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NIGHT SHIFT
Nearly forgotten from 1982, Night Shift was a rather cliched comedy that was one of Ron Howard's earliest directorial efforts and put a young actor named Michael Keaton on the map but really hasn't aged well.
This is the story of Chuck (Henry Winkler), a milquetoast morgue attendant who has recently been switched to nights at work and been saddled with an obnoxious man/child named Bill (Keaton) as his new partner who gets the idea of them running a prostitution ring out of the morgue. The idea is born when a pimp is murdered and brought into the morgue and it is revealed that one of his girls, Belinda (Shelley Long) lives in Chuck's building.
This film was pretty much the genesis of the Ron Howard/Brian Grazer/Lowell Ganz/Baboloo Mandel production company, who would later collaborate on films like Splash, Gung Ho, and The Grinch and this film definitely shows promise, but it also shows that these guys were still trying to find their footing as filmmakers. The screenplay by Ganz and Mandel is just a little too antiseptic considering the subject matter and employs every tired joke about prostitution ever used in a movie. A prostitution ring being run out of a morgue after the murder of a pimp? This film should have been a lot raunchier than it is, though as a novice director, I'm sure Howard had to make a lot of concessions to get this film made at all and it shows. I have never seen Times Square look so clean and shiny nor have I seen more prostitutes who look like Beverly Hills socialites.
Howard does show some of his future directorial style and ability to create striking cinematic images...the slow motion shot of the kid making the basket while the pimp is being thrown out a window simultaneously about to go through the basket as well is seriously stylish and shows that this is a director to watch.
Howard does show some skill where casting is concerned though...casting his Happy Days co-star in a role that is the polar opposite of Arthur Fonzarelli was inspired and totally works...Winkler quietly and effectively underplays the least showiest role in the story but never allows anyone to blow him off the screen either. Shelley Long is charming as Belinda, though I never really buy her as this hardened Manhattan hooker...her perfect hair, clothes, and diction just made it hard for me to take her seriously and the word "pimp" just sounded foreign coming out of her mouth. But what this movie really has going for it and makes it worth watching is the 100 mega-watt comic tour-de-force performance by Michael Keaton that provided the only consistent laughs here. Keaton is a one-man comedy class here and makes the rest of this comedy look like it works better than it really does.
Howard has also packed this film with a plethora of once and future stars, including a very early appearance by Oscar winner Kevin Costner as a boy at a frat party, Vincent Schiavelli as a delivery boy, Richard Belzer as a murderous thug, and of his course, his little brother Clint. If you don't blink, you might even catch Howard's wife, Cheryl, in a brief cameo. With a little more realistic screenplay and some more on target casting, this could have been a minor classic, but Keaton alone makes it worth a look.
Nearly forgotten from 1982, Night Shift was a rather cliched comedy that was one of Ron Howard's earliest directorial efforts and put a young actor named Michael Keaton on the map but really hasn't aged well.
This is the story of Chuck (Henry Winkler), a milquetoast morgue attendant who has recently been switched to nights at work and been saddled with an obnoxious man/child named Bill (Keaton) as his new partner who gets the idea of them running a prostitution ring out of the morgue. The idea is born when a pimp is murdered and brought into the morgue and it is revealed that one of his girls, Belinda (Shelley Long) lives in Chuck's building.
This film was pretty much the genesis of the Ron Howard/Brian Grazer/Lowell Ganz/Baboloo Mandel production company, who would later collaborate on films like Splash, Gung Ho, and The Grinch and this film definitely shows promise, but it also shows that these guys were still trying to find their footing as filmmakers. The screenplay by Ganz and Mandel is just a little too antiseptic considering the subject matter and employs every tired joke about prostitution ever used in a movie. A prostitution ring being run out of a morgue after the murder of a pimp? This film should have been a lot raunchier than it is, though as a novice director, I'm sure Howard had to make a lot of concessions to get this film made at all and it shows. I have never seen Times Square look so clean and shiny nor have I seen more prostitutes who look like Beverly Hills socialites.
Howard does show some of his future directorial style and ability to create striking cinematic images...the slow motion shot of the kid making the basket while the pimp is being thrown out a window simultaneously about to go through the basket as well is seriously stylish and shows that this is a director to watch.
Howard does show some skill where casting is concerned though...casting his Happy Days co-star in a role that is the polar opposite of Arthur Fonzarelli was inspired and totally works...Winkler quietly and effectively underplays the least showiest role in the story but never allows anyone to blow him off the screen either. Shelley Long is charming as Belinda, though I never really buy her as this hardened Manhattan hooker...her perfect hair, clothes, and diction just made it hard for me to take her seriously and the word "pimp" just sounded foreign coming out of her mouth. But what this movie really has going for it and makes it worth watching is the 100 mega-watt comic tour-de-force performance by Michael Keaton that provided the only consistent laughs here. Keaton is a one-man comedy class here and makes the rest of this comedy look like it works better than it really does.
Howard has also packed this film with a plethora of once and future stars, including a very early appearance by Oscar winner Kevin Costner as a boy at a frat party, Vincent Schiavelli as a delivery boy, Richard Belzer as a murderous thug, and of his course, his little brother Clint. If you don't blink, you might even catch Howard's wife, Cheryl, in a brief cameo. With a little more realistic screenplay and some more on target casting, this could have been a minor classic, but Keaton alone makes it worth a look.