I finally watch "The Shining" and drink and blog it

I know: shame, shame, I've never actually watched The Shining (1980), but I've got the basic gist of it. Now it's time! I've got some booze and an Isaac. Let's do this thing. SORRY, ANOTHER SUPER-LONG MOVIE.

Mountains and yellow slug bug. Not a fan of Jack Nicholson, so this should be fun. I generally like Stephen King stuff, but haven't watched or read a ton of it. There's the giant ski lodge that I've seen ghost-investigated on TV shows. Shelley Duvall is so weird looking! We just saw her in Three Women, which was also weird. Tony is the little boy's finger friend. Creepy. Jack Nicholson/Jack is a writer and teacher interviewing in an ugly peach-orange office. This lodge closes in the winter because the road gets snowed in all season. "The winters can be fantastically cruel," says the guy with the awesome wide and textured tie. J.Nichs is so young here. "Solitude and isolation can itself become a problem." FORESHADOWING? No big deal, but some other dude taking care of the lodge during the winter killed his whole family with an axe. Just a touch of cabin fever. Jack's eyebrows are disturbing.

Shelley Duvall is wearing an amazing '70s jumper and her hair is stringy as always. Little Danny and Tony are having an argument. Blood surges out of the elevator and there are creepy twins. Apparently this is Danny's vision? I've read enough about this movie to know that this psychic gift is the so-called "shining." He wakes up with some doctor. She asks to see Tony, who apparently has hidden in his stomach. Danny doesn't want to talk about Tony, OKAY, lady? OMG Shelley's red tights with boots make this outfit even more amazingly awful. This doctor lady claims "episodes" like "self-induced trance[s]" are totes normz for kids. Apparently Danny and Tony have been hanging out since he started nursery school, which Danny was not into. Shelley really needs to tap the ash on her cigarette and is relating the story about how Jack came home drunk and dislocated Danny's shoulder. NO BIG DEAL. Supposedly Jack no longer drinks, sober for five months.

The family drives up to the lodge and apparently they don't make Danny wear a seat belt. Jack does not seem to like kids. Donner Party reference. FORESHADOWING? Jack is really into explaining it to his kid, who knows about cannibalism from TV. Ominous clouds/fog in the mountains. I think the Torrance family is going to have a great winter, you guys! Indian designs in the decor--I hope they're not BURIAL ART. Danny sees the creepy twins in matching blue dresses and knee socks. They are holding hands like no real sisters would. Well, not me and my sister, anyway. The caretaker's apartment is all pink and creepy. There's a hedge maze, 13 feet high. I'm sure nothing eerie will/has ever happen(ed) there. INDIAN BURIAL GROUND. Knew it. There's some kind of snow tank that supposedly drives just like a car. Pink and gold are Shelley's favorite colors. EW. No booze on the premises all winter. WHAT A NIGHTMARE.

Dick, the chef guy is black and friendly. He shows Shelley/Wendy the kitchen because it's a WOMAN'S PLACE. Dick shows them the huge walk-in freezer which is full of meat, even though they're going into the off-season. I know it's frozen, but it seems kind of wasteful. Dick somehow magically knows Danny's nickname is "Doc" because black people. Apparently Dick and Danny can communicate telepathically. Dick's grandma called it "shining." They are bonding, but Tony doesn't want Danny to talk about it. Tony sounds more and more sinister, as he is clearly a creepy ghost and also Dick says some bad things have happened and left their marks on the hotel. STAY OUT OF ROOM 237. I'm not going to lie, it seems like Danny's a bit old to be riding a little three-wheeler. Jack's a sarcastic dick whose wife brings him breakfast in bed for some reason. Jack throws a tennis ball violently against the wall like he's fucking Toby or something. Wendy and Danny wander into the hedge maze with a Polaroid camera. LIKE YOU DO. DRINK REFILL TIME.

Now Wendy is dumping out an industrial-sized can of fruit salad. I used to open big cans like that of pineapple at my pizza job. The trick was to poke a couple of holes and let it drain first, though. TRUE STORY. YOU'RE WELCOME. Danny wheels past room 237 and is intrigued. Tragically locked. Vision of the twin girls. Get that kid a fucking bike, he's too old for that nonsense. I think he's supposed to be, like, five, but he looks, like, seven to me. I could ride a two-wheeler at four. Wendy is so obnoxiously upbeat, but Jack's a cranky dick who doesn't want to be interrupted. Why are these two married? OH, NOW HE'S MANSPLAINING. Don't come into his working manspace EVER. What a fucking asshole. I'd like it if a Native American ghost axed him to death.

Snow. Jack, not looking good these days. Title screens tell us what day of the week it is, but it's unclear how many weeks have passed. OMG WAIT, Wendy's wearing some faux-Indian/Southwestern jacket thing that is terrible. The phones are out, so she uses the radio to call a ranger station from the Overlook Hotel. No phones until spring, probz. The ranger's got pretty sweet hair. Gee whiz, Wendy's got fake moccasin things on her feet and is going to leave the radio on from now on since they have no phones. Fucking Danny wheels around and around the hallways. He runs into the twins again. "Hello, Danny. Come and play with us." They might be British? "Forever and ever." Unison is always creepy.They were totes axe-murdered in his bloody vision. SHINETY SHINE SHINE. Danny turns to Tony for comfort.

