This is the first collection of short stories by Stephen King, first published in 1978. In 1980, it received the Balrog Award for Best Collection, and in 1979 it was nominated as best collection for the Locus Award and the World Fantasy Award.
Night Shift is Stephen King’s sixth published book and it is made up of twenty different short stories. Most of these stories were published in magazines such as The Cavalier, Cosmopolitan and Penthouse before King decided to put them all together in one book. This contains some of the most popular stories King has ever written and there are many film and short film adaptations to these tales. I’m a sucker for short stories personally. I’ve always been a huge fan of shows like The Twilight Zone and Tales from the Crypt because every episode was something completely new and different that made me see the world in a way I hadn’t thought of before. This love of mine also goes back to the classic short stories contained in the popular books, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. The way they only have a limited time to hook you, peek your interests and then blow your mind with a wild ending is just so fun to me. So needless to say, I had been looking forward to getting to this book. I’ll go through each story in the order they are in the book and also talk about the film versions as I go.
The first short S.K. decided to kick this off with is Jerusalem’s Lot. When I saw this, my excitement went through the roof because it’s a prequel to his second novel, Salem’s Lot which I have already written about. It also holds the #2 spot on my Top 5 list, so yeah, I was excited. Jerusalem’s Lot takes place in 1850 in a town called Preacher’s Corner, Maine. Our main character is Charles Boone and the entire story is read through Charles’s letters to his good friend, Bones. He writes Bones to tell him about the house he has inherited and he and his servant, Calvin, were going to go and see what kind of shape it was in. While going through the house and its belongings, they find a map of the town and how there is a nearby town which has been abandoned for years called Jerusalem’s Lot. They decide to go and explore this mysterious place. While all of this is going on they keep hearing what they think to be rats in the walls, which we find out later, is not rats at all but something much scarier. From there the story takes its creepy turn into the world of vampires, evil and cult rituals.
It was so fun to learn about another chapter in the history of the messed up town of Salem’s Lot. There isn’t a film version of this story yet to my knowledge. I could see it being expanded on and made into something larger than it is but honestly I’m okay with what King has given us.
The next story is called, Graveyard Shift. I remembered watching the movie of this one a long time ago (once again with my Dad) and remembered loving it. I’m happy to say that nothing has changed. In this story, we read about a guy named Hall who is a drifter with an education and has made his way into a small town in Maine where he picks up a job at a textile mill. The foreman who is a hard headed jerk, recruits Hall and a few other workers to pick up a weekend shift and help clean out the basement of the old mill. Unbeknownst to them, the basement over the years has become infested with rats. BIG ONES. The book has quite a large variety of rats that the workers come across. They had evolved down in the dark, some with wings, others with armor plating.
The deeper they work, the bigger they seem to get. In the film, most of the rats are regular sized ones but there are thousands of them. They stayed true to the concept of the further you go the bigger they get though. The film actually gives us a more detailed look into this massive rat kingdom that lies beneath the mill. I hate rats and mice so for me, this story was defiantly cringe worthy. Just the idea of it now makes my skin crawl. A fun story and a fun movie for sure.
Next up, we have the story Night Surf. This one takes place on Anson Beach, New Hampshire where a group of college age kids have survived a plague called A6 that has wiped out most of the population. Sound familiar? Yeah, it did to me too. Then King hits us with one of the kids calling the virus Captain Trips and as we know from previous readings, Captain Trips is the name of the virus that causes the apocalyptic end to the world in King’s book The Stand which I just recently posted about. So, here we go with another little chapter to another one of his famous novels. The main character is Bernie and he explains to us what A6 is and what it has done to the world. These kids are far from good people as we find out early in the story.
