Graveyard Shift
Sure he's missing his eye and skin, but he still has his smile
Stephen King is a household name. While
the mainstream audience knows him from his work on The Shawshank
Redemption, The Green Mile, and Stand By Me, we horror fans love him
for his work on such classics as Children Of The Corn, Cujo, The
Stand, and The Shining. King is able to create horror movies in
believable setting and weave tales that are both compelling and
horrifying. His stories are full of suspense yet we cannot look away.
Being a superstar writer whose movies have also become big hits, I
find it strange when I come across a movie based on his work that
I've never heard of before. What could possibly be the reason?
Graveyard Shift is a 1990 horror movie
based on the short story of the same name by Stephen King. The movie
stars David Andrews (Fight Club, Apollo 13) as John Hall, a drifter
who has just arrived in a small town in Maine. He goes to the local
textile mill and is able to procure a job from the manager, Mr.
Warwick (Stephen Macht, General Hospital, The Monster Squad), a
sadistic man that enjoys verbally abusing and punishing his workers.
John works the graveyard shift, 11 pm to 7am, pulling cotton from a
separating machine. The mill is infested with rats and John tries to
scare them off by throwing empty soda cans at them with a slingshot.
Warwick employs Tucker Cleveland (Brad Dourif, Deadwood, The Lord Of
The Rings: The Two Towers), a disturbed Vietnam veteran, as the
mill's exterminator, but he is unable to keep the population under
control. The mill should be closed down due to the infestation and
potential fire hazards, but Warwick is able to bribe inspectors and
keep it open. Workers sent down to clean up the basement start to
disappear. When the exterminator goes into the graveyard next to the
mill to kill rats, something pulls him down into the ground. Warwick
send Hall and several other workers to clean up the basement. They
discover a subterranean maze beneath the mill that leads into the
adjacent graveyard. They also realize that they are not alone.
Something is done their with them, picking them off one by one and
eating them. Hall, an unraveling Warwick, and the rest try to flee
onto to come across a mound of bones, belonging to missing workers
and the graveyard. What is this horrible monster and how will they
survive?
"Oh yeah, you're going to need that tooth removed."
Well, there's a good reason why I've
never heard of this Stephen King movie: it's just not good. Graveyard
Shift is a simple monster movie that takes way to long to get to the
point, forcing the audience to sit through a whole lot of nothing.
There are a few hints at the monster living beneath the mill, barely
enough to keep things interesting. Despite John Hall being the main
character of the movie, more time is spent on Mr. Warwick. He's the
most developed and entertaining character in the movie, so I
understand why, but then why bother with focusing on the background
of Hall when it really doesn't matter. There's no need to make him a
drifter if it really makes no difference. He could have just as
easily been a regular worker. They tried to make him interesting and
set him up as a hero, but it feels too hollow, mostly due to the
story being stretched out. As a short story, I can see the appeal of
Graveyard Shift, but as a full-length movie it doesn't work. The plot
is very basic and when you stretch it out over and hour and a half,
you realize how thin it really is.
The movie tries to make up for the lack
of entertainment by cramming in a lot of excitement and violence in
the last twenty minutes or so. When it finally becomes a horror
movie, Graveyard Shift becomes far more watchable and fun to watch.
The sets used for the underground tunnels look adequately creepy and
the dark atmosphere plays nicely with the violence. The monster looks
pretty good when it was finally revealed as some kind of giant,
mutated bat. Making the monster a bat does beg the question of why
were rats a big focus for most of the movie. Shouldn't the big
monster be a rat? The inclusion of rats made me hope that the movie
would be similar to H.P. Lovecraft's “The Rats In The Walls,” one
of my favorite Lovecraft stories. While the stories are separate, the
scene where Hall is climbing a huge pile of human bones in an
underground labyrinth is straight out of “The Rats In The Walls”
and was very cool to see. One thing that wasn't a problem in the
movie was the acting. Everyone plays their part well with Stephen
Macht and Brad Dourif putting in the best performances.
"Have I ever told you about the time I was a doctor in the Old West?"
Graveyard Shift is a good short story,
but as a full-length movie, it just doesn't work. Some short stories
have enough going on with them that they can be stretched out and
easily fill an hour and a half of screen time. The acting is good, so
that's not the problem. Unfortunately, Graveyard Shift is unable to
do this, leading to boring scenes and weak character development.
Nothing of real importance happens until the last twenty minutes or
so, which is a shame, because they are a pretty entertaining twenty
minutes. They have action, suspense, scares, lots of blood, and even
a fight between Hall and Warwick in which they hit each other with
skeletons and bones. It's just not enough to make for a better movie.
5/10
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