Graveyard Shift (1990) – WTF Happened to This Adaptation?
The King train never stops it seems. While I joke that I could make a whole damn series just dissecting the various Stephen King adaptations that we have been getting for….let me check my math here…almost 50 years, putting them in here a few times a year is both fun and necessary. It’s necessary because of the sheer amount of them over the years and we all have our favorites but it’s also fun because we get to shine a light on smaller movies. Movies like today’s subject Graveyard Shift that is celebrating its 35th anniversary. Not seemingly anyone’s favorite movie or even King adaptation, it was one of those movies you could catch on a Saturday at 2pm on the basic cable channel of your choosing and have a fun time. It has a good collection of actors sprinkled throughout and is a fun little time waster. I knew it was a King story but hadn’t realized it was one of his magazine entries that was later compiled into a collection of stories for release on bookstore shelves. You know the drill by now, the short story has an emphasis on short so how well did the movie do in translating it to the screen? Grab your firehoses as we find out what happened to this adaptation.
The Movie
By 1985, the Stephen King adaptation business was in full swing, and boy business was booming. Graveyard Shift may have first appeared in Cavalier Magazine in 1970, but it was one of 20 stories to be smooshed together to make Night Shift which would be Kings 5th published book and first book that was a collection of short stories. Graveyard Shift would have its rights optioned in 1985 but would not be the first story to do so. Children of the Corn, also a very short story, would come out in 1984 while The Ledge and Quitters Inc would be included in Cat’s Eye that was released in Spring of 85. The Boogeyman would get included as one half of a two-parter in 1982 and of course later remade properly in 2023. The company that optioned the rights for Graveyard Shift was Brimstone Pictures and it was George Demick that pulled the trigger. Demick had worked with George A. Romero on Knightriders and had visited with King on the set of his own adaptation of Trucks, Maximum Overdrive, also from Night Shift, in North Carolina. Whether it was the massive amounts of cocaine or the association with Romero we will never know, but King agreed, and Tom Savini was set to do the effects, and apparently later direct if sources are to be believed, before all of this fell through.
Later on in the decade another attempt was made, this time with William J Dunn buying the rights for the very small amount of $2,500. This was due to Dunn working with King already as a location scout on things like Creepshow 2 and Pet Sematary, as well as Dunn being part of a smaller company that helped form the Maine Film Office, and well, quite frankly, because the short story is VERY short. King was excited to see what ideas the studio came up with and had the attitude of pay as you go for these guys. Dunn pulled in Ralph Singleton to direct based off a script from the previously unmade film by John Esposito. Singleton had only directed 2 episodes of Cagney and Lacey but was assistant director for things like Taxi Driver, Death Wish, Network, and The Sentinel so he worked with some of the best. This would be Esposito’s first screenplay, but he would also go on to pen a segment of Theater Bizarre, an episode of Masters of Horror, and 7 episodes of the Creepshow revival. If IMDB is to be believed, he is also attached to the adaptation of the video game Faith: The Unholy Trinity which, go play that game.
The finances from the film would be attained from Larry Sugar Entertainment who put the production on a fast track to be released right after Pet Sematary and Paramount would be the company to distribute. The cast includes David Andrews, Kelly Wolf, Andrew Divoff, Vic Polizos, Robert Allan Beuth, Brad Dourif, and the absolute best part of the movie, Stephen Macht who likes your style. Dourif and Divoff have appeared on the channel regularly but special shout out to Divoff who found his wife on set with actress Raissa Danilova. The two would marry two years later. Beuth is a character actor that also showed up in Ghostbusters II and Outbreak, Polizos has made a heck of a career with voiceover work and episodic TV but gets a special CHUD shoutout, and Kelly Wolf has a had a quiet but impressive career. Macht is the man in this and is a favorite from being the cool cop dad in Monster Squad but is an accomplished stage and screen actor while David Andrews may have had the most impressive career outside of Dourif. He had longer runs in hit shows like JAG and Justified while also appearing in movies like Apollo 13 and World War Z.
The movie was filmed in Harmony, Maine at the oldest woolen mill yard in the United States. Bartlett Yarns Inc was founded in 1821 and is the perfect setting. The movie was released at the right time in late October of 1990 but sadly didn’t connect with critics or audiences. It only made 11 million on its 10-million-dollar budget even after opening at number 1 in its first week and has a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes but even past that flawed system you will be hard pressed to find good reviews. It received a very bare bones Paramount DVD before a Scream Factory Blu-ray in 2020 and a cool Kino Lorber 4K in 2025. Sadly, Stephen King counts himself amongst those that don’t care for it, calling it a cheap and quick cash in.