They talk about how they took a man who was infected with the virus and set him on fire in almost a ritual style. They explain it was their way of trying to give a sacrifice to whatever god would allow things like this to happen. Also, for them to all be friends, they really like to talk down to each other. They’ve basically come to the realization of how life was going to be from now on and it hardened them to their cores. Bernie is very blunt about how he feels about everything even his girl who he comes to realize that he actually detests. This was a cool look at The Stand from a different angle, a darker and more hopeless one. Night Surf was adapted into a short film in 2001 but I have yet to find it to watch it myself.
Next up is one of my favorites from this book and its the story that the original cover art is based on.
The fourth tale is called, I Am the Doorway. Arthur is a retired astronaut who is retelling his story of when he was part of a mission to the planet Venus. On this mission, he becomes exposed to some sort of mutagen which he inadvertently brings back with him to Earth. He notices his hands seem to itch nonstop. Then one day, he realizes that there are tiny eyes opening on the tips of his fingers. These eyes monitor life on Earth and report back to whatever alien race they came from back on Venus. Things take an even darker turn and our narrator is forced to make life altering decisions in order to not only protect himself but the human race as well. This is one that I would absolutely love to see made into a movie. I feel like there is just so much story here even if it’s only about twenty pages long. My Dad had this book when I was little and it was my favorite one to grab from his shelf and look at because of the hand on the cover. Now that I’ve read it, it’s like I finally gotten answers to the questions that younger me had while looking at the creepy image.
Next up is the fifth story, The Mangler. A detective has been called to investigate a string of odd deaths that keep occurring surrounding a large laundry press machine that the workers have coined, The Mangler. Nothing seems to make sense as these weird deaths keep occurring with no fowl play seeming to be involved. After all reasonable solutions have evaded the detective, he begins to look into the more macabre answers. He ends up coming to the conclusion that the machine has been possessed by a demon that has been filling it’s blood lust with the laundry workers. For me, this one was a bit of a stretch. The thing that lost me in it was the way that the press became possessed is just really weak and kills the rest of the story. This short was made into a full length film that for the most part follows the story pretty closely. It stars Ted Levine and Robert Englund who is known for famously playing Freddy Krueger. Surprisingly, this movie got two more sequels squeezed out of it. I have only watched the first film and that was enough for me. Not the best but not the worst. On second thought… it’s the worst.
The sixth short is called, The Boogeyman. Lester Billings is in his psychiatrist’s office explaining his story of how he believes his three children were all killed by The Boogeyman. Lester tells Dr. Harper how his first two children were found dead in their cribs and it was claimed to be due to convulsions and crib death. Both times, when he had put his kids to bed the night of their deaths, each child had screamed the word “Boogeyman!” when he had turned out the light. He had also noticed that the closet door was cracked just a bit and he had been sure it was closed the night before they had died. He and his wife decided to move after that and she got pregnant relatively quickly after the move. All is well for the first year after their third son is born but then, things start to feel as they had in their old home. Doors cracked open when they shouldn’t be, sounds in the night, and the baby saying the word “Boogeyman” at lights out. Lester realizes that whatever it was, had followed them and made itself at home again. Then things go from bad to worse in a hurry. This was made into a short film in 1994 and I read that this was supposed to be adapted into a feature length film soon.
A script is currently being worked on and will hopefully be released in the next year or two.
The next story up is another one that I fell in love with. This one is called Gray Matter. On a snowy night somewhere in Maine (where else?) there is a group of men hanging out and talking at a convenience store owned by our main character Henry. Out of the storm, a boy bursts into the store yelling for help. Henry tries to calm the boy down and takes him into the back to see if he can get him to explain what was wrong. After a while, Henry comes back out and says he is going to the boys home to check on his father. Two of the other men go with him and on the way as they walk to the apartment building, they ask Henry what the kid had told him. He begins to explain that the boy’s father had been acting strange for a while now and seemed to be very sick. As he continues to tell the boy’s story to them, the details begin to become more and more strange. Like how he had suddenly felt pain when sunlight would come through the windows so he boarded them up.
