Line #13 Film/GraveyardShift


1	[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/graveyard_shift_1990_poster.png]]
2	[[caption-width-right:300:It’s a living... but not for long.]]
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4	''Graveyard Shift'' is a 1990 horror film, based on the short story of the same name by Creator/StephenKing from ''Literature/NightShift'' and starring David Andrews, Creator/BradDourif, Creator/StephenMacht, and Creator/AndrewDivoff.
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6	Drifter John Hall arrives in the flyspeck town of Gates Falls, Maine and goes to work at the Bachman textile mill, where he discovers a severe rat problem in the basement. Warwick, the mill's disgruntled foreman, isn't willing to do anything about it until it becomes apparent that the mill will close unless the rats are stopped. Following a descent into the cavernous depths of the basement, Hall, Warwick, and other employees are trapped by a collapse, and soon encounter a gigantic, bat-like monster hellbent on devouring them.
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8	----
9	!!This film provides examples of:
10	* AdaptedOut: [[spoiler: The Queen Rat]] doesn't appear in the movie at all, despite being TheReveal in the short story.
11	* AnimalisticAbomination: [[spoiler: The Queen Rat in the short story, a massive, cow-sized creature with no eyes or limbs, who exists solely to endlessly spawn more rats.]]
12	* ArtisticLicenseBiology: Aside from the implausible mutations, the rats in the short story appear to have been locked up in a sealed sub-basement with no food source for years without dying. Averted in the film, where the tunnels are shown to be extensive and connect to the outside.
13	** "Doris", the rat that urinates on a chair in the movie, must've been 90% bladder, as the resulting puddle covers nearly half the seat.
14	* AscendedExtra: The Bat-Rat, which was just mentioned in passing in the short story as one of several unique breeds that had evolved in the isolated ecosphere beneath the mill, is the BigBad in the movie.
15	* AssholeVictim: Danson, Brogan, and Stephenson who picked on Hall throughout the movie.
16	* AdaptationalAttractiveness: Wisconsky in the short story is described as a lazy, whiny, cowardly fat man. Wisconsky in the movie is a fit and fairly attractive woman who is [[AdaptationalBadass much braver and more proactive by comparison]].
17	* AdaptationDistillation: The short story's premise that ordinary rats had evolved into armored and winged variants controlled by a giant albino queen isn't referenced at all, leaving the monster as a less-fantastical giant mutant bat.
18	* AdaptationalVillainy: Warwick in the short story was simply a dick to Hall and the other mill workers, more or less ending up an AssholeVictim. Warwick in the film is a sadistic lunatic who goes full-blown murderous by the final act. Ironically, it's Hall who seems sadistic in the short story.
19	* AnArmAndALeg: [[spoiler:Carmichael]] gets his arm ripped off after [[HandInTheHole sticking it through a hole in a wall.]] Mind, this is after he and the other workers [[TooDumbToLive know there's a killer monster with them.]]
20	* AxCrazy: Warwick goes batshit crazy after being trapped in the cave underneath the mill and sustaining a severe head injury.
21	* BadBoss: Warwick, who on a good day fires his employees for questioning him and assigns workers he personally doesn’t like to shitty jobs out of spite, and on bad days outright attacks them.
22	* BadWithTheBone: One is wielded by Warwick in the film's final act.
23	* BatOutOfHell: The monster appears to be a Type 2. It's implied - albeit a lot more clearly in the original story - that the creature is not a bat at all, but a rat that has grown bat-like wings through something resembling convergent evolution.
24	* BigBadEnsemble: The monster and Warwick after he goes crazy.
25	* CensorBox: InUniverse. The bulletin board at the diner has a centerfold pinup, to which someone has affixed a notice big enough to cover her rack.
26	* ChekhovsSkill: Hall's [[ChekhovsGun slingshot]] and his accuracy when using it to fire empty soda cans.
27	* CoolCar: Wisconsky has a red 1966 Ford Mustang and Warwick has a black 1960 Cadillac Coupe [=DeVille=].
28	* CreepyGood: Cleveland, to an extent. He's somewhat unethical when it comes to his job and as creepy as only Creator/BradDourif can be, but he's one of the only people at the mill to be friendly to Hall.
29	* CruelAndUnusualDeath: The opening victim falls into machinery and is torn apart. [[spoiler:The monster meets the same fate at the end.]]
