I’ve taken some time off for vacation before the start of a new semester and have been working on the next chapter, on King adaptations that were filmed in Maine and films that invest significant time in visually creating representations of King’s Maine.

In the “filmed in Maine” section, one of the films I had the most fun writing about was the 1990 creature feature Graveyard Shift. My consideration of this film occupies the overlap of the film’s creation and the real life mill (Bartlettyarns Mill) that served as the exterior of the film’s Bachman Mills, which is still operational, selling yarn and offering tours once a year at their open house. This was a wonderful and surprising discovery and once of the tangential goals of my project here has become to make myself a Graveyard Shift scarf from Bartlettyarns yarn, though I’m having a heck of a time deciding on a color.

Here are some brief in-progress thoughts on King adaptations filmed in Maine and Graveyard Shift that explore those intersections of filming and literary tourism:

King’s fiction draws upon the varied geography of Maine, from the offshore life of Little Tall and Goat Islands to the Gothic wilderness of The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon and Pet Sematary and the uncanny towns of Castle Rock, Derry, and Jerusalem’s Lot. Given the symbiotic relationship between King’s Maine and that of the real world, the state would seem to be a natural filming location for King adaptations, though to date few have been filmed there. As J.W. Ocker explains in his book The New England Grimpedium, “Maine’s not a preferred filming location by the movie industry, for a pair of major reasons. First, it’s pretty much the farthest point in the country that you can get from the studio hub of Hollywood and all the supporting industries it takes to make a film these days … [and] Second, although Maine’s harsh, snowy climate looks beautiful on film, it’s also terrible to film in” (136-137). However, there are also significant benefits to filming a King adaptation in Maine, with the Maine Film Office highlighting the wide range of beautiful, cinematic locations the state has to offer (“Location Library”), many of which align ideally with key settings in King’s fictional Maine, and the sense of verisimilitude that comes from seeing the narrative action actually play out in the place where it was set. In addition, there is also a commercial and authorial influence in the choice of filming location, with King occasionally leveraging his involvement to benefit his local community and state, such as King’s insistence that Pet Sematary be filmed in Maine. King adaptations that have been shot (either entirely or in part) in Maine include Creepshow 2, Pet Sematary, Graveyard Shift, The Langoliers, Thinner, and Storm of the Century, with these films showcasing Maine landscapes and locations.

Some of these adaptations, like Graveyard Shift and The Langoliers, feature insular locations and largely rely on interior shooting. The action in Graveyard Shift centers around the horror of Bachman Mills in fictional Gates Falls, Maine, with the historical 1875 Bangor Water Works’ basement and tunnels serving as mill interiors. The exterior shots of the mill are of the still operational Bartlettyarns Mill in on Higgins Stream in Harmony, Maine, where “Since 1821, our mule spun woolen yarns are carefully created to produce several yarn and roving color ways with deep inspiration” (“Welcome”), working with local producers and featuring several products inspired by the unique Maine landscape, with yarn colors including Blueberry, Lupine, and Rangely Rose (“Shop by Color”). While both the Bangor Water Works and the Bartlettyarns Mill are historically significant locations that reflect the communities and state which surround them, with Ian Nathan noting in Stephen King at the Movies that the choice of filming locations capitalize on “the tumbledown Victoriana of first-generation America” (79). These locations’ appearance in Graveyard Shift is depicted as distinctly horrific, with the grueling working conditions at Bachman Mills, the manipulation and abuse of mill foreman Warwick (Stephen Macht), the rats that infest the mill, and the more monstrous horrors which lurk beneath the mill’s basement. The interior shots cultivate a sense of claustrophobic danger, while exterior shots featuring Harmony depict a fairly hostile and run-down mill town, where the film’s protagonist John Hall (David Andrews) never feels at home. There is a decidedly gritty feel to the setting and Nathan argues that Graveyard Shift “is King’s most working-class film and decidedly anti-capitalist in its visceral Dickensian muck” (79). These are not inviting places, though they do highlight the ways in which everyday locations can become uncanny, serving as a façade of normalcy for the terrors below. Literary and cinematic King tourists are fairly limited in their experiential options of these locations: the Bangor Water Works is now home to an apartment complex (“Bangor Water Works”), with filming locations not open to the public, and while Barlettyarns’ Harmony mill features a commercial store, they only offer public tours during their annual open house.

Filmed in Maine, great yarn, plus Brad Dourif AND a dog named Moxie—what’s not to love about Graveyard Shift? Well, except maybe for the giant killer rat monsters …