Graveyard Shift

1990 "Stephen King took you to the edge with The Shining and Pet Sematary. This time... he pushes you over."
4.9| 1h29m| R| en| More Info
Released: 26 October 1990 Released
Producted By: Paramount
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

John Hall is a drifter who wanders into a small town in Maine. He needs a job and decides to seek employment at the community's top business: a large textile mill. He is hired to work the "graveyard shift" -- from around midnight to dawn -- and, along with a few others, he is charged with cleaning out the basement. This task strikes the workers as simple enough, but then, as they proceed deeper underground, they encounter an unspeakable monstrosity intent on devouring them all.

Genre

Horror

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Director

Ralph S. Singleton

Production Companies

Paramount

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Graveyard Shift Audience Reviews

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good
Limerculer A waste of 90 minutes of my life
ActuallyGlimmer The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.
Casey Duggan It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny
K James I have seen preciously few movies as bad as this movie. It seems to take pride in its camp horror and cheesy gore - in fact, I would be surprised if it didn't, because that's most of what it has going for it.
AaronCapenBanner Based on the Stephen King short story from his "Night Shift" collection, about a drifter who comes to a small New England town looking for a job, and finds one in a cotton mill run by an obnoxious foreman(played by Stephen Macht). It turns out that workers have been mysteriously disappearing in the bowels of the mill, which is infested with rats, which the local exterminator(played by Brad Dourif) has been unable to wipe out, much to his annoyance. However, the rats are the least of the problems, as the workers who must pull an all-night shift will discover...Awful film is devoid of suspense or intelligence; despite the potential atmospheric chills of the underground setting, the direction is extremely poor, characters not developed or overacted, and result is a grimy, foul-mouthed piece of junk.
Michael_Elliott Graveyard Shift (1990) ** (out of 4) Silly adaptation of the Stephen King short story takes place at a textile mill where there are more rats than actual works. The problem starts when various employees go missing and it appears there's some sort of giant rat offing them. GRAVEYARD SHIFT has a few memorable moments but in the end it's a pretty laughable film but it's hard to really blame anyone other than the producers for giving this a green light. I'm not sure how good or bad the short story was but it's clear that it shouldn't have been turned into a feature. The entire idea of a giant rat killing people just isn't very scary and when you're doing a horror film that can't possibly get any scary moments then you're already playing behind the eight ball. Another problem is that there's just not too much going on here. A new guy (David Andrews) gets picked on by co-workers. Someone gets killed by a monster. The new guy starts to fall for a co-worker (Kelly Wolf). Someone gets killed by a monster. The jerk owner (Stephen Macht) picks on someone. Someone gets killed. There's really nothing for the viewer to do except wait for the next kill and wait for the next person to get picked on. The kills are somewhat memorable simply because how often to giant rats kill people? The rat creature (or whatever it is) looks rather silly and perhaps this is why they don't show it too much. I will say that the death scenes are quite graphic and bloody, which is somewhat shocking considering what the MPAA was doing to horror films in this era. The performances are all rather good with the exception of Brad Dourif who plays an exterminator. Whoever decided to have this character do comedy relief certainly didn't have the actors best interest in mind. GRAVEYARD SHIFT is a fairly forgettable movie but one almost needs to watch it just because of how silly it is.
mattressman_pdl Stephen King's Graveyard Shift will never win an Oscar. It will never change anybody's life or be mentioned on any top one-hundred lists. But it's easier to find flaws in a little horror film than to 'mine' it for good points as so many have failed to do.Adapting a short (very short) story from Stephen King's collection Night Shift, Ralph Singleton took a small budget, unique sets, and a remarkably gifted group of actors and spun a film called Graveyard Shift.Plot: A group of over-worked misfits in a textile mill run afoul of a strange, mutant creature and a large number of rats. Simple, huh? The film has a very dodgy quality as it suffers from budget restraints, unreliable accents, and an uneven pace. Stephen Macht is divinely evil (if that makes sense) as the unscrupulous Warwick, who runs the mill like his own demented clubhouse. Macht's performance is over the top as his accent wavers at certain times and his mania takes over but somehow it seems to fit in this guilty pleasure.But it's hard working character actor Brad Dourif who walks away with this picture slung over his shoulder as he portrays an intense exterminator with an unnatural hatred for rodents. His screen time is limited but, as in Exorcist III, Dourif fills it with charisma. The rest of the cast is quite good as well including the likable David Andrews, the sweet Kelly Wolf, the slimy Vic Polizos, and the underrated Andrew Divoff playing a bit of a jerk (go figure).It would be easy to kick the movie while it's down, as critics and audiences do quite often. But this movie's grimy, unusual charm has won this reviewer over time and time again.Shut your brain off and tune in."Okay, show's over!"