Graveyard Shift (1990)

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Graveyard Shift is one of the weakest Stephen King Adaptations but is still an entertaining Horror film that is filled with atmospheric direction,a good cast,an intense score and memorable special make-up effects. All of those make Graveyard Shift a memorable guilty pleasure.Based on Stephen King's short story and set in Maine,Graveyard Shift tells the story of a drifter named John Hall(David Andrews)who's just arrived in Maine looking for a fresh start and a job. John eventually finds a job at a textile mill working for Warwick(Stephen Macht),the mill's sadistic boss and working from 11:00 p.m to 7:00 a.m--the Graveyard Shift. But,at the Mill the place is infested with Rats and John and his co-workers are being stalked by a huge killer bat. Now,John and his co-workers have to worry about getting a good paycheck and survival.Stephen King despite being one of the greatest and most iconic bestselling Authors of all-time the film adaptations of his work have been a mix bag because the truth is for every great and strong Stephen King adaptations like Stanley Kubrick's The Shining(1980),Frank Darabont's The Shawshank Redemption(1994),and Brian De Palma's Carrie there is always a weak adaptation like Graveyard Shift. Even though it's not one of the best Stephen King films I always watch the movie when it's on television because there are some good things about it and it's entertaining and memorable. One of the things that I like about Graveyard Shift is the film's atmosphere which is dark and mysterious giving the movie a sense of doom and dread giving you the feeling that nothing is going to be alright in the end. Where most Horror films made now are pretty and glossy,GS is neither pretty or glossy,but ugly and dirty being true to the working class feel that the main characters represent. The heat and sweat also play a big part in GS because with the heat and sweat you feel like you are with the characters working with them and getting dirty in the textile mill and the heat just comes off the screen when you watch it. The killer bat(or rat bat)is good villain for film because what makes the bat so effective is that we the viewers only catch glimpses of the creature whether it's the bat's eyes,wings or mouth and we never see the Bat in it's full form until the very end which makes the creature in the film more effective. The blood and gore in Graveyard Shift is disgusting and not for the weak at heart,but will satisfy Horror fans and gore hounds. While there are things I like about the movie there is also problems with the film. GS has a great atmosphere but lacks the scares and suspense to back it up because with a movie like this GS should be a scary and creepy but the scares never come. Being that Graveyard Shift was based on a 15-page short story and the running time is 89 minutes GS feels too short and seems like there should have been much more in the film. And at the same time GS feels too long giving the film a few scenes there are necessary and some scenes that are unnecessary. At times GS almost seems like if they cut 30 or 40 minutes out of the film that it would've been better if were apart of Anthology films like George A. Romero's Creepshow and Twilight Zone:The Movie rather than it's own film. While some of the main characters like John Hall,Warwick,Tucker Cleveland(Brad Dourif)and Jane(Kelly Wolf)are interesting the rest of the main characters are thinning written and forgettable to the point where you don't care about what happens to them. The final 30 minutes of Graveyard Shift are wonderful and is filled with non-stop thrills and moments of blood and gore. A fantastic conclusion.The whole cast does great jobs in their roles. David Andrews is wonderful as John Hall,with Andrews bringing intensity and depth to the role. Kelly Wolf is terrific as Jane,a female co-worker of Hall. Stephen Macht is excellent and over the top as Warrick,with Macht doing a great Maine accent. Brad Dourif is brilliant and at his best as Tucker Cleveland,an exterminator of rats. Andrew Divoff(Danson),Vic Polizos(Brogan),Robert Alan Beuth(Ippeston),Ilona Margolis(Nordello),Jimmy Woodard(Carmichael),Jonathan Emerson(Jason Reed),Minor Rootes(Stevenson)and Kelly L. Goodman(Warrick's Secretary)give good performances as well.The direction by Ralph Singleton is good,with Singleton bringing a dark and gritty atmosphere to the film. Fine direction,Singleton.The score by Brian Banks and Anthony Marinelli is effective,moody and adds to the films tone and I loved the theme song that plays during the end credits. Good score and theme by Banks and Marinelli. The film also has a few songs on the soundtrack by The Beach Boys(Surfin' Safari),The Charlie Daniels Band(Bad Boys,Joanna,Honky Tonk Dreams),The Metropolitians(Blue Hour)and Scott Reader(They're Gone).The special make-up effects are great,realistic and well-done when used. Terrific special effects.In final word,if you love Stephen King,Horror Films or Monster movies,I suggest you see Graveyard Shift,a film that is one of the weakest Stephen King movie adaptations,but is still an entertaining Horror Film that is watchable. Recommended. 6.5/10.

