Stephen King has thrown fresh criticism at Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of his novel The Shining. The US author, who famously dislikes the classic horror film, once described the 1980 release as “a big, beautiful Cadillac with no engine inside it” branding the director’s version of Wendy – played by Shelley Duvall opposite Jack Nicholson’s Jack Torrance – “one of the most misogynistic characters ever put on film.
While King remains a fan of Kubrick himself (he has deemed him “a terrifically smart guy” behind “some of the movies that mean a lot to me”), he has reignited his disdain for The Shining in the pages of his new novel, The Outsider. It is noted in this new book how a character is watching Kubrick’s 1957 war film Paths of Glory because it’s “better than The Shining.”