A memory of a tour de force.

I suspect many might agree that the scariest film ever made is Kubrick’s ‘The Shining’ with a manic Jack Nicholson generally waging mayhem in an off-season holiday hotel.

For fans of Diane Arbus’s work there’s an image of the two little girls side by side, just like in her photograph. Right before the room fills with blood, that is.

The opening scene, where the camera seems to go off a cliff while the car it’s following proceeds straight on, is one of the first uses of the Steadicam in motion pictures. Right at the beginning, it will have you gripping your seat for the next 2 hours. I saw ‘The Shining’ in 1980 when it came out and am still too scared to risk it again. But the many images in the movie have stuck in my unconscious, not least the child on the tricycle mouthing “Redrum, redrum”. Check it in the mirror ….

Well, I still have Redrum Moments of flashback to the movie and the latest happened the other day in late sun.

5D, 24-105mm at 73mm, 1/180, f/16, ISO 400

Quite what this bizarrely colored VeeDub was doing in someone’s garden beats me, but you cannot beat the scary contrast of colors, pretty much unretouched. And that open door does little to calm the tension.