The axe from 'The Shining' sells for £170,000 at auction

Jack Nicholson's trusty axe from The Shining, perhaps the most famous axe in movie history, has sold at auction for £170,000, nearly four times the amount it was estimated to fetch.

The iconic tool became involved in a bidding war at the Entertainment Memorabilia Live Auction, held at the BFI in London yesterday, and was expected to haul in between £40,000 and £60,000.

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Nicholson's deranged Jack Torrance menaces a terrified Shelley Duvall with the ‘fire axe’ in the final scenes of Stanley Kubrick's benchmark psychological horror.

And though he puts it through a door, in one of the film's most famous scenes, the lot was said to be in 'excellent condition'.

Strangely, it wasn't the only movie axe going under the hammer – Jason Vorhees' trusty chopper was also being auctioned from the 2009 reboot of Friday The 13th, with a guide price of £3000 to £5000.

The axes were among 900 lots to go up for sale in the annual auction, among them a range of replica guns from the Bond movies, one of the model sharks from Jaws, Vito Corleone's pea coat from The Godfather: Part II, and Russell Crowe's armour from Gladiator.

There was also an original Stormtrooper helmet from the first Star Wars movie, and the Batsuit worn by Michael Keaton in 1989's Batman.