Whoops, sorry this is a bit late. Had a holiday trip to Bloomington to see some friends, got back waaaaaaay late and tired.

Still got the movie in though.

Ok, so Graveyard Shift was originally a short story in the King collection Night Shift.

This is solely so you can get confused on which is which. It’s a foul, nefarious conspiracy I say.

Ahem.

Ok, so Graveyard Shift is a fairly short tale involving hideous discoveries under an old textile mill which is in dire need of renovation, due to abandoned lower levels and a serious rat infestation.

A really, really serious rat infestation.

The movie is mostly faithful to this adaptation, but as you’ll see there is one rather, err, inexplicable deviation.

Now, Graveyard Shift the movie starts off on a promising note. It’s well shot, takes time to establish characters, has some decent acting. A man dies in an awful accident in the mill, which happens to free up a job for a wandering drifter, our main character, Drifty McDrifterson.

Ok, I forget his name. I’ll snag it from IMDB in a bit.

His new boss is one of those pricks you love to hate, a bit like a Maine-accented Dr. House or what’s his face from Scrubs. (Man I’m bad with names tonight – I blame the Velvet Hammer microbrew I had last night).

Update: Drifty’s real name is John Hall. The love-to-hate prick is just Warwick. IMDB has no first name, so it might be, in fact, Prick Warwick. Is that too cutesy?

Anyway, Warwick runs the mill as his own personal sexual harassment and unsafe working conditions bonanza, though he’s not portrayed in a completely unsympathetic manner either. He’s down there in the heat, sweat and dirt with his men (and, of course, women), and he states that the struggling mill is all that’s keeping the dying town alive. It feels like a credible claim, judging from the little we see of that shitburg.

Another man dies in another accident, and Warwick replaces him with one of rural Maine’s six black men, who, considering the horror monsters running amok are truly an endangered species.

Well, after a narrowly averted closure due to OSHA meddling (solved with business’ old friend The Bribe), Warwick has a cleanup he needs done, in a hurry. He puts Drifty and a bunch of other people he has grudges against on the cleanup crew (Drifty had previously stopped him from beating the daylights out of his mistress in the parking lot in front of a dozen witnesses, which seems more like a favor to me than a slight) and off they go, to clean out a ton of muck and drive off or kill a bajillion rats.

Needless to say, the monster that’s been behind these ‘accidents’ will be chewing through our cast, particularly after Warwick goes completely and inexplicably nuts and becomes a crude caricature of his previous character (he smears mud on his face and goes all Commando on… everyone. There’s no rhyme or reason for it. It’s just bad writing)

I won’t go into details on how everyone dies. It’s a fairly typical b-horror movie from here on out. I will say that there is fun to be had with Warwick’s Maine accent (I’ve been imitating it for days, particularly the long ‘aah’ sound that peppers the accent, or its stereotype’s, speech). It’s a pretty forgettable film. You can skip to the end if you like, I have something spoilery to talk about.

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Ok? Ok. They changed the final monster! In the story there are rats, and these blind bat things, and deep under the mill there are tunnels that lead under a cemetary next door, where they find a monstrous, enormous rat. A blind, hideous, mutated rat.

In the movie, it’s a giant, blind, mutated rat-bat-thing. Err. Huh.

It slithers and doesn’t fly, it’s ravenously carnivorous (are there any bats that hunt prey larger than insects?) and.. its lair is in a cave whose roof opens to the sky. So it’s exposed to sunlight at least a few hours a day, and you could in fact see this enormous cave FROM THE MILL SO HOW DID THEY NOT KNOW IT WAS THERE AIIIE

Ahem.

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Other than that, a fairly forgettable B-movie.

Next Week: Sleepwalkers! Hey, I used to sleepwalk.
Last Week: Tales from the Darkside, which is pretty nifty really.