Review of Graveyard Shift (1990) by Filipeneto — 18 Dec 2019

A bad idea for a movie.

Everything happens in an old industrial weaving set up by a creek and an abandoned cemetery, which seems to have been overrun and turned into a swamp, where graves and bodies float. In the midst of this general rot environment, a thriving rat community was born and invaded weaving. Now the owner wants the rat-free factory and the basement free to make new workspaces, but something terrible is killing employees at night.

Inspired by a short Stephen King tale, it is a film with little to see and little story to tell besides scaring no one. A new employee, stupid co-workers, the usual cliché of the hot secretary who has an affair with the boss, who is an idiot and who knows more than he looks, caring little about the employees. And after all, the terrible and giant monster is a kind of cross between a rat and a bat, which never comes up entirely and is clearly fake, in one of the worst-made special effects I've ever seen since the Spielberg shark.

Is there anything good in this movie? More or less. The actors do a decent job, David Andrews works even harder than the material deserves, I think. He was good enough, and so can Stephen Macht, who was cynical and cruel enough to deserve our hatred. But that's all. Kelly Wolf and Ilona Margolis limit themselves to being handsome faces and beautiful bodies to suffer or be in danger. Brad Dourif is ridiculous. Vic Polizos is stupid and Jimmy Woodard is histrionic.

In short, it is an unwritten and very poor horror movie, where everything is based on the environment and gore. It doesn't scare us, it almost makes us laugh at certain times.