Graveyard Shift (1990) · 6:13pm Feb 23rd, 2018
There are times you just know you're getting sick. Take for example this past week when I was sitting down and eating pizza at one of those make your own pizza places. I could feel it. The soreness in the throat and the occasional cough that was so subtle that it could be mistaken for me clearing my throat. I knew better though and things rapidly declined.
If it wasn't for the regular symptoms, the dreams were a sure kicker. When I start dreaming of long strings of math equations or running through the swamp with a fruit bowl in my hands in order to escape zombies and score points it's pretty clear I'm on the wrong side of healthy. However, being sick did allow me to catch up on things like sleep.
To answer an unasked question no I don't dream of cartoon horses. I don't even dream of robotic sheep. Most of my dreams on a normal night involve rather mundane happenings or if they're weird drift into the realm of creature features. You know, giant crabs, snakes , leeches, roaches and all that kind of stuff. Maybe its my subconscious' way of spinning a yarn that only some guy from Maine could put to paper and have it make money.
I'm of course speaking of Stephen King.
When you go into a movie based upon something written by King you really can't be sure what you're going to get. Sometimes it's really good like Misery. Sometimes it's kind of bad but damn it I like it anyway like Maximum Overdrive. Then there's The Langoliers, the mini-series about scrotum walnuts with teeth. Graveyard Shift is somewhere between Overdrive and Langoliers.
In Graveyard Shift we're treated to terror at a defunct textile mill in Maine where it apparently is around 100 degrees at night and rats infest everything. After one of the local employees really gets into his work after a bump by an unseen monster. Was it the foreman Mr. Warwick? Was it some slime beast from beyond or was it something they try to only show bits and pieces of through the movie that you immediately recognize what it is and then it's a waiting game for everyone else to catch up.
If you guessed the third option you'd be right. We spend most of the movie waiting for things to happen while the humans get picked off one by one but nobody really seems to care too much. It isn't until near the end when the employees and Mr. Warwick delve into the tunnels under the mill that we really get the majority of our body count. In a way that's kind of the problem.
See for most of the movie we're left with just the humans and some rats. To be fair to the actors they do the most with what they have to work with. For the most part they're competent but the movie drags due to the fact that the monster doesn't do much. It doesn't really stalk them, it just kind of shows up. There aren't any music cues to ratchet up the tension and the movie itself literally just sort of ends.
If this movie had been made in 1955 it would have been a true B-reel movie or drive in flick somewhere between the nudist camp "documentary" and the main feature. However in 1990 this movie was little more than a mildly enjoyable but not great movie with okay acting and a monster that truthfully isn't bad looking but needed more time to shine. Instead we get a whole lot of Mr. Warwick being a jerk (though when the one chick started beating up his car I understood why Warwick reacted how he did) and a whole lot of other characters not doing much about it.
The Stats:
9 dead bodies, 3 dead rats, 1 dead dog, 0 breasts, 2 instances of "Picker Stew", multiple monster bites, knife to the abs, arm gnawing, stone casket to the head, soda can fu, hose fu, gratuitous checking the thermometer.
Shout outs:
Stephen Macht (the runner up to Patrick Stewart for the role of Jean-Luc Picard) as Mr. Warwick for being a jerk and for saying the line "We're going to Hell... together," before attacking the monster.
David Andrews as John Hall, our hero, for reminding Warwick that, "You get no guarantee with any man."
Brad Dourif (Chucky) as the exterminator Tucker Cleveland for being a nut and delivering the best monologue in the entire movie.
Andrew Divoff before he became the Wishmaster for calling John Hall a "Girl Scout."
Frank Welker for doing "special vocal effects." Yeah no kidding, he's done pretty much everything from Optimus Prime to Dumbo to Flores from the 80s my little pony show. Dude's a legend.
I remember seeing that movie when I was a kid. I remember being disappointed and leaving no real impact on me.
You are correct in Stephen King adaptations either being hit or extreme miss. It has Brad Dourif, Andrew Divoff, two of the best horror (read ham) masters, and was still kinda meh. I want to see those two and Jeffery Combs do a project together so we can see who can deliver the best line.
Dourif: “You’re making me kill you for a STUPID reason!”
Divoff: “Done.”
Combs: Any line, really.
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Yeah, I can understand that. For me it was always one of the movies I'd look at at the video store. Something about the cover with the skull and the miner's helmet always just got me to look at it. It wasn't until I did this review that I actually watched it and only then because I bought it in a three pack of movies called "When Animals Strike Back vol. 2." It was like 4-5 bucks and there was an image of a small child freaking out because there was a parakeet on her head. It made me laugh so I got it.
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The cool thing about each one of them is that they can all act even if a lot of times the roles they do tend to call for "play it big kid," type of acting. Heck Dourif has an academy award nomination to his credit. It would be entertaining to see the three of them try to deliver the best line. You can get weird scenes just from their existing dialog:
Dourif: I'm going to be six years old again.
Divoff: Fulfill the prophecy.
Combs: We can achieve every doctor's dream... get a job in a sideshow!
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Oh yeah Bachman mill. I just got that reference.
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For Combs, I was thinking more of his line from The Frighteners: "My body is a roadmap of pain! And pain has its valves."