"The Shining" and "Friday the 13th"

Today's episode of Sounds of Cinema examined a pair of horror films released just weeks apart in the spring on 1980: The Shining and Friday the 13th.

The Shining represents the last gasp of a certain kind of horror film that hasn’t really been seen since. In the 1960s, under directors like Alfred Hitchcock, the horror film was considered a fairly respectable genre and throughout the 1970s Hollywood studios had financed high profile, star driven horror pictures like The Exorcist, The Omen, and Jaws. After The Shining, the genre gave way to the low budget thrills of Friday the 13th and its imitators. The Shining is paced less like a rollercoaster ride and more like a psychological study of madness and as a result, the film is stylistically anachronistic even for 1980 when the film was released.

The Shining was not well received upon its release. Critics considered it inferior to Kubrick’s accomplishments on films like Spartacus, 2001: A Space Odyssey, or Dr. Strangelove. This may have been unavoidable due to the fact that it is a horror film, placing it a genre that critics are loath to admire, and the impenetrable nature of the mystery and Kubrick’s intellectual style were off-putting. Variety wrote, “The crazier Nicholson gets, the more idiotic he looks. Shelley Duvall transforms the warm sympathetic wife of the book into a simpering, semi-retarded hysteric.” Fans of the Stephen King novel were upset by Kubrick’s abandonment of the book and King himself later confessed a great disappointment with the film. King later produced a made-for-TV remake of The Shining that aired in 1997.

The Shining was nominated for Razzie Awards for worst actress and worst director for films of 1980. Yet, the film has survived and even thrived. Filmmakers like Steven Spielberg, Sydney Pollack, and William Friedkin have praised the film and it has become a popular film for scholars to analyze. In 2001, The Shining was ranked 29th on AFI's '100 Years...100 Thrills' list and the character Jack Torrance was named one of the greatest villains on the AFI's '100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains' list.

Viewing The Shining three decades after its original release, the film is still harrowing viewing. Whatever the faults of the film, and it certainly does have its shortcomings, The Shining is an excellent example of the use of visuals and sound and at its best the film manages to put a face on evil that is as interesting as it is frightening.

Like The Shining, Friday the 13th was received negatively by critics upon its release but unlike The Shining its reputation with critics has never recovered. At the time of its release, Friday the 13th was protested by critics such as Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel who used their syndicated television program to attack the film makers for creating it, Paramount for distributing it, and recognizable actress Betsy Palmer for participating in it. Friday the 13th and its contemporaries and imitators were also a target of feminists who saw slasher films as misogynist and by social conservatives who objected to the sex and violence of the films. Releasing Friday the 13th was also a controversial decision among stockholders and executives at Paramount who were not proud of the film and saw it as tarnishing the history of a studio that had put out classics like The Godfather.

Friday the 13th was a trend setter, as it inspired a wave a slasher films made by independents and distributed by major studios. And this new business model had major repercussions. To compare, The Shining cost $19 million but made $44 million in its domestic theatrical run. The original Friday the 13th cost about 500 thousand dollars to make but made $5 million in its opening weekend and grossed $40 million in its theatrical run. The cost-to-profit ratio alone made slashers good business sense and they dominated both the horror genre and American film at large for the decade. This business model would pay off a decade later as independent films like Reservoir Dogs and Clerks were found major distribution deals.

Although the aggressive marketing campaigns that accompanied the theatrical releases of Friday the 13th deserve a lot of the credit for their box office success, the continued popularity of these slasher films has been largely fan driven. Friday the 13th has thrived in ways that The Shining never could primarily because of a devoted fan base. Like fans of Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings, the fans of Friday the 13th have responded to this series, despite its faults, and invested time and energy into coordinating conventions and maintaining websites. And in their efforts the fans have ensured that this little film will be remembered for decades to come.