Graveyard Shift (1990)

Truthfully, the production isn't so bad (no worse than most King adaptations) and the direction is rather passable. The bug, like in most bad films, is the script.

With such a strong cast and good production values, this should have been a great film.

But somehow the story bogs down at the beginning, more interested in the terrible management of an old mill than the giant monster in the basement. The story makes a play at being true to the source while making a statement but by the last 30 minutes it suddenly remembers that it's a horror movie and tries to stuff the denouement and everything else into a few rushed scenes. The monster, which was actually quite good, doesn't even get time to breathe.

Brad Dourif does his best to save the movie, playing a creepy exterminator with a Jeffery Combs style mania (if the two of them were ever in a movie, the world would explode from the awesome).

But in the end this film had everything, from a giant bat to a good cast, and it still sucked.

Fmovies: John Hall (David Andrews) is a drifter looking for a job in a small town, somewhere in Maine. He is hired by Warwick (Stephen Macht) to work the Graveyard Shift at the local textile mill. Some of the employees are starting to disappear during the night shift. When Warwick hires John and a group of other workers to work in the fourth of July for clean-up work. Soon enough, they discover the unknown.

Directed by Ralph S. Singleton made an decent horror movie, based on a short story by Stephen King (Cat's Eye, Creepshow, Stand by Me). The two-thirds of "Graveyard Shift" is pretty good, but the Giant Rat-Bat(!) shows up towards the end, the feature turns silly. Still, there is some good performances by Andrews, Macht and Brad Dourif as the Exterminator. Andrew Diroff, Best Known as The Djinn in "Wishmaster 1 & 2" is wasted in a supporting role. Die-Hard fans of Stephen King might forgive some of the flawed. Despite, an messy third act. It is worth a look. (*** ½/*****).

In Gates Falls,Maine,an old textile mill that has been closed down for many years is reopened.The place is dirty,run down,and overrun with huge rats.The graveyard shift is operated by a skeleton crew,just enough to keep it going.This is where we meet John Hall,a young drifter who gets hired on to work with the crew.The plant which is infested with rats also harbors something much larger,deep in it's cotton filled bowels,something that wants to come up to the surface.The crew of the graveyard shift are about to come face to face with what's underneath the factory."Graveyard Shift" is loosely based on Stephen King's short story.The film is fast-paced and entertaining and offers some gore plus a few shocks.Many people trashed this horror film,but I don't care."Graveyard Shift" is still much better than bloodless and politically correct horror garbage produced today.The cast is decent and the production design provides plenty of eerie atmosphere.Give this one a look.9 out of 10.

Graveyard Shift fmovies. Stephen King's Graveyard Shift is curiously one of my favourite adaptations of his work. I say curiously because it's not a very tasteful film, let alone even a good one. It's simple schlock and awe, goo and slime for 90 minutes straight, every human character either an unsettling nutcase or cardboard stock archetype. There's just something so Midnite Movie- esque about it though, a sense of fun to its gigantic, hollowed out mess of a textile mill in which some kind of vile denizen stalks a night crew that pretty much deserves everything they get. People wander about, squabble and are picked off in ways that get steadily more gruesome until the final reveal of the monster in some overblown puss-palooza of a finale. What more do you need in your bottom feeder helping of horror? Steven Macht is the sleazebag who runs the mill at his tyrannical whim, while David Andrews is the closest thing you'll find to a stoic protagonist. Andrew 'Wishmaster' Divoff shows up as a stock character, but it's Brad Dourif who chews scenery and ends up the only memorable person as the world's most simultaneously intense and incompetent exterminator, a bug eyed little weirdo who freaks people out with extended monologues about Viet Nam when he should be perusing corridors to find whatever's lurking there. The monster itself, if I remember correctly, is one big pile of grossly misshappen, poopy prosthetic puppetry, as is often the case in early 90's King fare. Would you want it any other way? Simple, efficient and impressively gory is what you'll find on this shift.

Bland David Andrews is a quiet hunk drifter who starts the late shift at a grimy Maine textile mill, headed over by a sadistic sleazeball boss (Stephen Macht). The basement work crew start falling prey to a giant rat monster that lurks underground. Real rats are all over the place too, to clean up the bodies.

The gore FX are mostly top-notch, the sets are good and there's plenty of violence and action, but this pointless movie is one big, unpleasant cliché thanks to poor direction and scripting (by John Esposito, based on the Stephen King story). Everyone yells and screams a lot, but Kelly Wolf (as a tough female worker who can hold her own) and Brad Dourif (as 'Nam vet pest exterminator Tucker Cleveland) are the only two who bring any spark to their roles.

A surprisingly good rat flick (another in a long line of minor classic neglected King adaptations). The changes made to the story are really quite good. In particular Brad Dourif as the Exterminator. He has a scene where he's describing how rats were used in 'Nam (not present in the short story) that's mesmerizing -- Dourif completely owns it.

Stephen Macht is great with his ridiculous "Maine" accent and scene chewing. It's a kind of perfect demented B-movie performance.

This is just another good rat movie let down by an abrupt, nonsensical ending. This one ends as just a boring creature feature with a giant bat underground. None of the foreboding or terror that preceded it. Killing off the best characters in lackluster ways. It really felt like the filmmakers had no idea where to take it, or ran out of time and money. Sad.