His 2017 takedown of
the classic horror film is just three words long.
By Sammy
Nickalls
February
23, 2017
Esquire
Though The
Shining is perhaps one of the most well-known horror films to date,
one of the people who is responsible for its creation wants no part of it.
Stephen King has not been shy about his distaste for Stanley Kubrick's twist on
his novel, but has time changed the author's mind? According to a recent tweet,
nope, doesn't seem like it.
When Blumhouse
Productions tweeted a video of the top five Stephen King films asking
"What're your top 5 [sic] @StephenKing joints?" they got an answer
from King himself. Just three words, but they speak volumes: "Not this
one."
Back in
2014, King didn't mince words about the film either when he spoke with
Rolling Stone, but he used more than three:
"The
book is hot, and the movie is cold; the book ends in fire, and the movie in
ice. In the book, there's an actual arc where you see this guy, Jack Torrance,
trying to be good, and little by little he moves over to this place where he's
crazy. And as far as I was concerned, when I saw the movie, Jack was crazy from
the first scene. I had to keep my mouth shut at the time. It was a screening,
and Nicholson was there. But I'm thinking to myself the minute he's on the
screen, 'Oh, I know this guy. I've seen him in five motorcycle movies, where
Jack Nicholson played the same part.' And it's so misogynistic. Wendy Torrance
is just presented as this sort of screaming dishrag."
