Night Shift: Difference between revisions

 

 

Not to be confused with the 1982 comedy film directed by [[Ron Howard]] and starring [[Michael Keaton]].

 

* ''Graveyard Shift'': Workers cleaning up the basement of an old textile mill meet giant rats.

* ''Night Surf'': Post-apocalyptic story, where nearly all humans have died in an influenza pandemic. Precursor to ''[[The Stand]]''.

* ''I Am the Doorway'': Former astronaut discovers that an alien lifeform inhabits his body, and eyes appear on his fingers.

* ''Gray Matter'': A man turns into a [[Blob Monster]] after drinking a can of contaminated beer.

* ''Battleground'': A professional hitman is attacked by living toy soldiers.

* ''Sometimes They Come Back'': A teacher's brother was killed by teenage greasers when they were kids. Many years later, they appear in his class, still as teenagers. Made into an instantly-forgotten movie (that somehow got [[Sequelitis|two sequels ANYWAY]])

* ''Strawberry Spring'': A story about a serial killer with a [[Twist Ending]].

* ''The Last Rung on the Ladder'': A man tells a childhood story about him and his sister who later committed suicide. Very different from King's usual style.

* ''The Man who Loved Flowers'': Another story about a [[Serial Killer]] with a [[Twist Ending]].

* ''The Woman in the Room'': A man euthanizes his terminally ill mother with painkillers.

 

* [[After the End]]: ''Night Surf''.

* [[Alien Geometries]]: Inverted in ''I Am the Doorway'', where the alien eyes see a sieve as "a device constructed of geometrically impossible right angles".

* [[Eyes Do Not Belong There]]: In ''I Am the Doorway''.

* [[Forced to Watch]]: In ''Quitters, Inc.'' the titular firm's method to make smokers quit is this: they keep them under constant surveillance, and if they smoke, they torture their family members and force them to watch it.

** ''The Last Rung on the Ladder'', a melancholic story with no supernatural or horror elements.

* [[Homicide Machines]]: ''Trucks'', ''The Mangler'' again. The story also features a murderous fridge. Also, the lawnmower in ''The Lawnomwer Man''.

* [[Humans Through Alien Eyes]]: In ''I Am the Doorway''.

* [[I Am a Humanitarian]]: Richie Grenadine in ''Grey Matter'', after turning into a [[Blob Monster]], starts eating humans.

* [[In Name Only]]: The film ''[[The Lawnmower Man]]'' is so different from the short story that King successfully sued the producers for using his name.

* [[Life or Limb Decision]]: In a way. In ''I Am the Doorway'', the protagonist eventually soaks his hands in kerosene, and puts them into fire to kill the alien lifeform inhabiting his body. {{spoiler|It turns out that this was only a temporary solution}}.

* [[Locked Into Strangeness]]: The protagonist's hair at the end of ''The Mangler''. In ''Grey Matter'', the protagonist mentions that a sewer worker that he knew once saw something horrible in the sewers, which caused his hair to turn white in fifteen minutes.

* [[The Mafia]]: Quitters, Inc. was founded by a gangster named Mort "Three-Fingers" Minelli, after he got lung cancer from smoking.

* [[Mercy Kill]]: In ''The Woman in the Room'', the protagonist gives painkillers to his mother who is dying of cancer. He knows that they will kill her, and so does she, but neither of them say it openly.

* [[Mordor]]: Venus is portrayed like that in ''I Am the Doorway''. The protagonist says that his expedition around it was like "circling a haunted house in deep space."

* [[Nameless Narrative]]: ''Trucks'', ''The Man Who Loved Flowers'' and ''The Woman in the Room''. In the last, we know that the protagonist's name is John, because other characters call him on his name, but the narrative never does.

* [[No Ending]]: ''Grey Matter''.

* [[No Name Given]]: The narrators in ''Trucks'' and ''Strawberry Spring'', the protagonist (and [[Nameless Narrative|everybody else]]) in ''The Man who Loved Flowers''. In several other stories, only the first or last names of the main characters are given:

* [[Rodents of Unusual Size]] / [[Swarm of Rats]]: In ''Graveyard Shift''.

* [[Serial Killer]]: The protagonists in {{spoiler|''Strawberry Spring'' and ''The Man Who Loved Flowers''}}.

* [[Twist Ending]]: Several:

** In ''Strawberry Spring'', the narrator describes the murders committed at his college community by a [[Serial Killer]] nicknamed "Springheel Jack". At the end {{spoiler|he realizes that the killer is his [[Split Personality]]}}.

* [[Villain Protagonist]]: Renshaw in ''Battleground''. He's a hitman who killed a toymaker, Hans Morris; the murderous toy soldiers are sent to him by Morris's mother as a revenge.

* [[Vomiting Cop]]: Officer Hunton in ''The Mangler'' after seeing the remains of a woman caught in the machine.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:The Seventies]]

[[Category:Horror Literature]]