User reviews

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.

Bland David Andrews is a quiet hunk drifter who starts the late shift at a grimy Maine textile mill, headed over by a sadistic sleazeball boss (Stephen Macht). The basement work crew start falling prey to a giant rat monster that lurks underground. Real rats are all over the place too, to clean up the bodies.

The gore FX are mostly top-notch, the sets are good and there's plenty of violence and action, but this pointless movie is one big, unpleasant cliché thanks to poor direction and scripting (by John Esposito, based on the Stephen King story). Everyone yells and screams a lot, but Kelly Wolf (as a tough female worker who can hold her own) and Brad Dourif (as 'Nam vet pest exterminator Tucker Cleveland) are the only two who bring any spark to their roles.

In a dark and nasty textile factory close to a cemetery and infested of rats, many workers are missing. When the corrupt manager Warwick (Stephen Macht) is forced by a sanitary agent to hire the exterminator Tucker Cleveland (Brad Dourif), he asks Tucker to use less poison than necessary to reduce the costs. Meanwhile, the drifter John Hall (David Andrews) applies for a job and accepts the position of operator of a textile machine in the graveyard shift. What they do not know is that there is a huge creature is in the underground of the mill threatening the workers.

"Graveyard Shift" is a gruesome horror tale with a dark story, rats, and nasty and disgusting locations. Most of the characters are unpleasant but the direction and performances are good. This film is certainly recommended for a very specific audience and may not please the viewer. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "A Criatura do Cemitério" ("The Creature from the Cemetery")

Note: On 30 Aug 2020, I saw this film again.

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 !

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.

Stephen King's Graveyard Shift is curiously one of my favourite adaptations of his work. I say curiously because it's not a very tasteful film, let alone even a good one. It's simple schlock and awe, goo and slime for 90 minutes straight, every human character either an unsettling nutcase or cardboard stock archetype. There's just something so Midnite Movie- esque about it though, a sense of fun to its gigantic, hollowed out mess of a textile mill in which some kind of vile denizen stalks a night crew that pretty much deserves everything they get. People wander about, squabble and are picked off in ways that get steadily more gruesome until the final reveal of the monster in some overblown puss-palooza of a finale. What more do you need in your bottom feeder helping of horror? Steven Macht is the sleazebag who runs the mill at his tyrannical whim, while David Andrews is the closest thing you'll find to a stoic protagonist. Andrew 'Wishmaster' Divoff shows up as a stock character, but it's Brad Dourif who chews scenery and ends up the only memorable person as the world's most simultaneously intense and incompetent exterminator, a bug eyed little weirdo who freaks people out with extended monologues about Viet Nam when he should be perusing corridors to find whatever's lurking there. The monster itself, if I remember correctly, is one big pile of grossly misshappen, poopy prosthetic puppetry, as is often the case in early 90's King fare. Would you want it any other way? Simple, efficient and impressively gory is what you'll find on this shift.

Truthfully, the production isn't so bad (no worse than most King adaptations) and the direction is rather passable. The bug, like in most bad films, is the script.

With such a strong cast and good production values, this should have been a great film.

But somehow the story bogs down at the beginning, more interested in the terrible management of an old mill than the giant monster in the basement. The story makes a play at being true to the source while making a statement but by the last 30 minutes it suddenly remembers that it's a horror movie and tries to stuff the denouement and everything else into a few rushed scenes. The monster, which was actually quite good, doesn't even get time to breathe.

Brad Dourif does his best to save the movie, playing a creepy exterminator with a Jeffery Combs style mania (if the two of them were ever in a movie, the world would explode from the awesome).

But in the end this film had everything, from a giant bat to a good cast, and it still sucked.

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.

This flick feels like something you'd come across late at night on cable, and I mean that in a good way. Sure, this is definitely something that *could not* air on cable without some serious editing, but it still has that *feel* to it. I can't believe this is sitting at a 5.0 on IMDb... definitely deserves more than a 6.0 average. Great off-the-wall characters, an even more off-the-wall premise, and a whole lotta fun. This flick is the definition of 'underrated'. So many actors here should've gone on to do more stuff -- it's a shame they didn't.

