THE SHINER

THE SHINING
dir: Stanley Kubrick

MAD #221, March 1981
w: Larry Siegel
a: Angelo Torres

It all begins with Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) taking a job as caretaker at the Overlook Hotel in Colorado in the middle of nowhere while it's closed for the winter. The isolation will help with his writing and do good for his family.

With all the cameos from iconic horror characters, they missed the most obvious one. Norman Bates is right there.

After the owner, Mr. Ullman (Barry Nelson) sees he qualifies, he returns with his wife Wendy (Shelly Duvall) and son Danny (Danny Lloyd). He's not put off by rumors of the hotel being haunted.

McLean Stevenson was used as a punchline when they needed shorthand for unbankable star. He had several TV shows that flopped, including Hello, Larry, spinoff of Diff'rent Strokes, parodied within MAD's parody of that show

In the background you can see a reference to A Clockwork Orange, one of Kubrick's previous films. There are later background gags that mention Barry Lyndon, Dr. Strangelove, and 2001. MAD was always trying to get the objects of their parodies to notice them but as far as I know never got Stanley Kubrick's attention.

Danny talks to his imaginary friend Tony through his finger, which they're assured by a psychologist is nothing to worry about. They're given a tour of the hotel when they arrive by the management before it closes, the management including cook Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers). Dick and Danny turn out to share a psychic link and he's warned not to go into Room 237 (here they call it “Room 238”, in case you don't get the pun). The family is told by management not to worry about caretaker Delbert Grady (Philip Stone) who was a caretaker there that murdered his family years earlier.

The hotel's maze becomes exposition for later in the movie. While riding through the hotel on his tricycle, he gets hints that the hotel is haunted and meets twins from the Grady family. Jack has been mild mannered all along, and it's established earlier that his recovering alcoholism is under control, but his anger starts to break through.

The 'Redrum' graffito, 'murder' spelled backwards, isn't revealed until later, and Danny doesn't see the haunted barroom, but—hey--artistic license.

Jack assures Danny there's nothing to worry about when he's around, though his creepy demeanor is suspect. He says Room 237 isn't really haunted, but when he sees it actually is, lies and tells Danny it's not. Jack goes to the hotel bar, reverts to his alcoholism, and sees ghosts from back when the murders were cmmitted there decades earlier.

”Serutan spelled backwards is Natures” was the slogan of a laxative once.

Jack runs into the spirit of Delbert Grady (literally) which seemingly takes possession of him, passing on the tradition of killing your family with an axe. Trying to find them. Wendy sees what Jack has been writing, which turns out to be hundred of pages that just say “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”. Jack finds his family and chases them while wendy tries to defend herself with a baseball bat. Dick has a premonition something is wrong and flies out to Colorado from his off-season Miami home.

”Marvelous Marv” Thornberry was player for the New York Mets, then the McLean Stevenson of baseball teams.

Jack kills Dick with his axe, then goes back after his family. Danny runs through the previously-exposited maze, and he and Wendy successfully escape him. We don't know what happened after that. Jack freezes to death.

Stephen King never found the movie to be a faithful adaptation, but that didn't stop him from representing it in a letter to MAD.

The German version used the parody for their cover. If they were going to use written text for the toilet paper, the “All work and no play” manuscript would have been a perfect gag, or would that be a spoiler?

This is the cover for the Portuguese edition.

And here's the South American one.

There was another trailer for the movie, but I didn't have it at the top because it didn't show any of the actors or story.

THE SIGNING
Crazy #69, December 1981
w: Paul Kupperberg
a: Steve Smallwood

Here's the Norman Bates reference. Though being a bachelor was an essential part of his character. Here's a John Denver appearance too.

Reference in the third panel to Room 222, TV show about a 'hip' schoolteacher.

Stanley Kubrick is on the wall in the last panel.

Mark Trail was and may still be a newspaper strip that teaches readers about wildlife. The ending refers to 2001: A Space Odyssey, about an astronaut named Dave destroying HAL 9000, an A.I. Computer which has overtaken his spaceship.

The movie's been spoofed many times on The Simpsons, including on one of their halloween specials.
The Simpsons has always done gags that are well-known references and I've talked to younger people that don't know of the actual source material. Ex:“Being forced to watch movies wearing headgear that has clamps that keep your eyes open? You mean like they did on The Simpsons once?” I've mentioned this several times, but I've always wondered whether younger people think “Here's Johnny” was written especially for The Shining and don't know it's a quote from The Tonight Show.