Stephen King and Hollywood has always had an unsteady relationship. For every good to decent film produced from the prolific horror-meister's works (Misery,Pet Semetary,Stand By Me) there have been several more middling to downright awful ones (Children of the Corn,The Lawnmower Man,The Dark Half). Graveyard Shift, a 1990 adaptation of King's same named short story, is absolutely in the latter category. Graveyard Shift is a complete waste of time and celluloid, devoid of any scares, laughs or any other redeeming quality. If you want a bottom of the barrel Stephen King film, look no further than this travesty.Set in a cotton mill in what I guess is supposed to be Maine (one character references Castle Rock, King's well known fictional Maine town), Graveyard Shift begins with a character who likes to shoot rats with rocks being attacked by . . . something . . . and then dying in the cotton picker. Into town walks John Hall (Dave Andrews) a drifter looking for work, who lands a job at the mill, under the direction of the rather unkind, and potentially unhinged, foreman, Warwick (Stephen Macht). Warwick is a rather despicable character, using the female employees to fulfill his sexual needs while trying to cut a few bucks here and there in regards to worker safety. When he is ordered to clean up the basement or be shut down, he recruits several of the plant workers for the job, but they quickly realize that there is . . . something . . . down there in the basement with them.Graveyard Shift is the kind of film that used to be cranked out in the 1970s and 80s by major studios, I suspect, because they were cheap to make and even with a lower than average box office compared to major films, they still managed to turn a decent profit for the studio. Because it is almost certain no one was greenlighting Graveyard Shift because it promised to be a good movie. And a good movie is definitely not what director Ralph S. Singleton and screenwriter Jon Esposito have supplied. There is nothing of value in Graveyard Shift. The characters are almost exclusively ciphers, existing for no other reason than to be picked off one by one by the film's creature that lives in the mill. Main character John Hall has no development to speak of, and the attempt by the filmmakers to create a relationship between him and female worker Jane (Kelly Wolf) is dead on arrival. Neither character is interesting, or heck, even really present, other than to serve as something for the camera to be focused on most of the time.Stephen Macht provides a seemingly hissable villain in the form of Warwick, but he is almost completely a caricature, a creation of the screenplay to give us someone to root against, not a three dimensional character. When he goes off his rocker towards the end of the film, it is completely out of left field, not something that has been building throughout the narrative. The only character who is even vaguely interesting is the exterminator called in to deal with the rat problem at the mill, played by Brad Dourif. His exterminator holds a personal vendetta against rats due to their use in torture when he was in Vietnam (and I wonder if some material intended for his character was transplanted to Warwick at some point in the re-write stage of development). But slightly interesting doesn't equal necessary, and Dourif's character is even given the weakest, most pointless send-off of any of the film's characters.The makeup effects of the creature are acceptable, I guess, but we are never given much of a good look at it. But, for the most part, the film's gore quotient, one of the reasons people would show up to these films, is pretty limited. And there is certainly no tension, scares or suspense to speak of. Never once was I concerned for anyone on screen, and there is a jump scare or two, but nothing remarkable, and many of them are predictable.Graveyard Shift was released in 1990, at the end of the horror film era of the previous two decades, before the genre would go into remission for a few years before being re-born with the self referential Scream series followed by Hollywood's brief dalliance with J-Horror. And frankly, if Graveyard Shift is representative of what the genre brought to the table, then it was deserving of being buried.

Mostly an average shocker, based on a short story by Stephen King, "Graveyard Shift" does have a couple extra things going for it to make it a fairly amusing view. What distinguishes it is its commitment to looking as grungy and unappealing as possible. In fact, it may be the grimiest genre film since "C.H.U.D.", which also took place underground. King's grisly and ghoulish tale tells of the crew of a textile mill in a small town. The mill is infested - yeah, that's the understatement of the year - with rats, and periodically the employees disappear. As it turns out, there's something in the bowels of the mill that's much bigger and uglier than any ordinary rat. Atmosphere and set decoration are pretty strong here; horror fans will dig a particular chamber that's just stocked full of human bones. There's a sufficient amount of gore and very crude yet undeniably entertaining creature effects. David Andrews is a good looking but rather bland hero, but Kelly Wolf is cute and endearing as his feisty leading lady. It's very cool to see a pre-stardom Andrew Divoff ("Wishmaster") as one of two bullies; Vic Polizos plays the other (and *he* was actually *in* "C.H.U.D."!). The cast members that really make watching this thing worthwhile are Stephen Macht and Brad Dourif. Macht hams it up something fierce, speaking in an exaggerated Maine accent that's so hilarious one may crack up every time he utters a line. He's a mighty fine white trash villain; perhaps his best moment in the movie is when he goes completely bonkers, rubbing the dirt from an old bottle on his face as if he's going to war. And Dourif, as a mangy exterminator, delivers a performance that's really way too good for this sort of thing; he even manages to shed a tear during a riveting monologue wherein he explains the Viet Cong's use of rats as torture devices during 'Nam. One of his best lines has him firmly state that he's not the kind of veteran one would see Bruce Dern playing on film! The direction is by Ralph Singleton, in his sole feature film directing credit; he's usually been a producer, assistant or second unit director, or production manager. He makes this a pretty clunky affair that's still a hoot in all of its tacky glory. There's certainly much more prestigious Stephen King cinema than this, but there's still a respectable amount of entertainment value to be found here. That extends to the choice of music for the end credits, a decidedly non funky beat over which dialogue from the movie is played. Six out of 10.

Stephen King adaptations seem to be something of a hit or miss and this particular feature "Graveyard Shift" (from a short tale) seems to find itself in the latter camp. After watching it for the first time, I didn't think it was as bad as it reputation lets on but I wasn't wowed over by it either. Quite a lumbering, by-the-numbers and threadbare creature on the rampage outing.An isolated small town community sees its business mainly arrive from their local textile mill. This is re-opened, after an accident saw someone die. A team of workers are hired to work in it and also clean it up as the decayed structure is a home to a horde of rats. However that's the least of their problems as there's something much bigger and hungrier shacked up in the mill's cellar.The makeshift story is rather daft, nothing is truly explained and the set-pieces are only there to set-up the cheap, dreary shocks which are plastered throughout. There's a real nastiness within. Some moody atmospherics from its gloomily dirty windmill setting with a neighbouring graveyard (despite some stagy direction), along with a colourfully intense support role by Brad Dourif as a rodent exterminator make it worth a gander. David Andrews is in the lead and draws up very little, while Stephen Macht overdoes it. Kelly Wolf is half-decent and Andrew Divoff shows up in minor support. The f/x work is modest for it low-budget, so is the creature design; something of a bat cross rat hybrid. Never does the camera get you a good look of it, as it stays hidden or in the shadows with only glimpses. A so-so creature feature.