That fucking carpet. The '70s, man.

Apparently the phone lines are down, but they get at least one TV station. Apparently they have to LITRALLY tiptoe around fucking Jack while he's asleep. Danny is wearing a sweet Mickey Mouse football sweater. Jack is awake, though, and awkwardly picks his son up. Danny looks super uncomfortable on Jack's lap and asks if his dad feels bad. He's noticed Jack hasn't been sleeping. Jack says he wants to stay in the hotel FOREVER AND EVER. Danny asks if Jack would ever hurt them. AWKWARD. When he says he loves his son and would never hurt him, he sounds so fucking creepily sarcastic. As per usual. God that carpet is hideous. Danny is now wearing an awesome Apollo rocket sweater! Isaac is totes jelly of the kid's fashion. Uh-oh, room 237 is open with the key in the door. Wendy is checking the heaters and shit because she does all the real work in this family. She hears a scream. It's Jack nightmaring at his desk. He dreamt that he hacked up his family. Danny shows up, all beat up and sucking his thumb. OMINOUS. Wendy thinks strung-out Jack did it to Danny. Things are going great. Only, like, four more months isolated up here!

Jack wanders up to the empty bar. He talks to a bartender who I'm pretty sure is not actually there. LLOYD. Lloyd looks like a vampire. Jack says some shit about "white man's bourbon." Jack Daniels is gross. Jack (Torrance) is now pissed that his wife thought he abused his son (again). Wendy runs in and says that there's a woman in the hotel who tried to strangle Danny. In Miami, Dick lounges in his orange room with pictures of amazingly afro-ed naked women. Supposedly the news in Florida covers the weather in remote Colorado. Dick has a vision of room 237, which has sweet mint green walls and fixtures in the bathroom. But I guess now Jack is up in there, looking for the strangler. A naked lady is in the tub. Jack is into it. She's real skinny, but at least she's got pubic hair, I guess. They're going to get it on now, I guess? Because I love making out with possible ghost chicks who like to strangle kids. He sees in the mirror that the back of her body is unattractive and rotting. Now she's old and gross! Danny's having a nightmare/seizure right now, too. Jack escapes the room because ew, old ladies.

Jack tells Wendy he didn't find anything in the room. LIES! Isaac just called the ghost a "moldy oldie." HA! Jack tries to convince his wife that Danny bruised up his own neck. Is he really in denial, or just a lying bastard on top of being lots of other kinds of bastard? Danny sees "redrum" written on the wall as his parents discuss getting him out of the hotel. Jack accuses Wendy of "creating a problem." WTF he is terrible. He does not respect the hotel's property, either. Jack finds evidence of a party elsewhere in the hotel. Dick keeps trying to call the hotel, but he can't get through. He wants the ranger to radio up there to see if the family is okay.

This is totally really happening, right?

Jack is now walking into a full-on 1920s party with flapper ladies and shit in the Gold Room with Lloyd at the bar. Lloyd won't let him pay. A waiter spills all over him and they go to the bathroom to clean up. The men's room is SO RED. The waiter is not "Jeevesy," he's named Grady. Grady's the name of the axe murderer guy! He's also BRITISH, just like the dead twins. Jack knows who he is. Grady claims he doesn't remember murdering his family. He tells Jack, "You are [now] the caretaker. You've always been the caretaker." Sure, okay. Grady tells him Danny's trying to bring someone in from the outside. Who? RACIAL SLUR TIME. Danny's trying to subvert his dad's patriarchal authority. He's WILLFUL and NAUGHTY. Probably a good time to punish him. Jack looks aroused as he explains that Wendy "interferes" in Danny's discipline. Grady gives him some really good parenting advice. "Corrected" his wife and daughters, he did.

Tony starts yelling, "Redrum! Redrum!" (Which is murder backwards, duh.) Wendy in her overall dress thing finds that Danny's gone, it's just Tony. Tony is very polite and calls her Mrs. Torrance, though. Jack hears the check-up radio call from the ranger station. This is a real good development for everyone, I'm sure. Jack just up and takes the radio apart. Dick Halloran is still CONCERNED. Dick, in a sweet orange dress shirt, stripy tie, and olive green corduroy suit is on his way to Colorado on uh airplane now. Jack types and types. I'm sure it's really, good, what he's writing now. Not insane ramblings or anything. Oh, another black guy! He and Dick know each other, of course. The other black guy, who is in all the Rocky movies, apparently, will lend him a snowmobile tank thingy to get up to the hotel. I like glaring Tony Danny. Wendy, don't go talk to "Daddy." BAD IDEA. Tony is watching the Road Runner do shit on TV, which is still working, I guess? I mean, they've got electricity, but who'd think they'd be getting television reception in a snowstorm in the mountains in 1980? I would not think that they would.

