Night Shift is a 1982 comedy film directed by Happy Days icon Ron Howard and stars Henry Winkler (Fonzie, also from Happy Days) along with Michael Keaton and Shelley Long in her first film. Maybe it’s just me, but there is an interesting dynamic having one Happy Days star direct another. Winkler is anything but “The Fonz” in Night Shift!
Henry Winkler stars as Chuck Lumley, a nerdy, quiet, recluse person who is forced to take the night shift at a morgue that he works at. Enter Bill Blazejowski (Michael Keaton, Batman) an eclectic idea man as he calls himself, who turns the morgue upside down. After Chuck’s neighbor Belinda Keaton (Shelley Long, Cheers, Caveman) lost her pimp (he was murdered) and sees how she is struggling without one, Bill comes up with an idea to turn the morgue into a pimp office, where they will earn far less than an actual pimp and give Belinda and her friends more money for the work that they do. At first Chuck balks at such an idea but he comes around. Everything starts out well at first, until the people who murdered Belinda’s pimp show up at the morgue where Chuck finds himself in deep, deep trouble.
This is a charming retro-eighties style comedy film with some great tunes, such as “Talk Talk” by the band Talk Talk, “Street Talk” by Burt Bacharach and others. The song “Night Shift” is performed by Quaterflash. The actors are all spectacular, especially Michael Keaton as Bill who is way over the top. Watching Henry Winkler’s character evolve to someone who lets people run all over him was compelling. Ron Howard’s brother Clint (Evilspeak, Get Crazy) has a small role as does screen legend Joe Spinell (Maniac, The Godfather). Media icon Richard Belzer plays Pig, one of the pimps! Seeing Henry Winkler outside of the cool Fonzie is a trip. I know he’s been in many films, but he will always be Fonzie to me! The film is a great blast to the past, total eighties nonsense that’s a lot of fun!
Warner Archive releases Night Shift on Blu-ray and it looks spectacular with rich, deep colors. Details look about as sharp as they can be. Be it the clothing or various locations around the city, the color palette and details to the scenery are sharp with rich textures, inky black and great shadow detail. Skin tones look accurate. This is simply a wonderful presentation by Warner Archive.
For the audio, Warner has used an English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 soundtrack which is perfectly fine with the dialogue, music by the various artists, screams and other action noises coming in clear. The audio clearly supports the era-specific music and other noises. No hissing or crackles were detected.
A theatrical trailer is the lone extra.
Admittedly, it would have been nice to have interviews with the cast and crew, and maybe Warner tried to no avail, but this is a film that would have been an even better release with some cool supplements. Outside of that complaint, the audio and video quality are top-notch, which is the Warner Brothers/Warner Archive standard. Recommended!
Night Shift
Director- Ron Howard
Cast- Henry Winkler, Michael Keaton, Shelley Long
Country of Origin- US
Distributor – Warner Brothers
Number of Discs – 1
Reviewed by – David Steigman
Date –11/27/2021