Well not a good film. It's rather stupid but entertaining in a weird sort of way. It's a film that if there is nothing else on TV and you like horror movies then you might watch it. You are not missing very much by missing this film.The worst part about this is all of the really weird characters - in particular the "Rambo-like" exterminator. Everyone was just weird and some of them not very likable characters.They never even explored the reason for the creatures existence at the end of the film. It just existed and chewed people up because it was hungry I guess.I did get a few chuckles out if this one from the sheer weirdness of it all so it's not all that horrible of a film - it's just not good.5/10

The town has a rat infested ancient textile mill. The big problem is that people on the graveyard shift get eaten by a monster in the basement. John Hall (David Andrews) is a newcomer in town. He's given the opportunity to earn double by the manager Warwick (Stephen Macht). Over the July 4th weekend, a group of workers are given the task to clear out the basement.The actors are mostly unknowns. Brad Dourif does a good turn as a crazy creepy exterminator. Most everybody is over acting, doing a lot of manic performances, and being mean all the time. It's all forgettable.The least forgettable is all the rats. If anybody has a rat phobia, this movie will scare the it out of you. The rats are pretty good. I particularly like that the rats are big on the screen. They're not small rodents down at our feet. The audience sees them face to face with their beady little eyes. That's a great touch.Other than the rats, the directing is perfunctory at best. The pace is slow as director Singleton doesn't edit to ramp up the tension. The set is artificial but still somewhat creepy. Damn basement is always good horror material. The kills are pretty good. Again I think it's the rats. It's always creepy to have real rats around.

Stephen King and Hollywood has always had an unsteady relationship. For every good to decent film produced from the prolific horror-meister's works (Misery,Pet Semetary,Stand By Me) there have been several more middling to downright awful ones (Children of the Corn,The Lawnmower Man,The Dark Half). Graveyard Shift, a 1990 adaptation of King's same named short story, is absolutely in the latter category. Graveyard Shift is a complete waste of time and celluloid, devoid of any scares, laughs or any other redeeming quality. If you want a bottom of the barrel Stephen King film, look no further than this travesty.Set in a cotton mill in what I guess is supposed to be Maine (one character references Castle Rock, King's well known fictional Maine town), Graveyard Shift begins with a character who likes to shoot rats with rocks being attacked by . . . something . . . and then dying in the cotton picker. Into town walks John Hall (Dave Andrews) a drifter looking for work, who lands a job at the mill, under the direction of the rather unkind, and potentially unhinged, foreman, Warwick (Stephen Macht). Warwick is a rather despicable character, using the female employees to fulfill his sexual needs while trying to cut a few bucks here and there in regards to worker safety. When he is ordered to clean up the basement or be shut down, he recruits several of the plant workers for the job, but they quickly realize that there is . . . something . . . down there in the basement with them.Graveyard Shift is the kind of film that used to be cranked out in the 1970s and 80s by major studios, I suspect, because they were cheap to make and even with a lower than average box office compared to major films, they still managed to turn a decent profit for the studio. Because it is almost certain no one was greenlighting Graveyard Shift because it promised to be a good movie. And a good movie is definitely not what director Ralph S. Singleton and screenwriter Jon Esposito have supplied. There is nothing of value in Graveyard Shift. The characters are almost exclusively ciphers, existing for no other reason than to be picked off one by one by the film's creature that lives in the mill. Main character John Hall has no development to speak of, and the attempt by the filmmakers to create a relationship between him and female worker Jane (Kelly Wolf) is dead on arrival. Neither character is interesting, or heck, even really present, other than to serve as something for the camera to be focused on most of the time.Stephen Macht provides a seemingly hissable villain in the form of Warwick, but he is almost completely a caricature, a creation of the screenplay to give us someone to root against, not a three dimensional character. When he goes off his rocker towards the end of the film, it is completely out of left field, not something that has been building throughout the narrative. The only character who is even vaguely interesting is the exterminator called in to deal with the rat problem at the mill, played by Brad Dourif. His exterminator holds a personal vendetta against rats due to their use in torture when he was in Vietnam (and I wonder if some material intended for his character was transplanted to Warwick at some point in the re-write stage of development). But slightly interesting doesn't equal necessary, and Dourif's character is even given the weakest, most pointless send-off of any of the film's characters.The makeup effects of the creature are acceptable, I guess, but we are never given much of a good look at it. But, for the most part, the film's gore quotient, one of the reasons people would show up to these films, is pretty limited. And there is certainly no tension, scares or suspense to speak of. Never once was I concerned for anyone on screen, and there is a jump scare or two, but nothing remarkable, and many of them are predictable.Graveyard Shift was released in 1990, at the end of the horror film era of the previous two decades, before the genre would go into remission for a few years before being re-born with the self referential Scream series followed by Hollywood's brief dalliance with J-Horror. And frankly, if Graveyard Shift is representative of what the genre brought to the table, then it was deserving of being buried.

I do not like rats. This place is full of them, Why did I watch this? These rats are vicious. But there is something in the basement that is even more vicious.I really enjoyed David Andrews as the man you most want to see in the basement alone.Brad Dourif as the exterminator made the film worth watching.But, it is not just the foreman who ends up in the basement, but the whole gang. Will they escape? Maybe some will. Will there be screaming? You can count on it. Will the foreman get his? You'll have to watch to find out.