Where Was The Shining Filmed? Every Major Location Explained

By the time Stanley Kubrick came to make "The Shining" in the late '70s, he was firmly ensconced in England. The Bronx native had moved to Britain in the early '60s to shoot "Lolita" at the famed Elstree studios. After that, he stayed. Not only did he stay, but in order to make all the cinematic classics for which we now know him, he made everyone else come to him. Before he designed the industrial nightmare Gotham for Tim Burton's "Batman," for example, production designer Anton Furst was tasked with creating Vietnam in North London for Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket." This continued right up until the director's final film, "Eyes Wide Shut," which took Kubrick's exhausting methods to new extremes by requiring entire New York City blocks to be recreated on the backlot of England's Pinewood Studios — all because Kubrick refused to actually shoot on location.

Prior to "Eyes Wide Shut," those exhausting methods were arguably most prevalent on the set of 1980's "The Shining," the bulk of which was shot — you guessed it — in England, even though it's set in Colorado. At the time Kubrick's Stephen King adaptation began shooting, the filmmaker had moved to the now famous Childwickbury Manor in Hertfordshire, from where he commuted to set every day. But that's not the full story, as the movie did include footage that was actually shot in the United States — just not a whole lot of it.

How, then, did Kubrick manage to shoot an entire movie about a Colorado hotel almost exclusively in the United Kingdom?

Back when Stanley Kubrick moved to Britain to for "Lolita," he shot the majority of the film at Elstree Studios, close to his new home of Abbots Mead just south of the studio complex. Though he'd moved to Childwickbury Manor by the time he started production on "The Shining," he returned to the same studio for his 1980 horror adaptation, constructing the famous Overlook Hotel interiors at Elstree Studios on Shenley Road, Borehamwood.

Filming began in May 1978 and finished in July 1979, at the very studio where "Star Wars" had been shot the year prior and the "Indiana Jones" movies would shoot in years to come. Kubrick basically used every inch of Elstree, too, erecting sets across four stages and ensuring that the entirety of the Overlook's interior was available to shoot whenever he wanted. The giant exterior maze, in which Danny (Danny Lloyd) tries to escape from his deranged father during the film's climax, was actually built inside on stage 1, with production using two feet of dendritic dairy salt and Styrofoam to create the snow. Other parts of the maze were filmed on a backlot at Elstree.

The rest of the soundstages hosted equally impressive sets, too, with the main lounge of the Overlook Hotel being perhaps the most memorable. Its large windows, which appeared to look out into the Colorado Rockies, were actually facing an 80 by 30-foot diffusion backing with 860 1000-watt lamps providing the stark lighting effects. As cinematographer John Alcott told American Cinematographer, the extreme heat given off by such a grandiose lighting display meant "you just couldn't walk from one end to the other between the lights and the backing. You just couldn't make it."

The Overlook interiors were the largest set ever built at Elstree at that time, alongside some other interior locations that included the Torrance's apartment, Dick Halloran's Miami home, and the ranger station. The studio was also used for several exterior shots, such as the back of the Overlook during the Torrances' tour of the grounds and shots of the characters running outside.

Lamentably, these impressive sets were almost destroyed altogether when a fire broke out on the lounge set. As still photographer Murray Close told fan site The Overlook Hotel, "We had a very big fire [...] in one of the sound stages. It was the stage that had the set of the Overlook Hotel with the lounge set where Jack typed and he chased Shelley Duvall around with a baseball bat. It was a huge fire in there one day. Massive fire." According to Close, the cause of the blaze was never determined, though perhaps the massive, scorching hot lighting rig had something to do with it? The photographer recalled the fire burning down two sound stages and threatening a third, which resulted in a cost of $2.5 million and a three-week delay. Not that "The Shining" is typically thought of as a horror movie that was cursed in real life, but that's a heck of a bad omen.

Stanley Kubrick might have refused to get on a plane to shoot "The Shining" but that didn't mean he couldn't send other people to get the exterior shots he needed. While the vast majority of the film was shot at Elstree studios, Kubrick still needed a suitably impressive establishing shot of the Overlook Hotel, so he sent a second unit directed by Jan Harlan, brother of Kubrick's wife Christiane, to get it.

While the interiors of the Overlook Hotel were based on the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite, Kubrick chose not to use that particular location for the exteriors. For that, Harlan travelled to Oregon, where the Timberline Lodge in Mount Hood provided the ideal look. The ski resort sits at 6,000 feet on the south slope of Mt. Hood and is still in operation today — yes, you can buy "The Shining" merch in the gift shop.

According to the hotel's official site, Kubrick was asked not to use Room 217 to depict the grim events featured in Stephen King's novel, as the Timberline proprietors felt that no guest would ever want to stay in that room again. As a result, the director used Room 237 instead — a room that doesn't exist at Timberline — only for guests to frequently request Room 217 anyway.

While Kubrick found Timberline to have the perfect exterior, King himself was actually inspired by the real Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado — which has its own haunted history. Kubrick, however, seemed entirely uninterested in that real world location, and was much more focused on recreating the mood of another hotel horror story.

Aside from travelling to Oregon to shoot the Timberline Lodge's exterior, "The Shining" production team needed to film the opening sequence of the film in which a car carrying Jack Nicholson's Jack Torrance travels along remote mountain roads on its way to interview for the job as the caretaker of the Overlook. The now famous sequence is made up of several aerial shots that ominously track the journey. To create these opening shots, camera operator Jeff Blyth and the team used the Going-to-the-Sun Road in Montana's Glacier National Park, which covers 50 miles and is the only road that traverses the park. Wild Goose Island and the north shore of Saint Mary Lake can be seen in the resulting footage.

Blyth wrote about his experience on the shoot, revealing that he and the crew had been told they could "do anything we wanted" and that the only dictate from Kubrick was that the Jack had to drive a yellow VW with Colorado licence plates. Blyth boarded a helicopter and directed the pilot as they followed the car, watching the results on a small black and white monitor.

The same footage shot by Blyth actually wound up being used for one of multiple endings to 1982's "Blade Runner" when Warner Bros. decided a more upbeat ending was needed for Ridley Scott's seminal sci-fi noir and rooted around in the vaults to find it. The shots of the Going-to-the-Sun road were also used for the "Shining" sequel adaptation, "Doctor Sleep," to depict Danny Torrance's return to the Overlook Hotel.