10 Horror Movie Endings You Can No Longer See
6. The Hospital Epilogue - The Shining
The case of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is a unique and fascinating one, given that a relatively large number of people actually saw the film's elusive original ending.
Kubrick's initial theatrical cut of the horror classic included an epilogue set at the hospital, where Wendy Torrance (Shelley Duvall) learns that her psychopathic husband Jack's (Jack Nicholson) frozen body hasn't been found, and there aren't any signs at the Overlook Hotel to corroborate her story.
Their son Danny (Danny Lloyd) is then given a yellow tennis ball, implied to be the same one that Jack was throwing around the hotel.
This ending was included in the movie's premiere and the first week of its theatrical run in Los Angeles and New York, before Kubrick decided he wanted to cut it, resulting in he and Warner Bros. instructing projectionists to manually splice the scene out and send it back to the studio.
Those few who saw the scene back in 1980 have generally opined that the film is better without it, which provides unnecessary explanation and robs the movie of its otherwise punchy ending.
Even so, fans would certainly love to see it for themselves, yet it's believed that Kubrick ultimately had all versions of the scene destroyed, with only a few scattered black-and-white photographs remaining.