Stanley Kubrick’s classic, The Shining, has been remade in a 5 minute short called The Chickening.
The title is pretty self-explanatory — they’ve reinvented the film to make it completely poultry themed. It’s hard to explain but to give you an idea, at last year’s Fantastic Fest it was named “the most bonkers fan edit of all time”.
While it still contains all of the classic bits, like the bathroom scene and “Here’s Johnny”, makers Nick DenBoer and Davy Force take all the scariness out of the film and just make it this surreal, kid’s animation.
Here’s the Synopsis:
Jack Torrance takes a new job as senior chief night manager for “Charbay’s Chicken World” –a state-of-the-art, volcano-fried, fast-food poultry production facility and resort strategically built on an active volcano. Jack travels to the remote facility with his wife, Wendy, and 42-year-old man-child son, Danny.
During orientation, Mansturd Nurlman (regional manager of Charbay’s) mentions a new experimental product that is currently under development: “The Shiny” – a brand new BBQ sauce created in the research laboratory deep within the radioactive volcano. Strange things start happening to Jack after he tries the sauce, and he slowly begins morphing into a chicken creature and becomes unstable and aggressive.
Scatmok (a hyperdimensional alien) conspires with Danny and his little friend Tony (a snarky Italian man who happens to be Danny’s index finger) to steal the recipe for “The Shiny” but their plan is compromised when they realize the horrific side effects of the experimental BBQ sauce. Danny and Scatmok decide they must destroy the BBQ sauce pipeline in order to stop the spread of this condition that has mutated Danny’s father.
Meanwhile, Jack has learned some of the restaurant’s darkest secrets from some of the other employees, including a potential cure for his condition. In the end, the restaurant is destroyed in a spectacular exploding BBQ sauce conflagration, with Wendy, Danny, Tony, Scatmok and a now-cured but frozen-solid Jack, who grumpily curses his former employers as they drive off in the Beak-Machine into the sunset.
Still not getting it? Just give it a watch yourself:
Pretty weird but also really clever. I like how Tony is an actual face on the end of Danny’s finger.
Apparently the two guys made it as a proof concept to pitch around studios, namely Warner Bros, in an aim to create a series where every episode is a different remixed classic film. There’s no confirmation whether they actually did this or not but I can’t imagine that Warner Bros would quite be the appropriate candidate — I’m sure somewhere like Adult Swim would be a much more suited target audience.
If you’re a bit of a Shining fan then you should check out this rare footage of Jack Nicholson getting into character for the famous axe scene.
