Day 9 Night Shift (1982)

I’m going to start with a reaction that I had as I was putting this post together, and it’s not about the film itself. I went looking for the trailer for the movie to include here, and the above is what I found. Before you read any further, I plead with you to watch this trailer, it does something that movie previews just don’t anymore, and boy should they. Instead of editing together a bunch of clips from the film, they have created an original promo that captures the spirit of the movie, without giving away all the jokes. The premise is set up in a fun way and the final shot of the cast and set tells you why this is a comedy. I am sooo happy to have found this, I hope you all like it as well.

Welcome to the second edition of “Comedy Tuesday” here at 80s Nostalgia Central. Originally I had a different film slated for today, but one of my goals was to start with films I own on physical media, and it turns out I did not have the planned film, so this was a quick substitute which works out very well. I would not say this is a Forgotten Film, but it certainly is not one that people bring up regularly when talking about movies from 1982, one of the great film years ever. “Night Shift” is the first studio film from director Ron Howard. I’d seen his first film, the low budget Roger Corman Produced “Grand Theft Auto”, and the similar film that he starred in, “Eat My Dust”, they were perfectly fine B-movies, but this is a studio film and a big step up. By asking his “Happy Days” costar Henry Winkler to be in the movie, he certainly was trying to reasure the studio that they had a viable product. The trick was however that Winkler ends up doing the more sedate part rather than the flashy role.

When people do recall this film, it is probably for the blazing comet that arrived on the scene in this his first movie, Michael Keaton. The role of Billy “Blaze” Blazejowski calls for a dynamic performer with comic chops and the willingness to go big. Keaton took to this like a fish to water. The character comes across as a likable, maybe slightly irritating victim of Attention Deficit Disorder. Billy Blaze has a hundred ideas and thinks about them at a hundred miles an hour. His constant banter and riffing on something in front of him or one of his big ideas, is the thing that energizes this movie when the plot falls into too much exposition.

Winkler is Chuck Lumley, a name that just creates a self image of shlulb. Chuck was a Wall Street guy who had too much stress in his life and chose a civil service job to hide in and try to reduce his stress. Billy is stress incarnate, and when he joins Chuck on the night shift at the morgue, fireworks were bound to happen. It’s a bit unfortunate that his neurotic fiancé is easily lead down the shrew path by Chuck’s mother, because she seems to want to please him, even though she is incapable of being comfortable with him. That makes what happens in the story a little bit more acceptable, and it forces Chuck to grow up a bit and make an important decision for himself.

The story of an exuberant man trying to help a repressed man out of his shell is an old one. Recent examples might include “Hot Fuzz”, or from the 1980s “Planes, Trains and Automobiles”. When the hooker in the apartment next to him has trouble with the cops and johns because she has no pimp, Chuck and Billy end up taking on the task. This of course is way out of Chuck’s comfort zone, but as the music montage shows us, he is good at it and creates a viable business plan for Belinda, played by Shelly Long, and the girls she works with. Of course this is a middle brow, studio comedy, so the prostitutes are not drug addicts, the johns are not degenerates, and the two leads only get a little carried away with their success.

The secondary love plot is fine, and the criminal element that does show up to help create a climax is played for laughs, even though they have murdered one man and attempt to kill Chuck (although with a comic twist). Nothing about the movie is to be taken seriously. There is not a political agenda about women controlling their own bodies, or how the patriarchy turns women into objects. The sex is never really shown and when it is suggested, there is never anything that would cause a maiden Aunt to get her ears red.

As I was listening to the movie, I was surprised at how solid the soundtrack songs were. Al Jarreau, The Pointer Sisters, Talk,Talk, Van Halen, Chaka Khan and Rod Stewart all have tracks somewhere in the movie. As I was listening to the title song, the thought went through my head that the studio band sounded like “Quarterflash” a one hit wonder from the era who played in a style that is clearly early eighties standard. Surprise, surprise, it was them, so they were not entirely a Quarter Flash in the pan.

This is Michael Keaton’s movie, despite the fact his is not the lead role. In the decade of the 80s, he was the comedy go to actor, and it was not really until “Batman” that he was able to shift out more to dramatic roles. That’s OK however because most of those comedies were really funny because he was in them. I saw this film with my wife in one of the Cinema General Theaters in what was then the Santa Anita Mall. It was a four screen multiplex that I’d also seen the early Ron Howard films in. Mall Cinemas almost always had matinees and those were at a discount price. For a young married couple that sort of thing mattered.