"The Last Rung on the Ladder", a melancholic story with no supernatural or horror elements.
"The Ledge" is a straightforward crime-and-revenge story that also lacks any supernatural content.
"The Woman in the Room" is much like "The Last Rung on the Ladder" in that it's more a tragedy than a horror story. It's painfully realistic, being about a man agonizing over the decision to euthanize his elderly, terminally ill mother.
"The Lawnmower Man" has an unusually comedic style for a Stephen King story (though the protagonist still gets slaughtered by an autonomous lawnmower).
Science Marches On : While they haven't managed to get close to Venus yet, the talk about leprosynote also known as Hansen's disease in "I Am The Doorway" seems antiquated through a modern lens. With a number of drugs, leprosy has been cured in areas where the patients can afford the cure (about $200), and the stigma has all but disappeared in modern times.
What Could Have Been: As recounted by King in the "Notes" section of Nightmares & Dreamscapes, "Gray Matter" almost didn't make it into the book. King says "Suffer the Little Children" (eventually published in N&D) was also up for inclusion in Shift, having been written during the same period as most of Shift's other stories. But his editor said the book was getting "too unwieldy" (read: too expensive to print or sell), and one story had to be left out. King voted for "Matter," his editor for "Children," and King ended up going along with his editor's judgment. Legend has it that "The Cat from Hell" (which King also wrote during this same period of his career, and which much later was included in Just After Sunset) was deleted from Shift as well, but this is possibly apocryphal.
"Graveyard Shift" and "The Mangler" are inspired by Stephen King's own experiences working in a textile mill and an industrial laundry. It's unusual for King's Most Writers Are Writers habit, as very few working writers appear in the stories.
"The Woman in the Room" was inspired by the death of King's mother.
The film
Breakaway Pop Hit: "That's What Friends Are For" was originally written by Carole Bayer Sager and Burt Bacharach for the film's closing credits, where it was performed by Rod Stewart. A couple years later Dionne Warwick saw the movie on TV and decided to cover the song herself after hearing it, with Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight, and Elton John joining in. Although this is still considered an early 80s comedy classic, very few people know its connection to the song; in fact, more than a few people have probably just thought that it was Rod Stewart covering a Dionne Warwick song.
Cast the Runner-Up: Henry Winkler was offered the choice of either lead, and took the role of the wimpy morgue director, in part, to go against type, and play a character opposite of the macho Fonzie character. "I thought I'd play Richie Cunningham for once," he said on Twitter.
John Belushi was offered the role of Bill, but turned it down. He later died during production of the film. Mickey Rourke and Kurt Russell auditioned for the part.
