Editorials
Happy 64th Birthday to Clive Barker!
Today marks the 64th birthday of English author/director/artist Clive Barker, a man who probably doesn’t need any introduction to the horror community. But just in case, he’s the man who created perhaps the most evil and dangerous puzzle box in Hellraiser, who mixed noir and horror in the criminally under-appreciated Lord of Illusions, who shaped my early nightmares with “The Thief of Always“, whose game Undying is still to this day one of the most eerie interactive experiences I’ve ever gone through.
You see, Barker is not a traditional horror creator. Rather, he has this wonderful fascination with magic, mysticism, the supernatural, and all things related, finding a way to blend them all into grand, almost epic tales. His stories don’t put only our world in a state of peril, they risk other worlds as well. No plane of existence is safe from Barker’s pen or brush, from “The Kingdom of The Cuckoo” in “Weaveworld” to Mr. Hood’s time warping realm in “The Thief of Always” to Pandemonium, the capital city of Hell, in “The Scarlet Gospels”. It is because of Barker’s seemingly limitless imagination that his works feel vast and limitless, the possibilities of where his stories might go endless and, therefore, always exciting and unpredictable.
As I’ve mentioned in the past, my first encounter with Clive Barker was with his children’s book “The Thief of Always”, which I saved up my lunch money to buy a copy of. A few years later, I got my hands on his game Undying, which only further sealed the deal of my interest in his works. As the years passed, I found myself watching his films, reading more of his novels and venturing into his short stories, and ogling his artwork. His oddities were as fascinating to me as many find the works of David Lynch, David Cronenberg, and Tim Burton. He found ways to marry beauty and horror in unique approaches, which is why he is one of the most recognized horror authors and ranks up there with King, Koontz, and similar contemporary names.
Although he hasn’t gotten behind the camera too many times, Barker’s three studio films that he did direct are each classics in their own right. Obviously we all know Hellraiser and the impact the ensuing franchise has had. Doug Bradley’s performance as Pinhead is so iconic that fans can’t imagine him played by anyone else. Nightbreed has become a cult sensation, one that perfectly exemplifies the imagination and scope that I spoke of earlier. It also turns horror conventions on its head, making the monsters the heroes and humans the villains. However, there is always that shade of gray in the middle, where nothing is falls under simple categorizations. And in Lord of Illusions, Barker took the world of illusionists and magicians and wove a haunting story behind their mystery. Scott Bakula’s portrayal of Harry D’Amour is one of my favorites in the horror genre and Daniel von Bargen brought charisma and foreboding, demonic strength to Nix.
With 16 novels, dozens of short stories, wonderful collections of art and a few video game titles under his belt, Barker is a horror auteur who paves the way with his works. We wish him a very happy birthday and are always excited to see what comes next from him!
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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