Prepare for a good time with this one if you're a creature-feature fan -- it won't disappoint!

When Stephen King hit his stride as an author whose nearly superhuman literary output averaged at least one book per year, his whoring of the rights to said books also yielded more rancid cinematic rapes than a crime-scene photographer (or film critic) would wish to count. "Graveyard Shift" is one such rancid production, a film whose sheer badness on almost every level makes it a slightly hypnotic, "let's-see-how-much-worse-it-can-get" venture, but mostly winds up a jaw-dropping exercise in futility. Based on the short story of the same name from King's "Night Shift" anthology, one would think a 90-minute film would be the ideal forum to iron out the nuances of a compact literary piece. Then again, that would require filmmakers who know how to expand the material in a creative, interesting way, and one of "Graveyard Shift"'s many problems is that the source story isn't the greatest, and John Esposito's adaptation and Ralph Singleton's direction doesn't know where to go with it. While this tale of textile-mill workers abused by a shifty, sadistic foreman (Stephen Macht) and menaced by a subterranean rat-bat seems a muddled allegory for the human "rat race" being a literal dive into the darkest pit of Hell, it is lost in the onslaught of terrible acting and unfocused characters. While King (not to mention directors who understand his work) brings a certain local quirkiness to his patented New Englanders, here they are transformed into grotesque, unpleasant yokels whose punchlines fall completely flat (the worst miscalculation being Brad Dourif's hambone Exterminator)–the violence lacks any irony, and is just more grist for the blood-spattered mill. The only remotely credible actor is Macht, whose performance hints at campy greatness that goes unrealized as a result of the script's awkward attempts at intentional comedy. The only thing that really gives "Graveyard Shift" any redeeming value is the often-creative set design (including an underground labyrinth that threatens to create actual atmosphere), and the not-bad (but far from great) creature FX; additionally, the small New England town does evoke King's prose with some credibility–it's too bad nobody could think of a way to put it to good use.

Stretching a Stephen King story about a rat-infested cotton mill in Maine to 90 minutes may have seemed like a good idea, but giving the rat infestment too much close-up coverage was not. Dwelling a little more on the human element and why the townspeople behave as they do toward the new mill worker (a drifter with a college ed), would have helped. Unfortunately, the script doesn't give any of the actors a chance to develop credible characters.

Nevertheless, loopholes and all (inconsistent motivations for the things certain characters do), GRAVEYARD SHIFT manages to serve viewers a fair share of unexpected twists and turns in the course of a typical King tale of terrorized victims which just happens to take place in his favorite domain, Maine. None of the performers are well-known (which can be a good thing), except for Brad Dourif who is hilariously over-the-top as The Exterminator. It doesn't help that the female lead is particularly unappealing.

What helps considerably are the able performances of David Andrews and his uneasy relationship with boss Stephen Macht, heavy on the Maine accent. Macht has the perfect face for sneering villainy. Andrews' predicament as the new mills worker is what kept me wanting to see how things turned out. The rat-filled prologue should have warned me of things to come, but even a dedicated horror fan should get some unexpected jolts from the last half-hour.

Not a great horror film, but one with the atmosphere down perfectly. You can almost smell the stench of Andrews' surroundings and the sweat on his back as he makes the most of a gruesome situation. I understand the new DVD version is an excellent transfer that makes the most of the gritty atmosphere.

Definitely not for those who can't stand the sight of the nasty little critters. I just happened to be in the mood for a spooky movie, and settled back to watch this on TV. Certainly not the worse King film committed to film and it does have its moments of pure terror.

But still, the subject matter is just a bit too unpleasant to give this any sort of "must see" recommendation. Strictly for die-hard King fans.

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.

Following a series of accidents, the new worker at a troubled textile processing mill finds the incidents are being caused by a massive infestation of rats and must clear them out in order to keep it in business.

