10 Horror Characters You Really Wanted To Live (But Knew They Were Doomed)

Blah blah, The Shining is a masterpiece of cinema and of horror, terrifies audiences to this day, that bit with the bearman is weird as hell, blah blah.

Got it? Good.

Yet for a film that is so very frightening, there are only a few deaths in this film. In fact, only two occur on screen. Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) can go freeze his arse some more, but Dick Hallorann is the other unfortunate victim of The Overlook Hotel.

Dick (Scatman Crothers) is the only friend that Danny Torrance (Danny Lloyd) has, acting as a mentor for Danny's blossoming supernatural abilities. Hallorann knows something’s not quite right about the hotel, but he hasn’t got a clue what horrors lie in those twisting corridors.

Still, Dick bravely ventures back into the Overlook, and the viewer knows this won’t end well for him. Jack is in full murderous rampage mode by now, and even with his psychic abilities, Dick doesn’t stand a chance.

Book fans didn’t even have a leg up here, as Hallorann survived in the source material! But unfortunately, the character’s death is thought to have helped kickstart the far too common trope of Black characters being killed first in horror films, which viewers have become desensitised to.

An unfair and grim demise, but one that viewers saw coming as Dick himself warned Danny how dangerous the hotel is to people who 'shine'. The clues were all there, we just didn’t want to believe them.