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Graveyard Shift

 Graveyard Shift
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TVTItem
 Graveyard Shift
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Graveyard Shift
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Graveyard Shift is a 1990 horror film, based on the short story of the same name by Stephen King from Night Shift and starring David Andrews, Brad Dourif, Stephen Macht, and Andrew Divoff.Drifter John Hall arrives in a flyspeck town and goes to work at the local 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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fetched
2023-09-24T11:20:10Z
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parsed
2023-09-24T11:20:10Z
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DBTropes
 Graveyard Shift / int_10937270
type
Noisy Nature
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Noisy Nature: The rats squeak constantly.
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 Graveyard Shift / int_13fc7795
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Reprise Medley
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Reprise Medley: The end credits take snippets of Warwick's Large Ham dialogue and broad New English accent, and almost create a rap song. It's worthy of "Weird Al" Yankovic. It's got to be heard to be believed.
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 Graveyard Shift / int_18aff462
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Artistic License – Biology
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Artistic License – Biology: 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. "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.
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 Graveyard Shift / int_1e584efa
type
Cruel and Unusual Death
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Cruel and Unusual Death: The opening victim falls into machinery and is torn apart. The monster meets the same fate at the end.
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1.0
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 Graveyard Shift / int_20f689e9
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Adaptational Villainy
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Adaptational Villainy: Warwick in the short story was simply a dick to Hall and the other mill workers, more or less ending up an Asshole Victim. 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.
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 Graveyard Shift / int_22793d67
type
Terrifying Pet Store Rat
 Graveyard Shift / int_22793d67
comment
Terrifying Pet Store Rat: 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.
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1.0
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 Graveyard Shift / int_2d4fa515
type
Ax-Crazy
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Ax-Crazy: Warwick goes batshit crazy after being trapped in the cave underneath the mill and sustaining a severe head injury.
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1.0
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 Graveyard Shift / int_33d5b7f2
type
Adapted Out
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Adapted Out: The Queen Rat doesn't appear in the movie at all, despite being The Reveal in the short story.
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 Graveyard Shift / int_34889673
type
Gender Flip
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Gender Flip: 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.
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 Graveyard Shift / int_3cb1d38d
type
Bad Boss
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Bad Boss: 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.
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 Graveyard Shift / int_41a48472
type
Bat Out of Hell
 Graveyard Shift / int_41a48472
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Bat Out of Hell: 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.
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 Graveyard Shift / int_475d592d
type
You Dirty Rat!
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You Dirty Rat!
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1.0
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1.0
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 Graveyard Shift / int_48c99e19
type
Death by Adaptation
 Graveyard Shift / int_48c99e19
comment
Death by Adaptation: Wisconsky is mortally wounded by Warwick.
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 Graveyard Shift / int_4d97e2b9
type
Urine Trouble
 Graveyard Shift / int_4d97e2b9
comment
Urine Trouble: One incontinent rat leaves a large puddle of pee on the seat of a chair.
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 Graveyard Shift / int_557838d1
type
Adaptational Attractiveness
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Adaptational Attractiveness: 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 much braver and more proactive by comparison.
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Graveyard Shift / int_557838d1
 Graveyard Shift / int_5a40d6a
type
Adaptation Distillation
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Adaptation Distillation: 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.
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 Graveyard Shift / int_5b057eae
type
Animalistic Abomination
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comment
Animalistic Abomination: 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.
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1.0
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 Graveyard Shift / int_62434fe2
type
Sanity Slippage
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Sanity Slippage: Warwick suffers it after being trapped in the mill's depths. The head injury he sustained couldn’t have helped either.
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 Graveyard Shift / int_6edc54d5
type
Here We Go Again!
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Here We Go Again!: The short story ends with the morning shift workers arriving at the mill, completely unaware of the horror they're about to descend into.
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 Graveyard Shift / int_6feeef5c
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Censor Box
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Censor Box: In-Universe. The bulletin board at the diner has a centerfold pinup, to which someone has affixed a notice big enough to cover her rack.
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 Graveyard Shift / int_7131e4c9
type
Rodents of Unusual Size
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comment
Rodents of Unusual Size: 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. 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.
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 Graveyard Shift / int_72cdfc33
