Stephen Macht is one of those character actors you’re sure you’ve seen somewhere but can’t remember. Maybe because he kinda looks like he could be Roy Scheider’s half-brother or with his facial hair, looks like Fred Ward, another character actor who never really achieve leading man status. In The Monster Squad, Macht played the Jim Hopper role as the top cop who believes the kids might be on to something supernatural and helps them.
He also played former educator Robert Anastas who also coached hockey at Wayland High School in Hudson, Mass. in an after-school special. Anastas formed SADD (Students Against Drunk Driving) in the early 1980s after two of his students/players died in unrelated separate drunk driving incidents. The special also features William Zabka as one of the doomed students who is a complete 180 from the Johnny Lawrence character he played in The Karate Kid/Cobra Kai franchise. In this case, Zabka is a very genial student who openly welcomes the new kid to the school and team. Talk about range, right?
Macht also deserves a footnote in the Star Trek franchise as he was Gene Roddenberry’s original choice to play Capt. Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation before he was passed over for Sir Patrick Stewart. But Macht isn’t chopped liver either. He trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, graduated from Dartmouth College and earned a Ph. D. in Dramatic Literature from Indiana University. So, being passed over for Sir Patrick Stewart while he was still a relatively unknown Shakespearan actor is something that he can dine out on for the rest of his life.
His son, Gabriel, is an actor too and has achieved some success and Macht appeared on the show, Suits, and had did 165 episode of General Hospital as Trevor Lansing. So, he’s an actor’s actor. Yet, his role as Warwick in Stephen King’s Graveyard Shift might be one of his most memorable roles in a very forgettable movie. As a matter of fact, it’s worth watching the movie for his villainous over-the-top role.
Warwich is the sadistic foreman/manager of a textile mill in a small-town in Maine. He wears cheap dress pants that are hiked up to his navel and short-sleeved button down dress shirts he’s had for years that make him look like an evil science teacher from the 1950s. He has a pocket protector in his shirt and speak in a dialect that is a combination of New England where saying the R sound as little as possible saying “ovah” instead of “over” and “picka” instead of “picker. But it sounds more like someone trying to sound like they’re from Maine with a Eurotrash (mostly Irish and German combo), and a little bit of Texas twang.
The textile mill is rat-infested and in need of repairs or else it’ll be closed down. The movie opens with a night worker being killed in what’s called an accident but his remains are feasted on by the rats. This leads a drifter, John Hall (David Andrews), to apply and get the position where he is hassled by the other mill workers, Danson (Andrew Divoff) and Brogan (Vic Polizos), for being the new guy. Mill worker Jane Wisconsky (Kelly Wolf) is more friendly to him.
Warwick hires the eccentric exterminator Tucker Cleveland (Brad Dourif) to get rid of the rat problem which he thinks are coming from the nearby graveyard. Tucker appears to be a Vietnam vet whose hair is always greasy and he wears a uniform that looks like if the Ghostbusters wore WWII combat fatigues. He has a small terrior dog, Moxie, that goes everywhere with him. Tucker and Warwick make the movie worth watching. Dourif and Macht are really having a great time playing these sleazy characters.
It’s just too bad the rest of the movie wasn’t as good. There’s some type of giant rat-bat creature lurking in the basement of the mill using workers for its meal. During the movie’s climax, we see its lair where its got a mountain of bones and skeletons. How such a creature can stay in the shadows and kill so many people in a small-town without many knowing is beyond me. The town seems to be one of those where all businesses are centralized in one location and everyone hangs around the local diner because it’s the only one in town.
Warwick gets John, Jane, Danson, Brogan and another worker, Charlie Carmichael (Jimmy Woodard) to help clean out the basement at night where they eventually discover a severed limb in a underground area which leads them to the creature, which hunts them through the underground tunnels. It’s a silly creature feature that is one of Stephen King’s lesser received adaptations. The movie was made following the success of the 1989 Pet Sematary. William J. Dunn, who was a location scout on that movie optioned the rights to the short story for $2,500, and he along with Ralph S. Singleton (who was an associate producer on that movie and credited as both producer and director on this movie) shot the movie in Maine as well.
However, the movie didn’t duplicate the success of Sematary as it only made $11.6 million on a $10.5 million budget. King, himself, isn’t a fan and has heavily disliked the movie calling it a “quick exploitation picture.” Aside from Tucker and Warwick, the rest of the characters are so generic. Andrews does what he can with the role but it’s so underwritten. And Wolf seems to have been hired as eye-candy as she spends most of her scenes in a tank top. She looks like the type of young woman you’d find working in a mill in New England. She does have a good scream which might have been why she was also hired.
There’s only so much you can do about a huge rat/bat creature lurking in the shadows. But the bigger rat is Warwick who treats all women as if they’re sex objects and uses his power to bully the men workers. I wouldn’t doubt if Macht or the filmmakers incorporated some of their former employers/supervisors into the role. Playing the villain is always fun and you can see just how much fun Macht is having playing the character even if it is in a cheesy B-movie. It seems while editing the movie, the filmmakers realized how over the top it was and made a remix of the musical score over the end credits adding dialogue from the movie.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 