DENVER — Director Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 take on Stephen King’s “The Shining,” which was inspired by King’s creepy stay at Estes Park’s Stanley Hotel, contains a scene so disturbing that its mere mention sends fans into paroxysms of terror.
That would be the bathroom scene, in which lead character Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) enters the fictional Overlook Hotel’s accursed Room 237 — and, more specifically, its color-saturated, mid-century modern bathroom. There he finds a silent, naked woman in a bathtub, who emerges dripping to embrace our hypnotized Torrance.
You won’t be shocked to hear it doesn’t end well. But it does imprint itself permanently on the gray matter, which is why Denver’s MOA Architecture relished the opportunity to re-create the set in screen-accurate detail. Now guests of the hotel’s “Shining”-related tours can step into that bathroom for themselves.
