his trike along the corridor’s hallucinogenic carpets. Danny has now grown up into Dan Torrance and assumed the form of Ewan McGregor who stars in the sort-of-sequel Doctor Sleep.
The Shining was, arguably, the crowning achievement of Stanley Kubrick, one of those rare film-makers accorded the accolade of an exhibition devoted to his oeuvre, which recently ended at the Design Museum.
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