Night Shift is a short story collection by American writer Stephen King , first published in 1978 and consisting of 20 stories in the genre of horror literature . The preface to the collection was written by John MacDonald . In this collection, King first uses a prologue addressed to the reader - in the future, this will become the "corporate identity" of the author. The Night Shift includes some of King's most famous short stories previously published in various magazines; several stories were written specifically for the collection. In 1979, the collection was nominated for the prize “ Locus ” and “ World Fantasy Award ” [1] . Many stories were subsequently filmed.
| Night shift | |
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| Night shift | |
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| Author | Stephen king |
| Genre | mysticism , horror , fantasy . |
| Original language | English |
| Original published | 1978 |
| Publisher | Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, NY |
| Carrier | book |
| Previous | People, places and things. |
| Next | Skeleton Team |
Content
Contents
| No. | Title | English title | Year | 1st publication |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| one | Jerusalem settlement | Jerusalem's lot | 1978 | here |
| In 1850, the hero inherits a house near the abandoned settlement of Salimov Udel (" Lot "), and learns that his ancestors were associated with a pagan cult worshiping the demonic "Worm". The story is stylized by the works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft and refers to the Myths of Cthulhu . | ||||
| 2 | Night shift | Graveyard shift | 1970 | Cavalier (Oct. 1970) |
| The building of the old factory is teeming with rats. The worker makes the cruel foreman go down into the dungeons, where they encounter the real rat kingdom. | ||||
| 3 | Night surf | Night surf | 1969 | Ubris (spring 1969) |
| Most of the world's population is exterminated by a flu pandemic (“ Confrontation ”). A group of young people who believe that they are immune to the virus spend time on the beach. They meet the patient and burn him alive. | ||||
| four | Alien eyes | I am the doorway | 1971 | Cavalier (March 1971) |
| An astronaut who returns from a flight to Venus discovers eyes in his hands - a certain alien parasite has settled in his body, gradually capturing the rest of his body and forcing the host to kill. | ||||
| five | Meat grinder | The mangler | 1972 | Cavalier (Dec. 1972) |
| Investigating a series of accidents with an ironing press in the laundry room, a policeman and a professor of literature conclude that the machine is obsessed with a demon and try to perform an exorcism ceremony. | ||||
| 6 | And the beech came | The boogeyman | 1973 | Cavalier (March 1973) |
| The patient tells the psychiatrist about the death of three of his children - as if they were killed by a "beech tree" coming out of the closet in the bedroom. The psychiatrist turns into a "beech". | ||||
| 7 | Gray rubbish | Gray matter | 1973 | Cavalier (Oct. 1973) |
| After drinking spoiled beer, the alcoholic gradually turns into a monster, as if consisting of mold. The heroes, having glanced to his house, run in fear, seeing that the monster is divided in two, multiplying. | ||||
| eight | Battlefield | Battleground | 1972 | Cavalier (Sept. 1972) |
| A professional killer receives a parcel - a box with toy soldiers. The soldiers come to life, and the killer is forced to take the fight in his own apartment. | ||||
| 9 | Trucks | Trucks | 1973 | Cavalier (June 1973) |
| Heroes are hiding at a gas station from animated cars. Cars are trying to get people to refuel them. The heroes hope to wait until the trucks besieging the station run out of fuel, but a fuel truck arrives with a supply of fuel. | ||||
| ten | Sometimes they come back | Sometimes They Come Back | 1974 | Cavalier (March 1974) |
| The school teacher confronts a group of hooligans who have risen from the dead, and calls Satan , believing that evil can be overcome only by evil. | ||||
| eleven | Strawberry spring | Strawberry spring | 1968 | Ubris (Fall 1968) |
| In 1968, with the advent of an unusually early and warm “strawberry spring”, someone kills college students. Eight years later, the “strawberry spring” comes again. | ||||
| 12 | Cornice | The ledge | 1976 | Penthouse (July 1976) |
| In a penthouse on the 43rd floor of a skyscraper, a drug dealer offers his wife’s captured lover a bet: freedom if the victim goes out onto the balcony and can walk around the entire building on a narrow ledge. | ||||
| 13 | Lawn mower | The lawnmower man | 1975 | Cavalier (May 1975) |
| The lay hero calls the lawn mower to mow the front lawn. He discovers that the lawn mower at work stripped naked and devours mowed grass, claiming that he works for the god Pan . | ||||
