10 Ridiculous Secrets Behind Iconic Movie Scenes

8. The Door Is Real Because Jack Nicholson Kept Breaking The Prop Doors Too Fast - The Shining

There's no scene more iconic in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining than the chilling sequence where a murderous Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) hacks a door to pieces with an axe in an attempt to slaughter his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and son Danny (Danny Lloyd).

But getting the "Here's Johnny!" scene right saw Nicholson smash his way through a reported 60 doors over the course of three days, and funnily enough, this wasn't really a result of Kubrick's well-noted obsessive perfectionism.

Rather, due to Nicholson having been a volunteer firefighter in his younger days, he had some experience with breaking down a door or two, and made short work of the thinner prop doors supplied for the production.

Kubrick felt that this implied Jack had superhuman strength, and so instructed the prop department to bring him some real doors, which ultimately produced the more realistic, laboured result in the final scene.