Night Shift: Difference between revisions

 

 

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

 

* ''Jerusalem's Lot'': [[Scrapbook Story]] set in 1850. [[Homage]] to [[H.P. Lovecraft]].

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

* ''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.

* [[Lost in the Maize]]: ''Children of the Corn''.

* [[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:

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

* [[Shout-Out]]: ''Necronomicon'', [[H.P. Lovecraft]]'s famous [[Tome of Eldritch Lore]] appears in ''I Know What You Need''. And as noted, all of ''Jerusalem's Lot'' is an overt Lovecraft homage.

* [[Things That Go Bump in the Night]]: ''The Bogeyman''.

* [[Town with a Dark Secret]]: Gatlin in ''Children of the Corn''.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:The Seventies]]

[[Category:Horror Literature]]