Graveyard Shift (1987)

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Crappy film

Absolutely brilliant

A Masterpiece!

There is an interesting and entertaining vampire movie buried deep deep down in the Canadian effort "Graveyard Shift", and occasionally it comes out and bares its fangs. For one thing, while the movie had a painfully low budget, it actually looks very decent. The photography and lighting is very eye-catching, and it also manages to generate a little atmosphere - you really feel the cold and creepiness of this setting. If only the screenplay had been given as much care as the movie's look and feel. For starters, you never get a real sense of what is going on in the characters' heads, particularly the taxi driving vampire. What was his past? What are his motivations? We never get the answers to questions like those. And the subplot with the estranged couple also has some vague touches and is not resolved in a satisfactory manner. The unanswered questions really pick up in the second half of the movie, with the plot really starting to become muddled. If you don't care about the plot and characters and are just looking for basic horror thrills, you'll likely be disappointed - there is not much blood and gore, though to compensate there are several instances where the characters take off their clothes. I don't think the movie works in the end, but apparently it did work for enough people during its initial release on home video, because there was a sequel the following year. But I'm in no rush to track down a copy.

Visually and dramatically, this movie heralds the Alliance Shift in Canadian film-making: the move from unpredictable, chaotic incompetence to shiny, meaningless competence. It brings to mind Stephen King's description of Prophecy: "Slick but also somehow cheesy, like a dead rat in a lucite block". And I use the word competence loosely; maybe 'professionalism' would be a better term. It's a vampire flick, so let's have a blue light going this way, a red light going that way, and instead of atmosphere you get a neon shop after hours: how 90s. (That's not even to mention the shots that didn't quite work out but got left in anyway: some of the indoor connecting stuff is Ug-Ly!) The funny thing, for a movie that is trying to channel Anne Rice, is how frumpy everyone is: the vampires have like wisdom fangs or something, they're way out at the side so they look all jowly and have to open verrry wide to display them. In full fetter the vampire cabbie looks like Gilbert Gottfried playing Al Lewis at a costume party. And Helen Papas comes off more like a line producer than a romantic lead; it's like she wandered in front of the camera by mistake. Or perhaps she was coerced by her pal the aspiring director.

So, I went into this movie thinking: Okay, a hairy Italian vampire who walks around without clothes on a lot of the time, how could it be that bad? Well, as it turns out, they found a way to do it. I was only uh.. 5 when this movie came out but, I still can't figure for the life of me what was going on during the script production. There was just a lot of things that didn't make sense. For example, why was Stephen going to die? How could he make himself die? By not drinking blood? The dialogue lead me to believe he had initiated something that would cause him to die, besides just not feeding. Also, why did the women seem to go insane after becoming 'lovers' with Stephen?

So the taxi driver, on the night shift, is a vampire. Powerful, mystical, spiritual, all the usual vampiry stuff... but hey, he's gotta earn a living, get some o' them dollars, right?? Wrong. The whole point of vampires is that they live a separate existence, feeding off of our race as they need. Their structured and mysterious society goes far beyond money, far beyond the need for the day to day, 9pm to 5am, shift work that the rest of us have to put up with. Taxi driver indeed! And it gets worse.Our vampire hero, the love, lust, and blood full monty only becomes a vampire when someone has tipped a bag of flour over him, and turned on some blue scenery lights. Yep, the make-up and lighting budget was a bit strained. Made in the late 80's, this film also seemed more linked to the "Fame!" series than anything else. These aren't actors, they're dancers! The story is set around an 80's dance production, and yes, they definitely did stick with hiring dancers... even the vampire hero midget, with what looks like an astounding physique, will not doubt turn out to be a dancer when put under the microscope.So, 80's dancing, leg warmers, shocking 80's music, awful 80's characters and situations... oh yes, the 80's was the decade when nothing really happened anywhere, unless there was an over choreographed modern dance show going on! And yes a ridiculous 80's script. There is nothing here for vampire or horror fans... nothing at all. A budget film, with budget cast and when the budget ran out they ended it with a sub-budget ending... it really is terrible. Sure, they "Wanna live for ever", and after a quick nibble in the park, they probably will! I voted a "2"