10 Insane Conspiracy Theories About Stanley Kubrick

You know how the world occasionally seems to pick a celebrity to project all its insecurities and collective insanity onto? Stanley Kubrick was that guy on steroids. Ever since his death in 1999, conspiracy theorists have been working overtime to implicate the portly genius in all sorts of shady shenanigans. We’ve already told you about the guys who think Kubrick faked the moon landings and hid clues in his film The Shining. Little did we know that was just the tip of the world’s craziest iceberg.

10His Films Are Warnings About A NASA Sex Cult

If you’ve never heard of the Saturn Death Cult, prepare to have your mind blown. A sort of hyper-evil Illuminati crossed with whatever it is David Icke keeps going on about, they’ve infiltrated every organization on Earth to prepare us for the next stage in interstellar evolution—an evolution they intend to bring about by having sex with lots of children. Sound insane? Well get this: Stanley Kubrick supposedly spent his entire life warning us about them.

The theory goes that while faking the moon-landings for NASA, Kubrick became aware of the fiendish, Saturn-worshipping sex cult at the heart of America’s space race. He then set about littering his films with coded warnings alerting us to their existence. 2001: A Space Odyssey was supposed to contain references to the planet Saturn before Warner Bros changed it to Jupiter; Eyes Wide Shut deals with an evil, worldwide sex-cult; AI was originally about the “sort of person” who would want to buy a non-aging, 12-year-old robot boy slave; Lolita warns us about the existence of a child-grooming network.

Sure, that last one was released years before Kubrick allegedly became aware of all this, but why bother with stuff like chronology when we’ve got a salacious cult on our hands?

9The Shining Is About Abandoning The Gold Standard

The film Room 237 recently made waves by exposing a whole host of the crazy conspiracy theories focused around The Shining. But there were a couple of theories too insane even for a documentary about insanity. Our favorite is the theory that the entire film is a secret mockery of Woodrow Wilson for abandoning the gold standard.

Let’s back up and look at the clues. Several of The Shining’s key scenes are set in something called “the Gold Room.” In one such scene, Jack Nicholson tries to buy a drink from the bartender, only to be told his money is no good and it’s “orders from the house.” Colonel Edward Mandell House is the man who convinced Woodrow Wilson to drop the standard and make American money worthless. But wait, how do we know Jack is meant to represent Wilson? Simple: Jack has terrible typing skills and in 1913 the New York Times mocked Wilson for that very same defect.

But the real kicker comes in the film’s final shot. In a photograph dated July 4th, 1921, we see Jack Nicholson surrounded by people waving at the camera. July 4th, 1921 also happens to be exactly two months after Wilson retired, and the guy standing behind Jack in the photo looks just like Wilson (sort of, if you squint). There you have it: final proof that the Shining is really a satire on economics.

82001: A Space Odyssey Proves The Existence Of Aliens

For a film ostensibly about aliens influencing mankind’s development, 2001: A Space Odyssey doesn’t actually have much in the way of space creatures. But that hasn’t stopped some people from seeing it for what it really is. Far from being a seminal sci-fi masterpiece, 2001 is secretly proof of the existence of extra-terrestrials.

This particular theory is an offshoot of the “Kubrick faked the moon landings” one. Starting with the premise that Neil Armstrong was really bouncing around a soundstage somewhere, it asks why a great director might fake one of the most important events in history and comes up with a suitably bizarre answer—aliens beat us to it.

That’s right, the moon landings were really a reconnaissance trip to find evidence of alien tech, hence the need for a fake “public” version. We know Kubrick knew about this because 2001 is chock full of hidden references to alien abductions. The hyper-60s LSD trip taken through the monolith at the end is really a metaphor for people being kidnapped by space aliens, taken from government files which were still top secret at the time. Somehow (while faking the moon landings, no doubt) Kubrick got hold of these files and placed the experiences in 2001 as a “big reveal” for mankind. And we all thought it was just a revolutionary blockbuster.

7His Final Film Was Re-edited By Evil Cultists

When Kubrick died in 1999, he’d only just finished editing his final film. Released after his death, Eyes Wide Shut has gained a reputation as the “unfinished” Kurbrick film, despite its creator hanging on just long enough to oversee the final cut. Or at least he would have, if occult New World Order types in league with Warner Bros hadn’t secretly re-edited it after his death.

Yep: The slightly perplexing/disappointing film we saw at the cinema wasn’t Kubrick’s original cut. In scenes that Warner Bros now refuses to release, the director apparently expounded at some length on the existence of real messed-up cults just like the one in the film. To protect the nefarious leaders of these cults, Warner Bros quietly had the picture re-edited—and now denies this ever happened.

But what sort of crazy cult could wield its power like that? What sort of insane organization would be so precious over a simple movie? We’re glad you asked:

6Eyes Wide Shut Is About Scientology

We’re going to go out on a limb here and guess you’ve heard of Scientology. Hollywood’s biggest “religion” is everything a creepy cult should be: secretive, convicted of international fraud, and seemingly fronted by Tom Cruise. The same Tom Cruise who just happened to be the star of Kubrick’s final film.

Thanks to this Cruise connection, a lot of people are convinced that Eyes Wide Shut is really a thinly-veiled warning about Scientology. Aside from the film featuring a shady society of no-good rich types, there’s the fact that Kubrick himself had a personal interest in the cult—his daughter Vivian vanished into its clutches in 1998 and hasn’t spoken to her family since. Some have even gone so far as to say everything that happens in the film is a metaphor for Kubrick losing his daughter, right up to the apparent kidnapping of Tom Cruise’s daughter at the end of the film.

