20 Perfect Scenes In God-Awful Horror Movies
19. The Vietnam Monologue - Graveyard Shift
Good old Brad Dourif. Even when he's in the biggest piece of trash, the Chucky star acts his ass off.
And Graveyard Shift is no different. In this schlocky monster movie, Dourif plays a deranged exterminator called Tucker who's tasked with ridding a mill of rats. As he and the mill workers explore, they discover the vermin have mutated into man-eating beasts.
Graveyard Shift is the worst kind of horror, where it's not even entertainingly bad. It takes forever to get going, and when it does, the scares are underwhelming.
Having said that, Dourif's performance is some of his finest work. Even though Graveyard Shift features mutant rodents, Tucker's Vietnam speech is significantly scarier. In the scene in question, Tucker explains to one of the workers how rats were placed in the open wounds of soldiers during Vietnam, forcing them to burrow underneath the skin, shredding them from the inside.
The visual isn't shown, but dwells in your mind due to Tucker's chilling description. Dourif could've turned this over-the-top character into a caricature, but instead humanised him, depicting him as a man shaped by trauma.