Graveyard Shift (1990) Reviews

• The mutant rat movie to end all mutant rat movies

  Chromium_five2009-02-18

  This might be the craziest Stephen King adaptation ever made (and yes, I am aware of "The Lawnmower Man"). It's so f**king intense from start to finish that it makes Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" look like a Hallmark movie. The studio executives no doubt wanted to make a few bucks with a by-the-numbers B-movie and chose the director based on his past experience on a number of respectable movies; no one could have predicted that he'd go balls-out crazy and treat a story about a mutant rat monster as if he'd been handed the script to "Macbeth." A drifter named John arrives in the town of Gate's Falls and applies for a job in a rat-infested textile mill run by Mr. Warwick (played by an unknown actor named Stephen Macht, whose attempted Maine accent sounds more Transylvanian), a deliriously evil man who rules not only the mill, but the entire town, with an iron fist. Warwick regularly strolls through the mill to laugh at how exhausted everyone is and knowingly sends his employees to their doom in the basement, which is inhabited by a huge rat-bat hybrid. This seems like an extremely counterproductive way to run a business, but it's best not to question anything in this movie. Meanwhile, an exterminator gone wrong (Brad Dourif's performance will give you nightmares) attempts to flush out the mill's rats, and John sort of develops a relationship with the mill's secretary, although even the romantic scenes are not handled calmly. As an example of the film's overall mood, at one point Warwick sends John to help clean the basement; the script probably said, "Warwick sends John to clean the basement," but it plays out with Warwick and John staring each other down wild-eyed as if Warwick had challenged John to a death-match; it is indeed the most intense "one character asks another to do a simple task" scene in history. Basically everything in the movie is like that, until the final sequence, at which point the maniacal director apparently tore the script into confetti and threw it into the air, because all nine levels of hell break loose. Our small cleaning crew, including Warwick, descends through a trapdoor and finds itself lost in a maze of wooden tunnels, the mill being some kind of labyrinthine, "House of Leaves"-style structure that extends hundreds of feet below the surface of the earth, and the rat-bat begins killing them off. Warwick goes completely off the beam at this time and begins chasing John and his girlfriend through the tunnels after smearing his face full of black grease. He encounters the rat-beast and throws himself at it, screaming, "We're going to hell... TOGETHUUUHHH!!!" Somehow, John and Jane descend even deeper, and end up in a massive cavern packed full of human bones; I could only imagine the director running around foaming at the mouth as he told his set design crew he needed the most gigantic cavern ever put on screen. Then, through some miracle, our man John makes it back into the textile mill and defeats the monster using, and this is no less crazy than it sounds, a Pepsi can. These final scenes are exhausting, but the movie isn't about to let some trifle like an "ending" release its grip on the viewer, because a nightmarish theme song then begins playing consisting of a bizarre techno beat with sounds of industrial machinery and bits of dialogue mixed over it. The tremendous amount of effort that was put into this thing forces me to rate it 8/10; any less and I am afraid the director might track me down and cut out my eyes or something.

  More

• Another Dourif must-see!

  uds32002-07-03

  Right then, I've read every review up until this one and I have to say..its the same old story - you're mostly all fruitcakes. GRAVEYARD SHIFT is one ripper of an admittedly "oddball" movie. A few people evidently share this view which is encouraging at least. The film is a terrific character study and never have I come across a more depressingly grotty and apt setting for a bleak horror film. You need little imagination to smell the filth and dirt. David Andrews makes a superb anti-hero, as the college-boy/drifter who takes it right up to Mill owner Warwick...as dislikable a screen presence as any and so well played by Stephen Macht. Loved the caddie-bashing sequence. Brad Dourif as the Exterminator was simply out of his tree here - overacting????? hardly! this is Brad Dourif we're talking about! So, four-fifths of you heaped scorn on the rat/bat? (it was a BAT actually) What the HELL does it matter WHAT it was - a feral chicken even? I've seen way worse monsters than this in my time around horror flicks. The production values on this film were high, this was NOT a rabid el-cheapo along the lines of HOWLING II ! In case you're interested. I would rate this as one of the better horror flicks of the last millennium. If I'm losing my objectivity then it must be a case of collective hypnosis because everyone in this family (and you're talking seriously varied tastes here) likes this flick! I would rate it a 6.75 !

  More

• good and underrated chiller.