Well, this happened.

Wendy wanders off to find Jack while carrying a baseball bat (wooden, not aluminum, clearly a mistake). She sees that he's just typed "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" on the typewriter over and over again. That's a good sign. He's also typed many, many pages of it, in paragraph form. Sometimes in block quotes! Poem form! So many formats! She just keeps paging through the pile for some reason. Jack wants to know how she "like[s] it." He chides her for being in his workspace. Same old sarcastic douche. She's scared. Finally. Tony knows what's up and keeps seeing bloody visions. I bet the role of Jack was super-fun. Menacing/sarcastic/happy/angry. YES. She keeps backing up, clutching the baseball bat as he walks towards her. Apparently he can't comprehend that she might need to leave with Danny and leave him there to fulfill the contract with the hotel. Jack play-grabs at her and calls her "darling." NICE. He says he's going to bash her brains in. He playfully sticks his tongue out and asks for the bat. She hits him a little bit and he falls down the stairs.

Jack wakes up as Wendy drags him to the walk-in freezer. She can't get it open because she's stupid, apparently. Oh, just the storage room. Too bad. She locks him in there right as he figures out what's going on. Now, run far away with that knife you just grabbed. Get your kid and sled down the hill. Better to die in the snow than chopped up by your husband, I say. He begs to be let out. Nobody who's ever said, "Open the door!" should have the door opened to them. He pretends to be hurt/sad. Run away, Wendy! She's crying and telling him her escape plan. Apparently Jack's already fucked up the Snowcat in addition to the radio. PEE BREAK/DRINK REFILL.

Lots of high-pitched peaks in this soundtrack. That big chef's knife's not going to put those spark plugs back into that snow tank thingy, Wendz. Just sled. SRLSY RUN WAY. Sled down the hill, mofucker. Butler Grady comes to visit Jack in the storage room. Grady emasculates him by pointing out he didn't "take care of that business we discussed." Jack wants one more chance to murder his fam. Are there really, like 25 minutes still left in this movie? Grady is letting him out. Dick Halloran approaches the hotel in his snowmotank thing. He's ballin pretty hard. Tony, wearing another sweet sweater chants "Redrum" and plays with Wendy's knife. How is she sleeping? He writes "redrum/murder" on the door and is maybe back to being Danny. Jack is at the apartment door, breaking it with an axe. Wendy runs into the bathroom with Danny and lets him slide down the snow bank out the window. "Wendy, I'm home," Jack announces. In some bizarre turn of events, Wendy is "too big" to get out the tiny window. She tells Danny to run. Jack is pretending to be the Big Bad Wolf now. AWESOME.

Nobody here is working up to their maximum havoc/escape potential.

As Isaac pointed out to me, it's stupid he's just chopping the door, not the lock. What a waste of energy. Here's, "Here's JOHNNY." Wendy slices his hand a bit. NOT ENOUGH. Halloran approaches the hotel. Will it be soon enough? Everybody hears the vehicle arriving. Jack wanders off. Danny is now hiding in a kitchen cabinet in a twist of Jurassic Park-iness. Dick finds the hotel door ajar. Jack is limping, Isaac says from the stairs probz. FORGOT ABOUT THAT. Was that still today? This is a long movie. Jack chops Dick in the chest and Danny screams because he can see it with HIS MIND'S EYE. Danny tries to run away now. Wendy's still wandering around with that fucking knife. Now there's creepy chanting? And a furry with a bare ass is giving a man in a tux a blow job? WHAT. Okay, let's wrap this thing up, people. Jack turns on all the exterior lights to find his son hiding outside. Just try and catch him now, gimpy. Danny, of course, runs through the snow to the hedge maze. PERFECT. Uh-oh, snow = footprints. Wendy is uselessly running around, as usual. She finds Dick's body in the entryway. Now she sees a bloody tuxedoed man. Apparently his furry BJ is over.

Slow snow chase through the maze. Wendy finds a bunch of skeletons and spider webs around a corner. Ew. Danny figures out he should step back through his own footsteps/remove evidence of his path. Now Wendy is by the bloody elevators. Splash! I expect the Kool-Aid Man to burst through any second. How does he feel about murder? "OH, YEAH."

This is happening. Just accept it.

More maze chasing/scariness. Isaac says (of Danny), "That's where all the Big Wheel cardio comes in handy." HA! Danny emerges from the maze to his mother. Stop fucking hugging and get in the snowtank thing and drive away! Jack yells incoherently from the maze. He's still got his axe, so you can't see he isn't focused on the task at hand. I think he's yelling "Wendy" sort of. The Snowcat drives away. He freezes to death with his eyes open in the snow and it's hilarious.

Hilarz.

Some creepiness, some serious suspense, but not scared. Also, now Jack's in some 1921 picture on the hotel wall. HE'S ALWAYS BEEN THERE, JUST LIKE GRADY. Another movie down, kids. Up next: The Exorcist.