By Lori Ferraro
At our house, we love Halloween. I mean love, love, love it, it’s kind of like our Christmas – we dress up, we decorate, our house glows orange and we watch a ton of scary movies during the month of October.
There’s one particular movie that’s on my list of the all-time best, scariest, edge-of-my-seat, sweat, jump and squeal no matter how many times I watch it movies.
It’s Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 masterpiece The Shining.
I mean come on . . . how great is Jack Nicholson in this movie? How creepy and demented is he? Watching his transformation into madness throughout the film is pretty brilliant.
Jack plays Jack Torrance, a writer who schleps his poor family – his wife, Wendy, also brilliantly played by Shelley Duvall, and his young son Danny (oh jeez, poor, poor Danny) to be caretakers for the winter at an isolated hotel. Jack is a writer and thinks he could get some peace and quiet up there in isolation-ville and get some work done on his book he’s writing. I guess he also thinks this might be “fun” for his wife and kid.
We learn that his son Danny has a form of ESP. We also learn that this particular hotel is the worst possible place to be a kid with the gift of ESP. You especially do not want to be a kid with ESP in room 237 of this hotel.
Memorable horrific fear inducing scenes from the film include a race through a hedge maze in the freezing snow (creepy) elevators full of blood (super creepy) terrifying twin girls (double creepy) and the word “REDRUM” or “murder” spelled backwards, being repeated over and over by a small child in a weird, frog-like voice (creep factor overload.)
But the best/worst scene to watch is when Jack chops through the bathroom door with a fire axe to get to Wendy. She screams in panic and horror with each chop as Jack leers through the hole he has made, shouting the famous “Heeere’s Johnny!” line.
You can now recreate one of the most famous scenes from horror movie history yourself.
Here’s what you’ll need:
- A piece of plywood with a hold cut out for your head to pop through (make sure it’s jaggedly cut so you have that freshly-axed-by-a-psychopath feel)
- A dark red/maroon button down shirt
- Jeans
- An axe
- A manic look on your face
A fun, original twist on a super twisted character – be prepared to give that signature “Heeere’s Johnny!” line over and over throughout your evening.
Remember, all work and no play can make you a dull boy – have a great Halloween.
