Stephen King's "The Shining" on DVD

One of the reasons many movie adaptations of books fail is that there’s too much material to fit into a mere two-hour time period.

Perhaps that is why, then, the best Stephen King adaptations have been TV miniseries. Many of his novels are very, very long, so the only way to capture the full essence of the book is to make the visual version four hours long (or more).

Stanley Kubrick's 1980 version of King’s The Shining failed on several accounts. Jack Nicholson wasn’t believable enough, Shelley Duvall was ear-coveringly annoying and, worst of all, it wasn’t scary. The 1997 TV version fixes most of the problems. Steven Weber (yes, that guy from Wings) plays a good psycho who’s believable as the loving – but flawed – father and the deranged lunatic. Rebecca DeMornay, as Wendy, doesn’t scream her way through the film, so by the end we’re not actually hoping for her to get killed. In fact, we actually like and respect her and wish for her to punch her husband’s lights out when he comes after her. As for the third problem, well…it may not be scary per se, but it’s a lot scarier than the movie was.

Jack Torrance (Weber) and his family are going to be looking after the Overlook Hotel in the Colorado mountains. Normally it wouldn’t be such an odd task, except that once the roads close in late October, they’ll be pretty much cut off from the outside world until the end of April. That alone would be enough to make a person go insane, but it doesn’t help that the hotel is infested with a number of not-so-nice ghosts.

For some reason, the ghosts seem very interested in Jack’s son, Danny, who is gifted with a precognitive power dubbed “The Shining.” Strange things start to happen, scaring the crap out of Wendy and Danny, and turning Jack ever so slightly mad.

Split into three parts (each running roughly an hour and a half), each part has its own appeal and drawback. Part one is very slow, and it’s pretty much just the introduction, but without it you wouldn’t have a clue what was going on. Part two is the really creepy one; the one that is most worth your time, but it seems more of a way of connecting parts one and three than anything else. Part three has the quickest pace, but fails to be terrifying since it’s pretty much just Jack going crazy.

Perhaps the main reason this particular version is so much better than the movie is because Stephen King himself penned the teleplay. After the success of The Stand miniseries, we can’t think of a better person to adapt King’s work than King, and maybe the producers figured that out as well.

There are better, shorter, and more entertaining horror movies out there, but The Shining is well worth a look. If you enjoyed Stanley Kubrick’s version, you’ll probably enjoy this one even more, and even if you didn’t enjoy Kubrick’s, there’s still hope for you with the miniseries.

Though we wouldn’t quite call it a “Special Edition,” the DVD provided for The Shining is pretty nice. Interestingly enough, it’s presented in anamorphic widescreen (it appears to be about 1.78:1), which is always nice to see. The quality may not be great, but it’s pretty good. And hey, we were so pleasantly surprised to see an anamorphic transfer that it wouldn’t have bothered us if it looked like an old silent film (okay, now we’re talking crazy).

The audio track is done in Dolby Surround Stereo, which is a bit of a disappointment. We don’t really want to complain too much since it sounds really good for what it is, but 5.1 would have worked brilliantly for the film. Characters hear noises and voices quite frequently that could have scared the dickens out of the audience had they come from the back of the room, but we have to settle for the front corners instead. But like we said, this is a very nice audio track with excellent clarity and very good use of the front channels.

Extras include an audio commentary with Stephen King, director Mick Garris, actors Steven Weber and Cynthia Garris and select crew members, and 11 additional scenes. Some of the scenes are actually pretty good, but the miniseries had to be cut for three two-hour timeslots, so we can understand why they were left out.

The Shining, from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment
273 minutes, anamorphic widescreen (1.78:1) 16X9 enhanced, Dolby Surround Stereo
Starring Rebecca DeMornay, Steven Weber, Melvin Van Peebles and Courtland Mead
Produced by Mark Carliner
Teleplay by Stephen King
Directed by Mick Garris

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