Horror in the 90s: 'Graveyard Shift'

Graveyard Shift (1990)

Directed by Ralph S. Singleton

Written by John Esposito

Starring David Andrews, Kelly Wolf, Stephen Macht, Brad Dourif

Release Date October 26th, 1990

Box Office $11.6 Million

Graveyard Shift is a grimy, gross surprise. I had zero expectations for this mostly forgotten monster movie, based on a Stephen King short story, and I was wonderfully surprised by just how boldly gross and silly Graveyard Shift is. Director Ralph S. Singleton has only one credit as a feature film director and credit to him, he made a heck of a unique little monster movie for a guy whose only previous experience was a pair of episodes of Cagney and Lacy.

Graveyard Shift stars David Andrews as John Hall, a drifter who arrives in a small New England town looking for work. Despite his having just arrived, everyone seems to know that he went to college at some point. Townies call him a college boy and express needless resentment for a group of grown adults. John does however, make a friend in town. A coworker named Jane takes an interest in John after finding out he's a widower and thus the only attractive and datable man in her zip code.

I say that John and Jane are coworkers and they are. John has just found work on the overnight or 'Graveyard' shift at a local textile plant owned and operated by the ruthless Warwick (Stephen Macht). Warwick is beyond merely shady, he's covering up multiple deaths that have occurred in his mill. Most recently, the man that John replaced was found mauled to death in the cotton thresher. How he got there is a mystery that will become clear as Graveyard Shift unfolds its monster movie narrative.

Rats have a big role to play in Graveyard Shift. Let's just say that this is not a movie that PETA would find acceptable. Rats are never a welcome site but the abuse and violence aimed their way in Graveyard Shift is almost enough to make you feel bad for the plague spreading little pests. Rats are everywhere in Graveyard Shift and even our hero John is not afraid to demonstrate his disdain for the little buggers. An important plot point finds John using his trusty slingshot to fire empty soda cans at invading rats near his thresher, unaware that antagonizing the rats got the last guy on this shift killed.

The rats are responsible for introducing the best thing about Graveyard Shift, the performance of horror movie MVP Brad Dourif. Indulging in his show-stealing, scene-stealing character actor schtick, Dourif plays a deeply gross and tormented exterminator who delights in his chosen profession. That Dourif's rat-catcher is going to die is not in question. How he dies and how gruesome that death will be is only a matter of patience on our part. Until his very expected demise however, Dourif is completely awesome, a wildly out of control weirdo who is so much gross fun to watch.

Less interesting is star David Andrews, a charisma black hole, Andrews is good at being a stoic good guy who lets his actions speak louder than his words. This is a good choice as when he talks its easy to drift off and forget he's there. Andrews is bland and forgettable and his zero chemistry with everyone and everything, save for his soda cans which he wields like a ninja master. Beyond that, his back story is odd and his very reason for existing is solely to be a counterpoint to the colorful players around him, and a giant king rat bat.

Yeah, about that killer. Early on, I was under the impression that the big bad of Graveyard Shift were the rats. I thought, maybe the film was taking a page from the Willard playbook and would be a movie about our hero, John wielding a rat army against Stephen Macht's vicious and corrupt business owner. Nope, instead, despite hinting that rats had killed the first victim of the movie, we will come to discover, spoiler alert, there is a giant rat-bat. The monster has wings but also a tale and it looks like a combination of a rat and a bat. How is this creature possible? The movie doesn't have a clue and it doesn't really matter.

There are plenty of things wrong or merely overlooked in Graveyard Shift but what works about the movie works well enough for me to have enjoyed it. I really enjoyed the sweaty, gross, grimy aesthetic of Graveyard Shift. The movie commits to the humid, nasty setting and the grossness of everything you see, the swampy, sweaty, nastiness acts as a unspoken justification for why there is a Rat-Bat Monster in the building. It's as if the collective slime, grime, and corruption melted via the heat into this vile creature that is now enacting vengeance against its creators.

Is Graveyard Shift a hidden gem of early 90s horror? Yeah, I think it is. I had a good time watching this movie. Granted, I had extremely low expectations going into it and that certainly helped with my enjoyment of the movie, but genuinely, I had a lot of fun. As a big fan of what Brad Dourif brings to the horror genre as an absolute horror movie legend, he's reason enough for Graveyard Shift to have a cult following. But the whole movie, including the inexplicable Rat-Bat monster, is really entertaining in a gross, low budget horror way.

This article in appreciation of Graveyard Shift is serialized from my book project, Horror in the 90s. I am writing reviews of every horror movie I can get my hands on released between January of 1990 and December of 1999 so that I can create the ultimate compendium of horror knowledge from the 1990s. It's a pivotal decade for the genre which was in grave decline from its heyday of the late 70s to the mid-80s. May felt the genre was waning out of existence until Scream exploded in popularity and the genre roared back to life as a potential blockbuster genre.

I'm fascinated by the state of the genre in the 1990s and I am convinced there is a lot to learn about movies, genre movies specifically, and our popular culture by examining the state of the horror genre in the 1990s. I've already written about most the horror films of 1990 but I cannot complete this effort without your help. If you'd like to help me make Horror in the 90s a reality, you can do so by making a monthly pledge on Vocal or by leaving a one-time tip on Vocal. You can also donate via my Ko-Fi account if you prefer. All donations go to support the book and everyone who donates will get a shout out in the completed book. Thanks!