Unfortunately, the claims don’t stand up to much scrutiny. Vivian didn’t abandon her family until Eyes Wide Shut was already underway, far too late for major rewrites. Even then she was still in contact: Kubrick wanted her to write the score and she only dropped out at the very last second. It’s an interesting little theory, but a theory is definitely all it is.

5Dr. Strangelove Is A Warning About Fluoride

Unlike our intricate breakdown of The Shining up there, the fluoride “conspiracy” of Dr. Strangelove is actually pretty straightforward. About halfway through the film a character sits down and explains to Peter Sellers that fluoridation of water is “the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face.” So when people claim that Kubrick intended the film as a warning against fluoridation they’re just stating the obvious, right?

Not quite. See, the character who gets those lines is General Jack D. Ripper—a man portrayed in no uncertain terms as absolutely insane. He’s obsessed with his own sexual performance, his “precious bodily fluids,” and starts World War III just for the sake of it. In fact, the movie is so clearly mocking the anti-fluoride brigade that it’s spawned a counter-conspiracy theory, which claims Kubrick created the character to stop fluoride opponents from being taken seriously.

4A Clockwork Orange Is About MKUltra

Most of Kubrick’s biggest films were based on novels, and A Clockwork Orange is no exception. However, unlike The Shining or Barry Lyndon, Kubrick made very few changes to Anthony Burgess’ original book. The conspiracy-based reason? He wanted to keep all the references to CIA mind control.

At first glance, this isn’t so insane. We know the CIA’s MKUltra program conducted terrifying drug and mind control experiments in the ’60s and we know Anthony Burgess worked for British Intelligence. But then things get a little wackier. According to one biographer, Burgess witnessed the MKUltra experiments and peppered his novel (which he wrote in just three weeks) with hints about them—clues Kubrick then included in the movie.

So what are these clues? Well, the most-obvious is the use of music, images, and drugs to make the protagonist Alex change his behavior. Then there’s the frequent use of the word “bliss,” allegedly referring to Fort Bliss, where the experiments took place. And that’s before we get to the use of American words in this British book/film, apparently referencing the involvement of the CIA. In fact, it’s even been suggested the CIA helped write the book—though why they’d then stuff it with clues about their own criminal behavior is perhaps something only OJ Simpson could answer.

3The Shining Is About The Mayan Apocalypse

Remember slightly over a year ago when everyone was convinced a certain date in December would spell the end of the world? Turns out the more paranoid among us were in good company. According to at least one conspiracy theory out there, The Shining is encoded with the predicted date of the Mayan apocalypse.

Before we go any further, we should point out that during the ’70s the expected date was 12/24/11—it was only later revised to 12/21/12. This is significant, because the theory hinges on the insane amount of references to the numbers 21 and 42 (12 and 24 backwards) in the film. An exhaustive list, found here, includes stuff like Shelly Duvall swinging her baseball bat 42 times before she finally hits Jack Nicholson, the little kid saying “Red Rum” 42 times in his creepy voice, and Jack Nicholson hitting the door with his axe 12 times. Even the score gets in on the madness, with the word “Dad” in one sequence being followed by 12 F notes and a later melody of 24.

In short, it’s the sort of stuff that’ll make your brain hurt. There’s even an analysis of how the cast share 21 double letters in their names, suggesting Kubrick was either so passionate about the apocalypse that he cast people based on the number of letters in their names, or that this theory is the pinnacle of OCD bunkum.

2Kubrick Worked For The Illuminati

As we mentioned earlier, the creepy/occult thing Eyes Wide Shut has going on means all sorts of conspiracy theorists are attracted to it. The general thinking goes that Kubrick was trying to get a message out to the world about what’s really going on. But what if the reverse is true? What if Eyes Wide Shut is secretly a pro-Illuminati propaganda film created by a perverted occultist?

The people behind this theory assert that Eyes Wide Shut is part of a PsyOps campaign to make the Illuminati look so cuddly we won’t fear them. Apparently, Kubrick does this by “whitewashing” their rituals to look more like an edgy party than a cult and glossing over instances of pedophilia so we won’t judge them too harshly. The authors even claim that Eyes Wide Shut was made deliberately boring in order to hypnotize us and make us accept these subliminal cues. It’s a conspiracy about a conspiracy about a film that is about a conspiracy—in other words, it’s really confusing.

1He Was Assassinated By [Insert Evil Group]

NASA sex cults, the Illuminati, the CIA, water fluoridation experts, the descendants of Woodrow Wilson…if the above list is true, then Kubrick had more enemies than most of us have Facebook friends. And he may have paid the ultimate price for this, because nearly every Kubrick conspiracy agrees on one thing—he was murdered.

The most famous version has it that he used Eyes Wide Shut to rat on the Illuminati, who retaliated by having him killed on 7th March, 1999—666 days before 1st January, 2001—as a gruesome nod to his most famous film. But others have linked his death to the CIA, George Bush, arms deals, and even Sonny Bono. The motives and means keep changing, but one thing they all agree on is that Kubrick’s death was not the result of being overweight and over 70, but of his brave meddling with sinister societies. If only he’d lived a bit longer, we could all now be hearing about how he helped fake the Curiosity Rover’s Mars pictures.