| 14 | Stop Smoking Corporation | Quitters, Inc. | 1978 | here |
| A passionate smoker signs an agreement with Quit Smoking. It turns out that behind the "Quit Smoking" are mafiosi who use the most cruel methods to force their victims to abandon a bad habit. | ||||
| 15 | I know what you want | I know what you need | 1976 | Cosmopolitan (Sept. 1976) |
| A beautiful and successful heroine is pursued by a fan - a nondescript young man who owns some kind of magic. He uses his abilities to kill her groom and tie the heroine to himself. | ||||
| sixteen | Children of corn | Children of the corn | 1977 | Penthouse (March 1977) |
| A married couple, having stopped in the outback of the state of Nebraska , is faced with the ominous cult of the "children of corn." Children of corn kill adults and sacrifice them to the demonic inhabitant of corn fields. | ||||
| 17 | The last bar | The last rung on the ladder | 1978 | here |
| The hero receives a belated letter from his sister, who committed suicide. When they were children, a long staircase broke under the sister; only the intervention of her brother saved her life - now the sister again asks for help. | ||||
| 18 | The man who loved flowers | The man who loved flowers | 1977 | Gallery (Aug. 1977) |
| A romantically inclined young man buys flowers for his girlfriend. He meets a girl, hands her flowers and then kills her: he is a serial killer, who sees his long-dead beloved in other women. | ||||
| nineteen | On the road (story) | One for the road | 1977 | Maine (March-April 1977) |
| During heavy snowfall, a frightened man enters the bar: his wife and daughter were left in a car stuck in the snow near the abandoned town of Salimov Udel (" Lot "). Heroes go to the rescue and encounter vampires . | ||||
| 20 | Woman in the ward | The woman in the room | 1978 | here |
| The mother of the protagonist painfully dies of cancer. The hero decides to give her a lethal dose of medicine. | ||||
Films
Feature Films
- “ Children of the Corn ” (1984) directed by Fritz Kirsch . The film and its non-book-based sequel, Children of the Corn 2: The Last Victim (1992) were quite successful and spawned a series of sequels that were produced in direct-to-video format and were not shown in movie theaters.
- Cat's Eye (1985) directed by Lewis Teague consists of three short stories; two of them are similar to the original screen versions of the stories from the collection “The Night Shift” - “Quit Smoking Corporation” and “Cornice”.
- “ Maximum Acceleration ” (1986), film adaptation of the story “Trucks”; The director was Stephen King himself.
- “The Night Shift ” (1990) directed by Ralph Singleton.
- The Lawnmower Man (1992) directed by Brett Leonard . The plot of the film in the cyberpunk genre has nothing to do with the story; Producers from New Line Cinema Studios acquired the rights to film the story of The Lawnmower Man and used Stephen King's name to promote the film. In 1996, the sequel to The Lawnmower 2: Beyond Cyberspace , also unrelated to King's story, was released.
- Crush (1994) directed by Toub Hooper , film adaptation of the story The Meat Grinder. Two direct-to-video sequels were later released: Crush 2: The Computer Killer (2001) and Crush 3: The Renaissance (2005).
TV movies
- “ Sometimes They Come Back ” (1991) directed by Tom McLaughlin. Later two direct-to-video sequels were released: “ Sometimes they come back ... again ” (1996) and “ Sometimes they come back 3 ” (1998).
- " Zone 51 " (1997) directed by Chris Thomson, an adaptation of the story "Trucks".
- The Battlefield series in the series Nightmares and Fantastic Visions (2006)
- “ Children of the Corn ” (2009) directed by Donald P. Borkers.
Animated Films
- “ The Battle ” (1990, USSR) directed by Mikhail Titov; film adaptation of the story "Battlefield". Made in the technique of total animation .
Dollar Deal Movies
Around 1977, King formulated the rules of the so-called “dollar deal” ( Eng. Dollar Deal ), according to which he agreed to grant permission for non-commercial screening of his stories to students and novice filmmakers for a nominal sum of $ 1. As a result, many low-budget short films were created [2] .
- " Boogeyman " (1982), an adaptation of the story "And Buka came."
- The Apostles of the Crow (1983), a film adaptation of the story Children of the Corn.
- “ A Woman in a Room ” (1983) directed by Frank Darabont , a film adaptation of the story “A Woman in a Chamber”.
Notes
- ↑ World Fantasy Awards 1979 . Science Fiction Awards Database . Locus Science Fiction Foundation . Date of treatment September 20, 2013. Archived June 30, 2015.
- ↑ Spignesi, Stephen J. The Stephen King Encyclopedia: The Definitive Guide to the Works of America's Master of Horror. - Contemporary Books, 1991. - ISBN 978-0809238187 .