  Coventry2003-08-31

  You don't hear or read much about this movie based on a short story written by Stephen King and I think that's a shame. It sure ain't no big masterpiece but it got several things going for it. Though, there is ONE aspect that makes this film very memorable ! The very creepy atmosphere. Graveyard Shift takes place is a textile factory during a very hot summer. Temperatures are so high, the men have to work at night...during the Graveyard Shift ! You can actually feel the heat these men are working in. You can feel the sweat running down their back and you can feel the dirt on their bodies, caused by the hard work. That's a very good mood being set. When it comes to the level of "scary" I would dare to say that some scenes equal to that of "Arachnophobia"... Because the hideous little creatures here are rats, and these animals scare and disgust people as much as spiders do. Graveyard Shift contains some great acting performances as well. Andrew Divoff is a decent actor and the guy who plays Warwick is fantastic ! He has the face of a natural born bastard so the role he plays fits him very well. I don't know his name but he reminds me of Fred Ward. I'll keep my eyes open for possible other movies he starred in. And then there's ...Brad Dourif!! This guy always delivers !!! Whether he plays in big budget productions like LOTR: The Two Towers or in small obscure horror films, he's always brilliant. Especially here, as the "Exterminator". His little Vietnam anecdote is the best scene in the whole film. He's still too underrated, if you ask me. So these are all good elements, no ? Then, why is Graveyard Shift not up there with the big titles in the genre? Well, the low budget obviously killed this movie. Most scenes are very dark and hard to follow. The big monster is supposed to be very impressive, but you're never able to see it properly. Half of the time, you're wondering "what? ...what happened ??" Real shame and waste. I'm convinced that with a few clear and decent special effects and make-up, this movie could have been one of the best horror films of the 90's.

  More

• Silly, but enjoyable little flick

  The_Void2005-09-19

  Films like this one were released by the bucket load in the 1980's, but as 1990 approached; they became less and less common. Still, there are a lot of silly horror flicks that were released in the 90's debut year, and, surprisingly, this one isn't all that bad. It lacks all the elements that make great films great films, of course; things such as brains, coherency and any whisper of characters has been neglected in favour of monster special effects and a few nice death scenes; but seriously, that's all you want from a film like this, so to say that Graveyard Shift does it's job isn't wrong. The film is based on a short story by Stephen King. Nearly everything that King has ever touched has been turned into a film, with a lot of mixed results. I would put this one in the middling category, which isn't a bad place to be in considering all the failed adaptations. The plot is typically thin (it is a SHORT story!) and it follows a man who gets a job in a cotton mill. The place is infested with rats, and after being charged with cleaning the place up, our hero finds a trapdoor and soon he and his team are up against the reason rats have made their home in the mill... One thing that really stands out about this film is the atmosphere. Director Ralph S. Singleton delights in presenting a fetid and disturbing aura around the central location, and this helps the story massively and gives the film an almost 'odyssey' approach when the characters finally make their way underground. I don't find rats scary, personally, but many people do and this film could easily be a reason why! The way that the rats surround the characters is brooding and frightening and provides the film with one of it's key elements. Acting definitely isn't a key element of Graveyard Shift, but the appearance of popular cult actor Brad Dourif will please many of this films' audience. I'm not a massive of fan of Dourif personally, but I respect his ability to shine in campy productions. The story doesn't offer anything in the way of a point, and it's incoherency will annoy many - but if you go into this film with the right sort of expectations, and don't think you're about to see a horror classic, Graveyard Shift really shouldn't disappoint.

  More

• Horror movie with social pathos

  Ankh-112000-06-09

  This film is sadly underrated: Actually, this may be caused by the relative low-key way the film is shot in. In contrast to many other recent "horror"-movies (take "The Mummy" for instance) the special effects are not generally exploiting gory, in-depth looks at the monsters (which almost always tend to ruin much of the real horror, i e where you yourself fill in on the aspects not covered by the camera; a commendable example of this last aspect would be the first "Alien", where the monster often only is shown in extreme short-cut scenes). Anyway, what made the film stand out is, however, not the spare use of monster-over exposure but the social setting of the plot. Unlike many other American stories, which seem to be set in rather idyllic surroundings (but for the appearance of the monster, that is!), this film actually lay out a more grim, perspective: The owners and the manager of the plant are basically exploiting the workers in search of greater profits, the possibilities of getting other jobs seem slim, the local people is not very keen on strangers and peoples´ basic attitudes towards each other often seem to range between distrust and hostility. This creates a darker, more menacing setting for the everyday life than could be expected; something I find much more interesting than the ordinary "everything here was so fine until the monster arrived to our idyllic town"-plot. If one likes to think about symbolic interpretations of horror movies (and why not? Even Stephen King does this in his book "Dance Macabre"), one could perhaps state that the monster in some way could be perceived as the physical manifestation of all hostility, exploitation and other bad feelings which seem to prevail in the little society depicted;-) To top it all (warning- spoiler ahead!), given what happens to one of the sympathetic characters very close to the end of the movie, there is not a really wholeheartedly happy ending: Quite extraordinary if you think about that this actually is an American movie! To summarize: This is a horror movie which, in many positive ways, feels like it was made by an independent company!

  More