A long-delayed look at a forgettable Film and a slightly-more forgettable Short Story from Stephen King.
Seeing another Story with a giant rat creature reminded to finally talk about this one.
See what happens when rats and men meet at work...
In said Basement, the Boss is killed and...
What's Different?
...so is our Hero. Only the two of them actually go down there in the original Story.
In the Film, we get a few of them to fill up the kill quota.
There's also a Love Interest, who tragically dies down there with them.
She has no equivalent in the Short Story.
In the Film, our Hero is the lone survivor and makes it to the surface...so he can have a big face-off with the rat-bat monster.
In the Short Story, the others stay up on the surface and are blissfully-unaware of the Monsters as they prepare to go down to look for the 2, ending the Story on a downer.
To pad the runtime out, the Film has a few set-up kills- including a man who our Hero is hired to replace- and one of them is pretty cruel (a woman who rejects the Boss' advances is killed).
They also add a fun- but unnecessary- Character in the form of Brad Dourif's Exterminator.
He has a few Scenes and dies, not really impacting the Plot as a whole.
Thanks for...being in the Film, I guess.
Final Thoughts
The Film is...alright. It is a pretty basic Creature Feature that I watched last year, kind of remember and didn't keep. It was worth the $2 I paid for it at Goodwill though.
The Short Story is less fleshed out- since, you know, it is like 30 pages long- and gives you a good taste of a bigger Story.
If the Film had been changed less (and done better), it would be a great segment in a Stephen King Anthology like Cat's Eye or a Creepshow-style Film. As a stand-alone, it's...not that impressive.
Night Shift has a bunch of fun, crazy Short Stories in it to enjoy.
Stick with that for now.
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