How he constantly craved warm beer. And to top it off, the boy had witnessed his Dad eating a dead cat one night in his bedroom. Most of this story takes place on the walk over to the apartment where we continue to learn more and more about the situation these men are about to walk into. This is such a classic monster story but written in a way that is very unique. Also it has an underlying lesson to it that always gives a story another level of greatness. This one has been made into a short film but is another one Id really enjoy to see made into a feature length. Certainly one of my favorites.
Our next one up is called, Battleground. Here we are introduced to a professional hitman named Renshaw. He is just getting back to his condo after completing a job. That job was killing a man who happened to be a toy maker.
He arrives to find a package sitting outside of his door. The package is addressed to him and turns out to be from the toy makers mother. The box contains a collection of little green army men with Jeeps and weapons and even helicopters. To his surprise, the toys come to life and begin to attack him. This revenge story is a fun one. Where you tend to catch yourself giggling at the fact that this “professional” killer is getting his butt handed to him by little green men. This was adapted into a short that was shown on the show, Nightmares and Dreamscapes which was based off another of Stephen King’s collection of short stories under the same title. The short actually won an Emmy which is pretty impressive. A change that they made for the film which I liked a lot more was that Renshaw, who was played by William Hurt, doesn’t speak at all throughout it.
I think that was a good way to make it more serious and less childish. No words, just action. This is a fun little story that brings you back to your childhood but with a bloody twist.
The next story is called, Trucks. This one is mostly known for being made into a feature length film that was actually written and directed by Stephen King himself. The movie was titled Maximum Overdrive. It featured and entire soundtrack made up of AC/DC songs. This was another film that I loved as a kid and when I re-watched it after reading the story, I laughed so much at how campy it is. I still love it though. This story is about how for some mysterious reason, trucks and cars and all kinds of other machines had suddenly come to life and started killing people. In the book, there are six survivors hiding out in a truck stop diner. They have been completely surrounded by a squad of semi trucks with dark intensions.
In the film, we’re given an explanation for the odd occurrence being due to the passing of a meteor which brings life to the machines we depend on every day. The film stars Emilio Estevez as the cook for the diner who is also on parole. It was then redone as a made for TV movie with its original title, Trucks. I have personally never seen that version but I did read that it wasn’t that great.
The tenth story in the collection is, Sometimes They Come Back. When Jim Norman was nine years old, he and his older brother Wayne were walking back home from the library when they get jumped by a gang of greasers. Jim is able to get away but Wayne ends up being stabbed over and over again by the boys and is killed. Seventeen years later, Jim is still haunted by the past and has nightmares of the event on a regular basis. He takes a job teaching in his hometown where the murder happened and that’s when things start to get weird.
A few of his students begin to die off in freak accidents. each time this happens, a new student is added to his class but they look just like the boys that killed his brother back in 1957. He cant get past the idea that they are in fact the same guys and somehow look as though they haven’t aged at all. This became a feature length film with very few minor changes from the original story. It also ended up getting two more sequels which I have yet to watch. I actually liked the movie more than I did the story. I felt as though the movie made changes that helped bring things together in a more sensible way than the short did. I felt like King wanted to write a quick story but as he was going, its almost like he kept building and building and could have turned this into a much longer book. It goes from a murder to a ghost story to a demonic twist to a exorcism of sorts. All of that in just a few pages. So I think this could have really become something much better if I was a bit longer, like a novella or even a full novel. I’m not really sure how the film sequels connect or if they even do to the original movie but I do plan on watching them soon.
They just didn’t feel like a priority to me at the time.
Whew! Well, there are the first 10 stories in this novel. For the sake of length, I’ll post another review with the last 10 stories separately. It’s not a long book but talking these out takes some time. My updated Top 5 list is now…
1.) The Shining
2.) Salem’s Lot
3.) The Stand
4.) Nightshift
5.) Carrie
So, until next time happy reading everyone!
Keys to the Kingdom 