The Bachman Textile Mill (in-joke alert: Richard Bachman is a pseudonym for Stephen King) is plagued with rats, making on-the-job conditions unpleasant...particularly on the graveyard shift. That's when worker Jason Reed (Jonathan Emerson) has a nasty accident: something gives him such a
fright that he tumbles into a mechanical picking machine's vicious teeth and is killed; there's hardly enough left to bury. An exterminator, eccentric Tucker Cleveland (Brad Dourif), is hired to eliminate the rats, but his efforts are fruitless. To make matters worse, a safety inspector has
threatened to have the place shut down. Though a bribe buys the plant's loathsome foreman Warwick (Stephen Macht) some time, the basement has to be thoroughly cleaned as soon as possible. It's an undesirable job, to say the least, and Warwick assembles a cleaning crew from the mill's financially
strapped work force. Crew members include college-educated drifter Hall (David Anderson), "tough girl with a heart of gold" Jane (Kelly Wolf), bullies Danson and Brogan (Andrew Divoff and Vic Polizos), class clown Ippetson (Robert Alan Beuth) and new guy Carmichael (Jimmy Woodard). They're a
mismatched bunch, and less than thrilled at the prospect of having to work together under such unappealing and potentially dangerous circumstances. Needless to say, they find more in the lower depths than broken furniture and moldering financial records. Not only is the basement rat infested, it's
home to a mutant monster (a kind of giant, hairless rat-bat) that begins killing off the crew members one-by-one.
For a multi-million dollar best-selling author who rates his name in the title, Stephen King has had very little luck on film. Though close to two dozen of his works have been made into movies, most have ranged from tolerable to dismal. The few exceptions have been Brian De Palma's CARRIE, Stanley
Kubrick's THE SHINING, Mary Lambert's PET SEMATARY, and Rob Reiner's STAND BY ME and MISERY. GRAVEYARD SHIFT, unfortunately, doesn't rate with that company, rising no higher than tepid King adaptations such as CUJO, CHILDREN OF THE CORN, and CAT'S EYE. It's difficult to say what the problem is.
King isn't a literary writer whose work is carried by its prose; most of his books read like outlines (if exceptionally long ones) for movies anyway. But the qualities that makes King's work so popular in print seldom translate to the screen. Adapting short stories to feature-length is
particularly tricky, and this film falls prey to the usual pitfalls--there just isn't story to go around. Consequently, for the first two-thirds of the movie the characters are forced to muddle through various forms of small-town unpleasantness to fill up time. Overall the cast does well with the
material, and Macht (GALAXINA, THE MONSTER SQUAD) is a standout as the vile, despicable boss. Dourif (BLUE VELVET, CHILD'S PLAY) strikes some sparks as the Vietnam-veteran-turned-exterminator (not one of your baby-killing flashback freaks like Bruce Dern plays, he assures Hall), but he's killed
halfway through the film. Released at Halloween, the film had the calculated feel of a movie made simply because the title was guaranteed to pull in audiences on opening weekend. Sadly, it's the kind of effort that gives horror films a bad name. (Violence, profanity.) leave a comment