John Hall is a drifter who wanders into a small town in Maine. He needs a job and decides to seek employment at the community's top business: a large textile mill. He is hired to work the "graveyard shift" -- from around midnight to dawn -- and, along with a few others, he is charged with cleaning out the basement. This task strikes the workers as simple enough, but then, as they proceed deeper underground, they encounter an unspeakable monstrosity intent on devouring them all.
Practical Effects
Gloriously gross creature effects that ooze 90s cheese and actual ooze.
Acting
Brad Dourif's unhinged exterminator steals every scene he's barely in.
Director
Ralph S. Singleton
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Stephen King reportedly wrote the original short story after working in an actual textile mill and hating every second of it. The rats are symbolic. Probably.
This bombed hard in 1990 but became a cable TV staple, rotting the brains of an entire generation of latchkey kids who thought all workplaces had monster problems.
US