type
Big Bad Ensemble
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Big Bad Ensemble: The monster and Warwick after he goes crazy.
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 Graveyard Shift / int_7453bc5b
type
Spared by the Adaptation
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Spared by the Adaptation: Hall makes it.
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 Graveyard Shift / int_7a143509
type
Shell-Shocked Veteran
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comment
Shell-Shocked Veteran: It's pretty clear Tucker Cleveland is still traumatized overseeing fellow soldiers being eaten alive by giant rats.
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1.0
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 Graveyard Shift / int_823c6e3e
type
Large Ham
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Large Ham: Everyone is this to some extent, but Warwick and Tucker take the cake.
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 Graveyard Shift / int_86ee8070
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World of Ham
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comment
World of Ham: With the exception of Hall and Wisconsky, everyone is some flavor of a Large Ham.
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 Graveyard Shift / int_8829dfa0
type
What the Hell Is That Accent?
 Graveyard Shift / int_8829dfa0
comment
What the Hell Is That Accent?: Warwick's infamous speech patterns. The character is supposed to be from Maine but sounds more like, as one YouTube comment put it, "every accent in the world, with perhaps a TOUCH of New England thrown in for variety"
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 Graveyard Shift / int_8c00901a
type
Creepy Good
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comment
Creepy Good: Cleveland, to an extent. He's somewhat unethical when it comes to his job and as creepy as only Brad Dourif can be, but he's one of the only people at the mill to be friendly to Hall.
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1.0
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 Graveyard Shift / int_8d83bed9
type
The Vietnam Vet
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comment
The Vietnam Vet: 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:
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 Graveyard Shift / int_8ed5c6e4
type
Asshole Victim
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comment
Asshole Victim: Danson, Brogan, and Stephenson who picked on Hall throughout the movie.
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 Graveyard Shift / int_93387c2e
type
Monster Delay
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comment
Monster Delay
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 Graveyard Shift / int_93f0fc43
type
Hooks and Crooks
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Hooks and Crooks: Hall wields a hook to defend himself during the finale.
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1.0
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 Graveyard Shift / int_a3c6c2b7
type
"Facing the Bullets" One-Liner
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comment
"Facing the Bullets" One-Liner: Warwick, when about to make a suicidal attack on the monster, spouts this at it:
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 Graveyard Shift / int_a65288e2
type
Ascended Extra
 Graveyard Shift / int_a65288e2
comment
Ascended Extra: 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 Big Bad in the movie.
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 Graveyard Shift / int_acecb17d
type
Chekhov's Skill
 Graveyard Shift / int_acecb17d
comment
Chekhov's Skill: Hall's slingshot and his accuracy when using it to fire empty soda cans.
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1.0
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 Graveyard Shift / int_b47d95be
type
No OSHA Compliance
 Graveyard Shift / int_b47d95be
comment
No OSHA Compliance: 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.
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 Graveyard Shift / int_b87666bb
type
Eccentric Exterminator
 Graveyard Shift / int_b87666bb
comment
Eccentric Exterminator: Tucker Cleveland (played by Brad Dourif) 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.
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 Graveyard Shift / int_c6846f0f
type
Bad with the Bone
 Graveyard Shift / int_c6846f0f
comment
Bad with the Bone: One is wielded by Warwick in the film's final act.
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 Graveyard Shift / int_c868a42a
type
Freudian Excuse
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comment
Freudian Excuse: Tucker Cleveland's love of killing rats stems from having watched the Viet Cong feed his fellow soldiers to rats during the Vietnam War.
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 Graveyard Shift / int_caf89e54
type
Taking You with Me
 Graveyard Shift / int_caf89e54
comment
Taking You with Me: Warwick tries to do this with the monster. He fails.
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 Graveyard Shift / int_d028e0da
type
An Arm and a Leg
 Graveyard Shift / int_d028e0da
comment
An Arm and a Leg: Carmichael gets his arm ripped off after sticking it through a hole in a wall. Mind, this is after he and the other workers know there's a killer monster with them.
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 Graveyard Shift / int_eb8ec7c8
type
Jerkass
 Graveyard Shift / int_eb8ec7c8
comment
Jerkass: Warwick.
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 Graveyard Shift / int_f97df10b
type
The World's Expert (on Getting Killed)
 Graveyard Shift / int_f97df10b
comment
The World's Expert (on Getting Killed): Tucker gets his head smashed by the monster(indirectly).
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 Graveyard Shift / int_fd4f8299
type
Well-Intentioned Extremist
 Graveyard Shift / int_fd4f8299
comment
Well-Intentioned Extremist: Warwick is a Bad Boss because he believes it's the only way to keep the mill open. This goes out the window once he goes crazy.
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Graveyard Shift

The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

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Bat Out of Hell / int_f4bee6fd
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Eccentric Exterminator / int_f4bee6fd
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Films of 1990–1994 / int_f4bee6fd
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Love to Hate / int_f4bee6fd
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Terrifying Pet Store Rat / int_f4bee6fd
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Urine Trouble / int_f4bee6fd
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What the Hell Is That Accent? / int_f4bee6fd
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You Dirty Rat! / int_f4bee6fd