Overrated

Am I Missing Something?

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

This was a very popular movie rental under the title "Graveyard Shift" back in the 80's. The movie has a combination disco/ Miami Vice feel to it. The Travolta looking lead as well as the sound track gives it that classic 80's feel. Steven is a vampire in NYC who, like all vampires works the Graveyard Shift. Steven senses when women are in their "death cycle" at which time he makes them his lover and gives them a nibble. They in turn become vampires, who Steven never calls. He is a cab driver.There is a subplot involving a woman named Michelle, who directs vampire videos, but apparently not to well. She is also terminal. Steven eventually ends up at a Halloween party at her house. Michelle's husband, who plays the field, is jealous, but Michelle is in love. The women vampires kill their victims. The cops are trying to figure out where the bodies are coming from.The film uses red and blue lighting to represent heat and cold, hot and cold bodies. Sometimes it is effective, other times it doesn't work and is annoying. The movie also had some erotic nudity, especially one blue-lit scene with Kim Cayer, which was perhaps the main reason for its popularity. They don't even show her scene on the back cover and they should have plastered it on the front. It sold the movie. I think they did themselves a disfavor by re-releasing it under a different title, especially a bad one.Sex and nudity. Not much blood for a vampire film.

...but just didn't follow through.Ever wonder what Dracula would be like mashed up with Taxi Driver? Me neither, but I found this when I was cleaning out my stepson's room after he moved out, so I figured why not. Silvio Oliviero stars as an East European vampire working as a cab driver in NYC. He chooses his victims from the helpless and despondent fares that he picks up. He's grown world-weary, though, and is about ready to hang up his cape when he meets Michelle, a melancholy film director who has just learned she has an incurable fatal illness. They fall in love and mope together. Her former boyfriend doesn't approve, so he enlists a vampire-lore expert buddy to help put a stop to things.There's also a subplot about all of Silvio's prior victims coming back as vampires themselves and causing a murder spree across the city, much to the concern of two NYPD detectives. This is a very low budget affair, and almost resembles a student film for much of the running. The acting runs the gamut from poor to passable, while the use of colored lighting and moving cameras has some flash, even if the picture quality itself is bottom of the barrel. There are long scenes of vampiric erotica, akin to a toothier version of Red Shoe Diaries. This isn't worth seeking out, but I've seen much worse. There's a sequel - "The Understudy: Graveyard Shift II". I'm giving it 5/10 on the novelty coupled with the nostalgia since I do love those 80's.For some reason the DVD only seems available in full screen although it was originally shot in widescreen.

Graveyard Shift (1987) is a cheesy movie about a love sick vampire named Stephen who drives a cab at night to pay the bills. When he's not attending to his posse of the living dead, he's pining his attention on a terminally ill woman named Michelle (Helen Papas) who has struck his fancy. Looking like death warmed over, this wimpy looking vampire dresses all in black and cruises for fares and victims. But poor Stephen can't seem to get his dream girl out of his mind.Eventually the two hook up. Michelle's off again on again boyfriend doesn't take to kindly to this interloper. One time he catches Stephen in her room and threatens to wake him up from his daytime coma by pulling the curtains!! Too bad he didn't because it would have be interesting. The vampire's world collapses when the cuckolded boyfriend puts two-and-two together. He has the cops raid his hang out. To his horror her finds his woman about to be snacked on. by Stephen. Weeks later there's a new cabbie on the beat dressed in black working the night shift. It's Michelle living out her life as a vampire. I guess she's working the night shift as well.Slightly recommended.,

Silvio Oliviero has got to be one of the sexiest actors every to portray a vampire. His John Travolta SNF hair, muscular hairy chest, and ascent all add tremendously to the sex quotient of this film. So much hotter and more humane than any portrayal of Lestat could possibly be.