Jack Nicholson's 'Here's Johnny!' Axe Goes Up for Auction

The axe Jack Nicholson swung through a locked door in the 1980 horror classic The Shining goes on sale with a list price of £30,000 to £50,000, as part of an auction of the late director Stanley Kubrick's personal archive.

The weapon carries one of cinema's most quoted moments. Nicholson's character, Jack Torrance, uses the axe to hack an opening in a door protecting his terrified wife, Wendy, played by Shelley Duvall, as he delivers the chillingly manic line: "Here's Johnny!"

The same axe also served as the murder weapon in the killing of Dick Hallorann, the character played by Scatman Crothers.

What is in the Kubrick auction?

The axe is one of hundreds of items to be sold as part of the influential late director's personal archive, according to details of the upcoming sale.

The sale places a tangible price on one of the most recognisable props in film history. Few horror images are as widely reproduced as Torrance's grinning face framed by the splintered gap he has just cut through the door of the Overlook Hotel's living quarters.

Why does this axe matter?

The prop sits at the intersection of two legacies: Kubrick's, as one of the most scrutinised directors of the 20th century, and Nicholson's, whose performance in The Shining remains a defining screen portrait of cinematic menace.

For collectors, the object's provenance is unusually precise. It is not a generic background prop but the specific weapon used in two of the film's pivotal scenes — the door-breaking sequence and Hallorann's murder.

The £30,000 to £50,000 estimate positions the axe as a serious lot rather than a novelty. Prop weapons from landmark films have long commanded premium prices, and few props from the horror canon carry a single spoken line as famous as the one delivered over this blade.

The auction of Kubrick's personal archive suggests that material from the director's estate continues to surface on the market, decades after his death. Buyers will be weighing not just the object itself but its place within the production history of a film that scholars and fans still dissect frame by frame.

Whoever wins the lot will own the tool of Torrance's rampage — and, with it, one of the most unsettling artefacts Hollywood has ever put up for sale.