Why Stephen King (& Critics) Were Wrong About Graveyard Shift

Why Stephen King (& Critics) Were Wrong About Graveyard Shift

Despite what critics and source material author Stephen King claim, 1990’s Graveyard Shift is a nifty, brutal bit of eco-horror that’s worth watching.

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Why Stephen King (& Critics) Were Wrong About Graveyard Shift

Horror icon Stephen King was not alone in disliking the 1990s Graveyard Shift, but he is wrong about the horror film nonetheless. With dozens of novels to his name, it is only fair that the prolific horror scribe Stephen King doesn’t care for a handful of the movie adaptations of his work. The author famously even disliked some of his own books, with only a select few being Stephen King’s favorite stories.

King infamously hated Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining when it was first released and has never been slow to dismiss an adaptation of his work if it doesn’t fit his standards, but this has not always been fair to the movies in question. More than once (as was the case with The Shining), King has dismissed adaptations of his work that have gone on to become cult classics. In other cases, King has slammed adaptations that critics were equally unimpressed with, but which are actually more interesting and inventive than both reviewers and the horror author give home credit for.

Take, for example, the 1990s Graveyard Shift. Like many critics at the time, King called Graveyard Shift a “quick exploitation picture” and said the movie was a lesser adaptation of his oeuvre. Based on a story from the collection Night Shift (like King’s favorite story “Survivor Type”), Graveyard Shift tells the simple gruesome story of a textile mill infested by monstrously oversized rodents and the unfortunate working stiffs stuck trying to root out the terrifying mega-rats. Cerebral it isn’t – but, despite King’s dismissal, the movie is an effective adaptation of the original story (which is itself a pretty minimal and grimy slice of eco-horror) with a stellar bit of scene-stealing from horror veteran Brad Dourif as an obsessive, unhinged exterminator.

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The storyline is slight, but the premise that the mill’s workers are put-upon laborers trapped in a thankless, horrifying job is a compelling one that works far better than the unintentionally funny King/Tobe Hooper collaboration The Mangler. Unlike that later dud, Graveyard Shift gives the humdrum work lives of its characters believable brutality long before the rodents show up, and the fact that they are trapped in this job due to economic hardship makes them a sympathetic bunch. That said, the movie finds room in its cast list for a rogue’s gallery of horror legends ranging from Dourif to Stephen Macht to Andrew Divoff of Wishmaster fame, all of whom spend as much time chewing the scenery as the rodents.

Graveyard Shift’s visual effects are satisfyingly gross and the movie’s story gradually morphs from a slice of satirical eco-horror into a more Lovecraftian effort from King as the movie wears on and the characters come closer to the belly of the beast and ends up being a surprisingly surreal trip to Hell via a bad job. It is a deeply flawed movie and far from perfect, but given the fact that King sang the praises of the superficially similar The Boogens, it seems unfair that this outing got such a bad reputation from its author and critics. Grimy, brutal, and still agreeably silly, Graveyard Shift may be inherently over-the-top, but it’s also quintessentially Stephen King.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/stephen-king-critics-wrong-graveyard-shift-good-why-explained/

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