To a great extent, then, this creature represents the great unknown and brings fear to people. The creature is rather like the Lochness monster in that we never really see it - we merely see shadows and an occasional part. “In the film the characters are pitted against each other and a terrifying creature that lives beneath the cemetery next to the textile mill,” comments producer/director Ralph S. Hall survives, but soon finds himself back inside the mill with the ever-present rats and the “thing.” The grand finale comes when Hall trips the loom into operation, the rats and the “thing” fall into it and become mincemeat. They fall into the underground river and are carried out into the cemetery where they engage in a life and death struggle. With no way of escape, the “thing” attacks and kills one after another, until only Warwick and Hall are left. Warwick goes with them.Ī short time later, the group starts back up the stairs, but the rotting steps crumble and disintegrate. Soon, someone discovers a trap door, and the entire crew cautiously descends the rotting staircase. Of course, the atmosphere in the basement is even more foreboding than in the mill. Jane Wisconsky, another mill worker, is also assigned to clean up the basement when she refuses to grant him sexual favors. The tyrannical foreman, Warwick, quickly hires an unsuspecting replacement, John Hall, and assigns him to the basement clean-up detail. The situation intensifies when a second man dies mysteriously while working the graveyard shift. As he screams out in terror, a “thing” grabs and kills him. Suddenly, as he tries to stop the bleeding, he senses another overwhelming presence. In a fit of anger mixed with fear, he smashes a thermometer with his fist. The man talks to a rat he calls Doris, but quickly becomes aware of the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of rats staring at him. The intense darkness, creaking machinery and plentiful rats combine to create a terror-filled atmosphere where anything can happen. to 7 A.M., or graveyard shift, in an abandoned textile mill that has been re-opened. Set in Maine, near the town of Gates Falls, the film opens on an ominous note with a lone man working the 11 P.M. GRAVEYARD SHIFT, a movie adapted from Stephen King’s short story, abounds in Gothic elements: an unused cemetery complete with decayed, rotting tombstones a broken-down, rat-infested, still-operating textile mill a gloomy, turbulent river and, bloody, mysterious deaths.
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