Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining has many memorable scenes, but the one that stands out the most is the elevator scene – and here’s how it was shot. Stephen King has rightfully earned the title of the “King of Horror” thanks to his many novels and short stories from this genre, and they have become so popular that many of them have been adapted to other media. Among the most notable adaptations of King’s works is Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, based on the 1977 novel of the same name.
The Shining tells the story of Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), a struggling writer and recovering alcoholic who takes a job as the off-season caretaker of the Overlook Hotel in the Colorado Rockies. As his relationship with his family is fractured, Jack decides to take his wife, Wendy (Shelley Duvall), and their son, Danny (Danny Lloyd), with him, in hopes to rebuild their relationship and reconnect. Jack also hopes to find the motivation he needs to finish writing a play, but when a snowstorm leaves the Torrances cut off from the outside world, and along with Danny’s mysterious psychic abilities, the supernatural forces inhabiting the Overlook Hotel awaken and mess with Jack’s sanity, putting Wendy, Danny, and the hotel itself in danger.
Although Kubrick made a lot of changes to King’s novel and King himself has expressed his dislike towards it on many occasions, The Shining is considered one of the greatest horror movies ever and one of the best movies of all time, and it has some of the most famous scenes in film history. One of those is the elevator scene, where a river of blood rushes down the halls of the Overlook Hotel through the cracks of the elevator doors as Wendy stares in horror. Unsurprisingly, this scene was as nightmarish to shot as it is to watch, and it required a lot of preparation, including getting the color and consistency of the blood right, and it was so exhausting that Kubrick wasn’t even on the set when the scene was shot.
Why The Shining’s Elevator Scene Was So Difficult To Film
Stanley Kubrick’s longtime assistant Leon Vitali spoke to Yahoo! in 2018 about how The Shining’s elevator scene was shot and the whole process the production crew went through to get it right. Vitali explained that they spent weeks working on getting the quality, color, and consistency of the blood right as they needed it to be as natural as possible, and they needed hundreds of gallons of it. The mechanics of it weren’t easy either, as too much pressure inside an elevator can be risky, so on the day of the shoot, the production crew topped off the elevator compartment and set up four cameras with different lenses and film speeds, and Vitali shared that the camera operators climbed inside oversized wooden chests to avoid all the blood. The crew of The Shining was working against the clock when filming the elevator scene, as the elevator couldn’t hold all that fake blood for long, and Vitali recalls that it started leaking before the doors could open.
Luckily, the scene turned out as planned, and the wave of fake blood even carried some of the furniture with it, giving the scene an even more chaotic look. Vitali added that seeing all that blood rushing through the hall in person was as shocking as in the movie, and the crew even thought they would drown. The elevator scene in The Shining ended up becoming Kubrick’s favorite, and Warner Bros. even used that scene as one of the trailers for the movie. Stanley Kubrick is remembered for being a perfectionist and pushing boundaries while filming, and The Shining was no exception, even if he couldn’t bring himself to be on set and watch how the scene was made.