There's not a whole lot to really like with this one as its pretty underwhelming. The biggest issues against this one is the fact that way too much time is spent here on the utterly useless subplot about the different workers at the plant, none of which do anything interesting overall or move the film along at all. The fact that this one tends to continually bring up the different affairs and inter-office dramas within everyone here really has the effect of slowing down the film so that it really drags through the first half. As well, there's just nothing all that interesting or exciting about all of these particular tangents which are just plain irritating as this makes it really hard to really matter what happens to them and how they tend to the various situations around here are. The better elements, here, though, do manage to counteract the flaws here as there's some rather decent efforts throughout this. There's a rather interesting series of attacks throughout which is quite entertaining at times as the encounters in the mill are highly enjoyable. The first encounter within the bowels of the factory works pretty well due to the claustrophobic setting and intense heat, the recovery team getting assaulted in the sewers underneath the mill are quite fun as the different surrounding get utilized to help with the rampaging assault on the crew, as well as the rather chilling encounter within the cemetery crypt which provides this one with plenty of opportunities to get rather enjoyable and entertaining. The best part, though, is the finale down deep in the underground shaft atop a pile of bones as the fight there includes a huge, mutated monstrosity that perfectly echoes the Gothic sensibility of the setting down there by placing such a creature in that situation to make the chilling encounter all the better. By plaguing all of this alongside the great special effects for the giant rat alongside the dead bodies floating around, this adds another level here to what works and really helps to sell the goo parts about this one.

Rated R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.

I hardly dare to write anything about it. If scary movie is a quality rating, this movie certainly gets it. It´s scary how bad a movie can be.

I don't get it. People will give a high rating to all kinds of boring, cliché movies with terrible CGI, blood, predictable characters, zero plot twists, tropes everywhere, and hand-holdingly feel-good endings.

Then a movie comes along that's gritty, dirty, dark, dare I say it even evil? A movie with excellent practical special effects, blood, gore, and slime, a movie that doesn't back away from killing off characters, and it gets maligned and mocked and given terrible ratings.

Well, you can all have your stereotypical Hollywood garbage. I'll take this cult gem, even if it's based on a short story by Stephen King, whom I otherwise can't stand. The director really stepped up and made something that stands the test of time, that's original, and that's not afraid to be dark and dirty.

Stephen Macht is great as the tyrannical foreman, and Brad Douriff is having the time of his life as a Vietnam vet turned exterminator.

Be sure to watch the end titles with a great little song that has many samples from the movie.

Highly recommended.

I love the atmospheric setting for Graveyard Shift, a run down, rat-infested textile mill built over a network of tunnels and next to a cemetery. I love rodents: I used to own a lovely pair of white rats. I like bats (which are essentially flying rodents). And I like the rat/bat monster in Graveyard Shift, which isn't nearly as bad as some of the reviews here would have you believe.

What I don't like about this film, however, are the people. Drifter John Hall (David Andrews) makes for a bland hero, mill foreman Warwick (Stephen Macht) is an obnoxious bastard with a really annoying accent, Brad Dourif as The Exterminator is way too over the top (even by Brad's standards), and Andrew Divoff and Vic Polizos are terrible as Hall's co-workers Danson and Brogan, the latter almost making me switch off as he blasts rats with a high pressure hose (not because I felt for the rats, but because he screams at the top of his voice with each blast. Very irritating!).

Super cringe-worthy scenes include Warwick suddenly going nutzoid, smearing his face with dirt and acting like Rambo, and Danson suddenly breaking down in hysterics. Still, with a decent creature (I've seen plenty worse) and a fair amount of gore, Graveyard Shift is still worth a look, especially for Stephen King fans, on whose short story the film is based.

5.5 out of 10, rounded up to 6 for the so-bad-it's-brilliant end credits song that is comprised of snippets of dialogue from the film set to a cheesy backing track.

Graveyard Shift is a contemptible piece of crap. That it was based on the wonderful and creepy short story of the same name is even worse. The story and the film have very little in common. The monster in the film is NOT in the book and I highly recommend that you read the story and forgo the movie entirely. The movie itself is horribly done with horrible acting save the performance of Brad Dourif, who is always good. Brad must have been hurting for money because this is obviously just a payday for him. Bottom Line: Unless it is your mission to watch every film based on King's work, forget this movie ever existed and go back to your life, which is better off without the memory of this movie anyway.