25 things you didn’t know about your favorite horror movies

The Shining – Author hated the final cut of the film

A movie doesn’t go down in history by being a little scary, and when it’s based on a story by Stephen King, you know to expect a serious thriller.

The Shining tells the story of Jack (Jack Nicholson) and Wendy (Shelley Duvall) Torrance and their son Danny when they head to an isolated hotel for the winter. Jack agrees to take care of the hotel and brings his family along with him. Soon, though, the evil presence in the building makes him violent, and he turns on them. Danny has a special psychic talent, called the “shining,” that he tries to use to inform people outside of the hotel about what’s about to go down with his family.

The movie, while a classic, isn’t loved by everyone. In fact, Stephen King himself, who wrote the story the movie is based on, doesn’t even like the finished product. Stanley Kubrick was a visionary director, but his style wasn’t for everyone. Many of the actors he worked with hated his methods too, and that includes the stars of The Shining.

Kubrick was notorious for his compulsiveness and his need for absolute perfection. He would take numerous retakes, to the point of exhausting the cast and crew. In some cases, actors would beg for him to stop, because they were so tired. Nicholson would reportedly be so tired after a day on the set that he would walk into his apartment, go straight to his bed, and pass out.

Even with his compulsive need to take a ridiculous amount of shots for each scene, the movie’s infamous elevator scene — which features a wave of blood pouring from an elevator in the hotel — took only three takes. But that doesn’t mean it was simple.

The shot took nine days to set up, and every time the doors opened and the blood flowed out, Kubrick would cut because he didn’t find it looked enough like blood. Despite only taking three takes, that shot still took almost a year to finally get right. Yikes!