1/10
The badness is so bright that it's almost blinding.
4 November 2004
Given that the three people at the time of this writing who have reviewed Graveyard Shift (Not to be confused with 'Night Shift' or 'STEPHEN KING'S Graveyard Shift') on the IMDb have loved it, I assume I'm going to receive some angry e-mails, because this movie fits in with Nightmare Weekend as one of the worst horror films I've ever seen. On the other hand, one of those reviewers also said that the main character in this movie is the sexiest vampire in any movie ever, and this was written years after Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, and Gary Oldman had all played vampires. Thus is credibility erased.

What you have in Graveyard Shift is a vampire with a heart of gold, I guess. He's a cab driver named Stephen and he only feeds on women who are already dying or willing to die, which leaves them alive and (oops!) running around the city killing people themselves. You know, maybe this is a requisite, but I would really love to see a vampire movie in which the vampires did not gape their mouths open as wide as possible, their eyes bugging out of their heads as they throw their head back for the camera to get a good look at their teeth as they slowly move toward the victim's neck.

I'd like to say, on the record, that a great vampire movie could be made without showing a single fang.

Or how about this? How about a movie vampire that can drink blood without getting it all over his face? This is what I hate about vampire movies. Vampires are sluggish, sloppy creatures. They live forever, but it just looks so foolish the way they open their mouths so wide and slowly move in to bite, and then once they do bite they start spitting blood all over themselves. What predator eats like that?? And to make matters worse, Stephen loses his virginity in this movie. What little scare ability he might have had is instantly gone.

One of my favorite parts was the investigation of one of the murders that have been turning up. The police have caught on that it is a female killer (or killers), so I guess that's good. But check this out, here is a sample of the dialogue spoken between two cops when they find another body:

Cop 1: It's gotta be a different woman.

Cop 2: How do you know?

Cop 1: Because the wounds are different!

Ah, great thinking'. Different wounds, so there must be MULTIPLE female killers running around the streets. Interesting that they can be right and yet look so stupid, but that is what happens when you have a script as badly written as this one. These cops looks stupid because the screenwriter didn't know how to get them to realize that there is more than one woman out there killing people without having them circumvent all manner of serious police investigation. Logic would never lead them to the right answer in time, so we better just have them jump to conclusions.

Even simply as a vampire story the movie fails miserably. There is a goofy love story drama that develops throughout the movie, which isn't sure if it is supposed to be a horror movie or a soap opera. It tries to be both and ends up being neither. The acting is staggeringly bad throughout, there are shots where Stephen is wearing so much white make-up on his face and hair that he literally, LITERALLY looks exactly like a clown, the soundtrack is of the prehistoric electronic beeps and bongs that briefly reared its ugly head in bad 80s films like this, and the film jumps around so much that at some points you may be wondering why two characters are standing in a soundstage talking about the cemetery set in front of them, and then the next scene takes place in a cemetery, the very same one that we just looked at the set of!

I have never seen anything like that in a horror movie. The finale of this movie literally takes place in a cemetery, which we had just gotten a behind the scenes look at, and not only that, but one of the characters ends up running and escaping out one of the doors of the soundstage!

Somebody please, PLEASE explain to me how this is, in ANY way, a 'smart, stylish horror flick.'

This, my friends, is absolute drivel.
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