The Shining in full glory for Halloween

YOU know the scenario. It's Halloween, you are visiting Liverpool and you are looking for a proper fright. 

Hmmm. You could book a night at the Adelphi, but you haven't got over £100. 

What's just as good for under a tenner that evening? How about a special screening of hotel horror flick The Shining, at FACT for one night only? All together now: Just book, will yer.

Martin Scorsese, after all, did describe it as "essentially unclassifiable and profoundly disturbing." The Shining, that is. 

And this is very special: a rare opportunity to see the complete 144-minute US version of the movie on the big screen, including a number of deleted scenes and an unexpected coda. It's part of a season of Halloween horrors at FACT (details below) including a documentary about the making of the film, Room 237, so named after the suite you'd be best steering clear of. 

Play it cool Johnny

A few weeks after The Shining's original US release, in 1980, director Stanley "Knife" Kubrick cut several minutes from the ending of the chiller. He then axed a further half-hour from the film for its UK/European release. So The the director's cut is now un-cut.

Based on the novel by Stephen King (sequel coming next year, folks), Kubrick's superb essay on fluorescent-lit horror, with its combination of bleak comedy, creepy atmosphere and sumptuously horrible visuals, was an instant genre classic. 

Room 237You know how it goes: struggling author Jack (Nicholson) is installed as winter caretaker in an empty, snowbound hotel in the company of his wife Wendy (Shelly Duvall) and spookily gifted son Danny. But the hotel has a grim history, and as its dark soul begins to possess Jack, Danny too becomes enmeshed in its terrors. 

It's the hotel that nobody on Trip Advisor recommends. Oh wait.

*The Shining (15) Wednesday 31 October, 8.30pm, Picturehouse at FACT, Wood Street. L1. Tickets are available from www.picturehouses.co.uk, on 0871 902 5737, or from the box office.