30	* DeathByAdaptation: [[spoiler:Wisconsky is mortally wounded by Warwick.]]
31	* EccentricExterminator: Tucker Cleveland (played by Creator/BradDourif) takes way too much pride in killing rats, and keeps a dog specifically bred and trained to hunt rats that he feeds whiskey and a pistol, which he uses in particularly aggressive rats.
32	* FacingTheBulletsOneLiner: [[spoiler:Warwick]], when about to make a suicidal attack on the monster, spouts this at it:
33	-> [[spoiler:'''Warwick''']]: We're going to Hell... ''together!''
34	* FreudianExcuse: Tucker Cleveland's love of killing rats stems from having watched the Viet Cong feed his fellow soldiers to rats during the Vietnam War.
35	* GenderFlip: Wisconsky, an enormously fat guy in the short story, is a physically fit woman(and Hall's romantic interest) in the film, basically an in-surname-only version of the character.
36	* HereWeGoAgain: The short story ends with the morning shift workers arriving at the mill, completely unaware of the horror they're about to descend into.
37	* HooksAndCrooks: Hall wields a hook to defend himself during the finale.
38	* {{Jerkass}}: Warwick.
39	* LargeHam: Everyone is this to some extent, but Warwick and Tucker take the cake.
40	* MonsterDelay
41	* NoisyNature: The rats squeak constantly.
42	* NoOSHACompliance: The mill is very clearly a wretched place to work, with stairs that collapse, a machine that can easily thresh somebody to death, and the vermin problem. Justified after a fashion, as it's run by a callous lunatic.
43	* SanitySlippage: Warwick suffers it after being trapped in the mill's depths. The head injury he sustained couldn’t have helped either.
44	* SparedByTheAdaptation: [[spoiler:Hall makes it.]]
45	* TakingYouWithMe: [[spoiler:Warwick]] tries to do this with the monster. He fails.
46	* TerrifyingPetStoreRat: While they're at least agouti and ''look'' wild, the live rats aren't particularly aggressive-looking. Some of them are even visibly bruxing - busily grinding their back teeth - which any rat-lover will tell you is ''cheerful'' body language.
47	* RepriseMedley: The end credits take snippets of Warwick's LargeHam dialogue and broad New English accent, along with snippets of everyone else’s dialogue, and almost create a rap song. It's worthy of Music/WeirdAlYankovic. It's got to be heard to be believed.
48	--> '''The Graveyard shift.'''
49	--> '''Show's....Ovah!'''
50	--> '''Can't be more than an instant enema by now.'''
51	* RodentsOfUnusualSize: Cleveland recounts how, while he was in the Vietnam War, he saw the Viet Cong train rats at least a foot long to eat American soldiers.
52	** ''ALL'' the rats in the short story, especially once the workers descend into the sub-basement where the rats have bred and evolved completely undisturbed for decades.
53	* ShellShockedVeteran: It's pretty clear Tucker Cleveland is still traumatized overseeing fellow soldiers being eaten alive by giant rats.
54	* UrineTrouble: One incontinent rat leaves a large puddle of pee on the seat of a chair.
55	* TheVietnamVet: Played with and discussed. Cleveland served there, and specifically mentions the siege of Con Thien as the place where he first saw rats eat men alive; in the present day, he seems to have focused all his PTSD, anger, and psychotic tendencies onto rats specifically as a form of revenge. He admits it, somewhat, but also says that he doesn't think of himself as the "sad" or "pathetic" type popularized in fiction:
56	-->''"...And I AIN'T one a' them burnin'-baby flashback fuckups y' see Creator/BruceDern playin', so quit yer grinnin'."''
57	* WellIntentionedExtremist: Warwick is a BadBoss because he believes it's the only way to keep the mill open. [[spoiler:This goes out the window once he goes crazy.]]
58	* WhatTheHellIsThatAccent: Warwick's infamous speech patterns. The character is supposed to be from Maine but sounds more like, as one Website/YouTube comment put it, "every accent in the world, with perhaps a TOUCH of New England thrown in for variety"
59	* TheWorldsExpertOnGettingKilled: [[spoiler:Tucker gets his head smashed by the monster(indirectly).]]
60	* WorldOfHam: With the exception of Hall and Wisconsky, everyone is some flavor of a LargeHam.
61	* YouDirtyRat

Context Film / GraveyardShift