The Story
Let’s take a look at the man behind the typewriter more so than about the actual short story. Without looking it up, do you know how long this guy has been publishing stories? We are in the year of our lord 2025 and the guy had his first short story published in 1959. That is EIGHT decades with published works. 66 years ago we had our first look at the King of Kings with his short story Land of a Million Years Ago. That went what we call uncollected meaning it didn’t end up in a collection like Graveyard Shift did but even that same year he would produce Jumper which WOULD end up collected in 2000’s Secret Windows. Graveyard Shift was actually his 25th published short story that first showed up in the October 1970 issue of Cavalier which was a semi regular thing with King contributing to the magazine fairly regularly in the decade. Graveyard Shift was later collected in Night Shift with 19 other stories as his first published short story collection in February of 1978. This story is fewer than 20 pages and aside from a great magazine picture inside Cavalier, seemingly goes under the radar but apart from bullying carries with it most of the author’s hallmarks.
What is the Same?
A drifter named Hall ends up finding work at an old textile mill in Maine. Warwick is the scummy foreman who is clearly up to shady activities and doesn’t like Hall because he is probably threatened by him. He calls him College Boy and orders he and the rest of the workers around while being disliked by all around him. 4th of July hits and there is call for a cleaning crew to get paid extra to clean out the basement levels of the mill. Hall, along with Warwick, Wisconsky, Ippetson, Carmichael, and a few others begin to clean out the lower levels with gloves, flashlights, and firehoses. Before long they are besieged upon by rats of increasing size and veracity before they eventually find what looks like a sub-basement. Warwick, Hall, Wisconsky go down together before finding a mutated large rat that has been turned into a bat/rat hybrid while the smaller rats stay in the shadows and watch the entire time. Warwick is eventually killed off while screaming after Hall.
What is Different?
What do you do with a 17-page short story? Well, you beef it up with a whole lot of subplot and extra kills. Much like the 30 pages of Children of the Corn or 20 pages of The Mangler, both from this book, you have to get a little creative to flesh it out to feature length. While many of the characters are the same, they get a lot of different treatment in terms of screen time. Warwick, Hall, and Wisconsky are the three main characters of the story, and you could definitely see that translate into the movie, but this time Wisconsky is a woman and the quasi-love interest of Hall. The movie doesn’t explore this too deeply but apparently there was a lot of screen time together and a shower scene with just her cut out of the final product. The story has well over 30 people working the 4th of July cleanup crew but the movie lowers that down to less than 10 and turns the chief antagonist rat into a slasher killer of sorts who picks them off one at a time. Brad Dourif is an exterminator character with a cool little dog and that guy doesn’t even exist in the story. Also made up for the movie is anyone else seen in town and Warwick’s secretary who knows he is up to no good. While only two characters die in the short story, fittingly Hall and Warwick, everyone EXCEPT Hall gets killed off in the film.
The flow is also quite different as the story and movie open with the same scene: a factory worker being bored and messing with rats but in the story its Hall and it moves quickly into the cleanup while the movie has a random guy who is killed off after he kills a rat with one of the machines. For the record, the movie was quite careful with the rats with fake ones as the dead rats, trained swimmers in the water, and ones that were hit with the cans being pulled to safety by handlers. The movie focuses on only two variants of rats with typical if not big ones roaming the basement levels while the mega sized bat rat is the leader and the one that does all of the killing. The short story packs more than that in its brief run time with all different sizes of traditional rats scurrying around as well as large crow sized flying bat rats causing issues but the big reveal in the story is a cow sized rat with no legs that is simply there to supply more rats. All the time being in the basements has made them blind and different than normal rats with many of them missing their back legs too.
Finally, as fun of a foil as Warwick is in the story, he is the main reason to watch the movie. He stays in true form to be a crazy guy, even killing off Wisconsky and going full PTSD before death while having just flat out some of the best lines and line deliveries in 90s horror. The book one actually ends up garnering some sympathy as his bribery is only hinted at possibly happening while the film version does it in front of our eyes and the story iteration becoming almost a hostage to Hall who becomes far crazier than movie Warwick.
Legacy
I personally think that Stephen King’s short stories are some of the most fun things by the author to read. While IT, The Stand, and his Dark Tower series are all epic and novellas like Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption or The Mist stand out as great books and even better movies, his shorts just have that charm to them. Some of them are mini sequels or prequels to bigger properties and some are just fun little nuggets and that’s what Graveyard Shift is. It could have been longer, but it also allows you to wonder what is to become of the people and the mill itself as well as what other rat-based horror lurks inside. All that being said, 1990’s Graveyard Shift adaptation is a fun and dumb slice of 90s horror with one of the decade’s best one-off performances. Stephen Macht’s dialogue and delivery will go down as all timers, and the movie ends with a weird and wildly entertaining end credits song. While the story is short and sweet, its ultimately forgettable while the movie has style that stays with you long after Hall punches out from his long day at work.
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