Underwood, Tim

(1952– )

   Horror fans Tim Underwood and Chuck Miller collected STEPHEN KING interview materials from 1979 to 1987 that occasionally touch upon his collaboration with STANLEY KUBRICK on THE SHINING in their book, Bare Bones: Conversations on Terror with Stephen King, published by McGraw-Hill in 1988. King is asked “Why did Kubrick acquire The Shining?” and gives an account that may or may not be true. Elsewhere King compared Kubrick’s “beautiful film” to a “great big gorgeous car with no engine in it,” and claims that “nothing in the movie is really scary. ” King was “deeply disappointed in the end result,” though he does admit in an earlier interview that “parts of the film are chilling, charged with a relentlessly claustrophobic terror. ” King believes that JACK NICHOLSON, “though a fine actor, was all wrong for the part. ” If Jack Torrance “is nuts to begin with, then the entire tragedy of his downfall is wasted. ” Kubrick’s adaptation is “a film by a man who thinks too much and feels too little. ” Responses to Kubrick’s film are scattered throughout the book but rather difficult to locate, since the book lacks an index.

   J. M. W.