Graveyard Shift (1990) is one of the interminable list of B-grade Stephen King adaptations from the '90s. Like The Mangler, it's based on a story from Night Shift which is quick, effective and gory in its telling - but doesn't possess enough substance for a feature. Only a few insanely hammy performances prevent it from being unwatchable. Drifter John Hall (David Andrews) applies for a job at Bachman Mills, a textile plant run by the amoral foreman Warwick (Stephen Macht). Hall immediately butts heads with his boss, both over his attitude and affection for coworker Wisconsky (Kelly Wolf), who fends off Warwick's unwelcome advances. Warwick soon enlists Hall to help clean the plant's basement of rats, with the help of several dimwitted employees and a crazed exterminator (Brad Dourif). But there's something more than ordinary rats facing Hall and his colleagues, a creature that seems born of nightmares and a particularly lazy effects designer.
Even Stephen King didn't think much of Graveyard Shift, a by-the-numbers schlockfest that hits the story's broad notes while adding little of substance. Director Ralph S. Singleton and writer John Esposito don't conjure anything as goofy as The Mangler's devil cult or the assorted asininities of Maximum Overdrive, instead dwelling on cliches like the inherent ickiness of rodents. The underemployed "college boy" Hall is now a dashing brooder with a past, his oafish colleague Wisconsky a perky gal in a fetching crop top. The movie does enhance King's anti-capitalist message; like Mangler's laundry press, Bachman Mills is a rotting deathtrap begging for an OSHA shutdown, which Warwick avoids with threats, bluster and bribes. We're also assured that Wisconsky's job survived Warwick's sexual harassment due to union protections. Who says that horror movies can't have redeeming social messages?
One-time director Singleton pads the run time with tedious scenes of Hall receiving mockery from the surly locals (they serve him a rat sandwich at one point) and flirting with Wisconsky, played by the fetching but vapid Kelly Wolf. Meanwhile Warwick terrorizes his employees, scenes both repetitive and hilarious due to Stephen Macht's scenery-chewing. Macht conjures an unfathomable accent, a cross between Robert Shaw in Jaws, Bill the Butcher and Boomhauer, all delivered with fist-pumping, teeth-gnashing glee. Brad Dourif's role is a glorified cameo (he doesn't even get the dignity of a showdown with Rat Mama) but he aces an absurd monolog relating his experiences with flesh-eating rats in Vietnam. Their costars, especially the stiff-as-a-board David Andrews, can't compete.
Such camp pleasures are incidental as Graveyard Shift descends into repetitive scenes of employees crawling around dank basements, waiting for the inevitable claw to reach from the darkness. Sadly, even that claw fails to impress. The Rat Mama (a weird, cow-sized Rat-Bat hybrid) isn't bad in concept, but the effects are laughably poor. The creature's head resembles a chewed-up rubber toy, and it's never even in frame enough to be a convincing scare. Not that it matters, because this pathetic creation isn't half as fun as Warwick's descent into madness. Macht smears his face with black soot, brandishes a hunting knife, mutters Kurtz-like aphorisms and vows to take Rat Mama with him, becoming the movie's sole interesting character by default.
Graveyard Shift concludes with a gory finish, enabled by empty soda cans and blood-slicked industrial machinery. An ambiguous ending suggests the nightmare might just be beginning, but since we haven't seen the menagerie of mutant rats detailed by King, it rings hollow. Then, in a baffling coda, Singleton "treats" us to a self-made YouTube Poop of random Stephen Macht ejaculations set to a spooky beat, playing over the end credits. By then, like Warwick, we're glad that this rat-tastrophe is OVAAAAH.
