Such a frustrating disappointment

Sadly Over-hyped

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

"Graveyard Shift" is another adaptation of a Stephen King work, this time a short story.Drifter John Hall (David Andrews) wanders into a small southern town in search of a job. He finds one at a rat infested textile mill where he is assigned to the graveyard shift operating a cotton processing machine. Foreman Warwick (Stephen Macht) tells him the previous employee "didn't work out". Actually he was ground into hamburger by said machine after tormenting the rats around him.Hall strikes up a friendship with Jane Wisconsky (Kelly Wolf) who has been harassed by foreman Warwick who has placed her in with a motley crew working at getting rid of the rats. An unusual exterminator (Brad Dourif) has also been hired to rid the mill of the pests.For some unknown reason, Warwick forms a crew to "clean up the basement". In addition to John and Jane we have Danson (Andrew Divoff), the fire hose bearing Brogan (Vic Polizos) and Carmichael (Jimmy Woodard). During the cleanup, Hall finds a trap door leading to who knows where. Warwick and the others descend into the hole and find that there is something unusual going on, discover a monster within and............................Plenty of grisly deaths, blood and gore to satisfy horror fans. The rats alone are enough to make one's skin crawl. The monster appears to be a giant bat which doesn't make much sense. We never learn of it's origin. We are also at a loss to explain why anyone would willingly want to work in a place such as this.This tale probably worked better as a short story rather than as a feature length film.

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.

Stephen King and Hollywood has always had an unsteady relationship. For every good to decent film produced from the prolific horror-meister's works (Misery,Pet Semetary,Stand By Me) there have been several more middling to downright awful ones (Children of the Corn,The Lawnmower Man,The Dark Half). Graveyard Shift, a 1990 adaptation of King's same named short story, is absolutely in the latter category. Graveyard Shift is a complete waste of time and celluloid, devoid of any scares, laughs or any other redeeming quality. If you want a bottom of the barrel Stephen King film, look no further than this travesty.Set in a cotton mill in what I guess is supposed to be Maine (one character references Castle Rock, King's well known fictional Maine town), Graveyard Shift begins with a character who likes to shoot rats with rocks being attacked by . . . something . . . and then dying in the cotton picker. Into town walks John Hall (Dave Andrews) a drifter looking for work, who lands a job at the mill, under the direction of the rather unkind, and potentially unhinged, foreman, Warwick (Stephen Macht). Warwick is a rather despicable character, using the female employees to fulfill his sexual needs while trying to cut a few bucks here and there in regards to worker safety. When he is ordered to clean up the basement or be shut down, he recruits several of the plant workers for the job, but they quickly realize that there is . . . something . . . down there in the basement with them.Graveyard Shift is the kind of film that used to be cranked out in the 1970s and 80s by major studios, I suspect, because they were cheap to make and even with a lower than average box office compared to major films, they still managed to turn a decent profit for the studio. Because it is almost certain no one was greenlighting Graveyard Shift because it promised to be a good movie. And a good movie is definitely not what director Ralph S. Singleton and screenwriter Jon Esposito have supplied. There is nothing of value in Graveyard Shift. The characters are almost exclusively ciphers, existing for no other reason than to be picked off one by one by the film's creature that lives in the mill. Main character John Hall has no development to speak of, and the attempt by the filmmakers to create a relationship between him and female worker Jane (Kelly Wolf) is dead on arrival. Neither character is interesting, or heck, even really present, other than to serve as something for the camera to be focused on most of the time.Stephen Macht provides a seemingly hissable villain in the form of Warwick, but he is almost completely a caricature, a creation of the screenplay to give us someone to root against, not a three dimensional character. When he goes off his rocker towards the end of the film, it is completely out of left field, not something that has been building throughout the narrative. The only character who is even vaguely interesting is the exterminator called in to deal with the rat problem at the mill, played by Brad Dourif. His exterminator holds a personal vendetta against rats due to their use in torture when he was in Vietnam (and I wonder if some material intended for his character was transplanted to Warwick at some point in the re-write stage of development). But slightly interesting doesn't equal necessary, and Dourif's character is even given the weakest, most pointless send-off of any of the film's characters.The makeup effects of the creature are acceptable, I guess, but we are never given much of a good look at it. But, for the most part, the film's gore quotient, one of the reasons people would show up to these films, is pretty limited. And there is certainly no tension, scares or suspense to speak of. Never once was I concerned for anyone on screen, and there is a jump scare or two, but nothing remarkable, and many of them are predictable.Graveyard Shift was released in 1990, at the end of the horror film era of the previous two decades, before the genre would go into remission for a few years before being re-born with the self referential Scream series followed by Hollywood's brief dalliance with J-Horror. And frankly, if Graveyard Shift is representative of what the genre brought to the table, then it was deserving of being buried.

Graveyard Shift speaks a lot about director Ralph Singleton's ability to make a great splatsticks and cheesy flicks. Perhaps this is as gory and bizarre as the novel itself. I believe Stephen King has a guardian angel that is always atop his head, inspiring him bring out the most unusual horrific thoughts. As far as the budget is concerned, GS is mediocre but the way this tale has been presented makes this film bit outlandish. The plot is simple, but the cause is freaky. The cinematography is great and gives a strange sullen atmosphere to the movie. The film has enough offering for the gore-hounds, who would love this flick for splatter reasons. The plot would have worked well even if it were incorporated in any of anthologies like 'Tales from the Darkside aka Creepshow 3.A run down textile mill is restarted by a firm. The owners appoint a grouchy and malevolent supervisor Warwick (Macht) to make new recruitment and keep the production on the go. The exterminators, specially Brad Douriff discovers that the mill is infested with rats. The population of the rodents is so high, that they have dug big holes in the mill premises. We soon watch John Hall (David Andrews) taking role of a night shift worker. Others are astonished to see John take the night shift. The shift has a notorious past, because it took the life of old workers. We also come to know that the deaths have something to do with rats. Andrews soon assumes his responsibility and is time and again bugged by the presence of rats. He manages to fend some of them with an empty cola can and sling. John is bullied by his fellows Danson (Divoff) and Brogan (Polizos), but he wants to keep his profile low. John also shares some pleasant intimacy with his co-worker Jane (Kelly Wolf), which is despised by Warwick. Time goes by and other incidents of disappearances take place. Searching for the clue, the exterminator Douriff scans the nearby graveyard and discovers a tunnel. Before he could track the channels, he is crushed under a tombstone. Warwick compels the workers to participate in the extermination program. Unfortunately, the team stumbles upon a chain of interconnected tunnels, that lead to a nearby graveyard. One by one the workers are killed by something unimaginable, that rests and breeds inside this tunnel waiting for the good time. However, John still has his time for the final showdown.The film succeeds in taking the viewers to discomfort. Unlike any other ambiguous horror farce that is trashed out in the name of horror, this doesn't lose grip. A newbie to horror may take it for a slow starter and soon start pigeonholing this gem of a film with other inferior squibs. This film has a strange atmosphere, that gets tedious and intolerable due to the presence of rats. Well, consider yourself working past midnight at a mill with no ventilation, heavily enervated and badly perspiring. Then to add to your troubles, you are alone, and furthermore you are surrounded by several hundred rodents, that are smelly and also HUNGRY! How do you think you'll react to this? Well watch GS to believe it. Cheers to Ralph Singleton!