8 Classic Movies That Were Released Unfinished

7. The Shining

The end of The Shining is as confusing as it is haunting. Jack Torrence freezes to death after being trapped in the Overlook Hotel's maze by his quick-thinking son, then we cut to a slow zooms in on a photo of the July 4th Ball from 1921 with Jack himself front-and-centre. What? Has Jack's soul been taken by the hotel? Is it a comment on inevitability and fate? Did Kubrick even know what it meant? It's so enigmatic that WhatCulture's dissection of the final shot is still one of our most regularly-visited articles.

But that wasn't the original ending. The version of Stanley Kubrick's horror masterpiece/Stephen King bastardisation that was first released had another scene before the zoom where hotel manager Ullman visits Danny and Wendy in hospital as they recover from their ordeal, telling them Jack's body was never found and giving Danny a tennis ball identical to the one that led him in Room 237 and started (continued?) all the madness.

Which Version Is Better? We can't say as, in a highly-Kubrickian move, Kubrick had the scene physically removed from all copies of the film because test audiences were too confused - it was one weird turn too ready that destroyed much of the final shot's subtlety. That's right - Stanley Kubrick, that beacon of auteur theory, bowed to a test screening. All that remains of it now is a couple of stills (although I still hold out hope someone will find a copy in their attic one day).