Can't imagine why Kubrick picked Diane Johnson to write this. She butchered one of King's nastiest tales. I understand that Kubrick always collaborates on scripts, so I can only guess who gets blamed for what.
Spoilers: The scariest scene in the book is when Jack goes to the "forbidden" room where Danny may have been attacked. He sees a few drops of water in the tub, smells something like body powder, feels uncomfortable, but concludes there's nothing amiss in the room. On the way out, passing the bathroom door he sees the shower curtain closed; he thought he left it open. Is there a shadow behind the curtain? No Jack, don't let your imagination carry you away. He turns to leave-- and hears the sound of shower curtain rings sliding on the rod. Eeeeeyi!
In the movie, a distorted version that substitutes explicit gruesomeness for the excruciating auditory shock.
Another classic scene in the book is the menacing of Danny by the topiary animals near a playground. Totally left out of the movie. (A made for TV version of The Shining was pretty poor but this scene was included and was very scary).
Another great scene from the book that was left out involved Jack trying to get a Snow Cat running to go for help when Wendy and he realize that real danger exists in the hotel (this is when he's still somewhat sane). It was all interior monologue, so hard to script and film, but an actor of Nicholson's caliber could have done it. In the book, it poignantly expressed the conflicts in Jack that destroyed him and almost destroyed his wife and child.
There quite a few other things about the script that I thought were wrong, while allowing for the necessary compression of a long book into a movie
Kubrick never made a bad movie; his craftsmanship partly compensated for the lousy script, but this could have been so much better.
Spoilers: The scariest scene in the book is when Jack goes to the "forbidden" room where Danny may have been attacked. He sees a few drops of water in the tub, smells something like body powder, feels uncomfortable, but concludes there's nothing amiss in the room. On the way out, passing the bathroom door he sees the shower curtain closed; he thought he left it open. Is there a shadow behind the curtain? No Jack, don't let your imagination carry you away. He turns to leave-- and hears the sound of shower curtain rings sliding on the rod. Eeeeeyi!
In the movie, a distorted version that substitutes explicit gruesomeness for the excruciating auditory shock.
Another classic scene in the book is the menacing of Danny by the topiary animals near a playground. Totally left out of the movie. (A made for TV version of The Shining was pretty poor but this scene was included and was very scary).
Another great scene from the book that was left out involved Jack trying to get a Snow Cat running to go for help when Wendy and he realize that real danger exists in the hotel (this is when he's still somewhat sane). It was all interior monologue, so hard to script and film, but an actor of Nicholson's caliber could have done it. In the book, it poignantly expressed the conflicts in Jack that destroyed him and almost destroyed his wife and child.
There quite a few other things about the script that I thought were wrong, while allowing for the necessary compression of a long book into a movie
Kubrick never made a bad movie; his craftsmanship partly compensated for the lousy script, but this could have been so much better.