46 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bloody great vampire flick, August 21, 2004
This review is from: The Night Flier (DVD)
Watching a film based on a Stephen King novel is an adventure fraught with peril. No other author, not even Michael Crichton, receives as much attention from Hollywood as King does. Regrettably, in the rush to adapt everything this author has written over the past thirty years to the silver screen, terms such as "quality" rapidly flew out the window. While I haven't watched every entry in the King canon, I've seen enough of the good and more of the bad to know that blithely wondering into one of his films involves a considerable risk. It only takes a single experience with "Maximum Overdrive" (directed by the "Maine" man himself, incredibly) or "Cat's Eye" for a viewer to think twice about hauling that "based on a novel by Stephen King" DVD off the video store shelf. But for every disaster there does exist a "Carrie," a "Shawshank Redemption," or another film that makes the effort worthwhile. "The Night Flier" falls in the latter category, a movie so incredibly good that it's a wonder more people haven't heard about it. This is a film casual fans of Stephen King may not know about, and more's the pity because of their unawareness.
Some nut in a pitch black Cessna is flying around the country and landing at small, out of the way airports in order to messily kill the personnel on duty. All of these grisly incidents take place in the middle of the night, not in and of itself particularly strange, but the actual killings raise a host of intriguing questions screaming for someone to investigate. No one makes a connection that these crimes might be linked until a bottom feeding trash tabloid paper called "Inside View" gets a whiff of the story. The star reporter for this rag, Richard Dees (Miguel Ferrer), eventually expresses an interest in the killings when the facts become too weird to ignore. This journalist (a term used loosely) boards his own small plane and begins to follow the crimes up and down the East Coast. Dees faces a host of problems during his investigation, including the reluctance of witnesses to speak about what they know. Bigger difficulties emerge in the form of Merton Morrison (Dan Monahan), the sleazy editor of "Inside View," and a hungry new reporter looking for her first big break named Katherine Blair (Julie Entwisle). Dees isn't too worried about these problems since he understands completely the ins and outs of tabloid journalism, and knows from years of experience how to hold his own against rivals and unenthusiastic witnesses.
Dees's excursions slowly uncover a series of sinister clues to the identity of the unknown pilot. The enigmatic aviator's name is Dwight Renfield, and the guy only flies at night. He also seems to possess a weird ability to control the minds of some of his victims, victims left lying in county morgues with holes in their necks that you could drive a tractor through. Dees knows he's on to something huge, a story that could very well put him back on page one of "Inside View." As the reporter homes in on his quarry, he learns Renfield knows about him and knows what he's trying to do. Ominous incidents start occurring, messages left in blood in Dees's hotel room warning the reporter to cease and desist, stalking, things like that. Richard isn't the sort of guy that scares easily, however, so he takes these warnings as signs that he's about to break the big story. Meanwhile, back at "Inside View" headquarters, Dees reticence to reveal the juicy details of the case to Morrison leads the editor to assign eager beaver Blair to the story. The boss chuckles over imagining the hostility that will inevitably occur when Dees learns he's been steamrolled. Better Dees should worry about what will happen when he finally confronts Dwight Renfield than what Blair or Morrison are planning.
I loved "The Night Flier" when I first saw it on pay television back in the late 1990s, and a recent viewing reaffirmed my initial impressions. This movie has it all in spades: sleazy characters deeply developed, a massively scary vampire, and gore ramped up to insane levels. Miguel Ferrer slams it out of the park as the cynical, world-weary Richard Dees, a journalist so fed up with the nightmares of humanity that he formulates the personal philosophy "Never publish what you believe, and never believe what you publish" in order to keep his emotional distance. The picture succeeds because King, and by extension the filmmakers, rework the vampire mythos in a fresh way. This story rightly equates trash media with vampirism, and you never know who the real blood feeder is in the film. Dees, for example, stops at a gory highway accident to snap a few pictures of the mangled bodies in the cars, not because he plans to write a story about the incident but because he simply can't resist exploiting a graphic tragedy. Merton Morrison, upon hearing a few tidbits about Renfield's latest spree, exclaims, "God, I hope he kills more people!" As bad as Renfield is, he pales in comparison to these modern day Draculas.
Aside from the social messages in the film, "The Night Flier" also boasts one of the scariest looking vampires we've ever seen in a movie. That final showdown between Dees and Renfield, when the vampire finally shows the reporter his true face, will make you shudder. As for the DVD, a trailer, production notes, and cast and crew biographies are all the extras you get on the disc. I highly recommend this movie to fans of the vampire film genre. Heck, I recommend this film to anyone who wants to watch a genuinely scary film. "The Night Flier" is an unmitigated winner.
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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stephen King done RIGHT, April 12, 2004
This review is from: The Night Flier (DVD)
Many Stephen King films just don't capture the scares Mr. King probably intended. Although The Shining DID and King hated that movie, so I am not sure if he likes The Night Flier or not. Well, he should. I read the story before the movie was made and the film if very faithful to the story and captures the feel perfectly. My town has a small airport like the ones featured in the story and film. No one goes there on a daily basis, so a small plane landing and the vampire pilot feasting on the small landing strip crew, is not only believable, but spooky for me (since I live about half a mile from our "airport".
The Night Flier follows a tabloid has-been reporter (played by Miguel Ferrer with his usual gravel-toned zest) chasing a small plane pilot who travels from small airstrip to small airstrip killing the crews he finds in a way that suggests he is (or thinks he is) a vampire.
My biggest problem with the DVD is that the killer is displayed on the front and back of the DVD packaging, thereby taking away any of the big surprise reveal of the killer's face near the end. I hate that. It includes a trailer and a slide-show type behind the scenes story about the making of the film.
Bottom line, this is one of the good Stephen King films. It's not blatantly scary, but it does have a certain sustained suspense to it as the journalist gains ground on his prey.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
DECENT VAMPIRE FLICK, November 4, 2005
This review is from: The Night Flier (DVD)
"The Night Flier" is a good low budget horror flick which has only one minus already mentioned in other reviews - its box cover. Imagine some detective film which would have the killer's portrait with a knife on the cover. I still can't come up with a reason why the studio did it. I try but I can't. And now a little about the movie itself. It's rather creepy and mysterious (forget now about the cover), it sticks close to Stephen Kings' work spirit. Besides to my opinion it's the best performance to date of Miguel Ferrer. I haven't seen him like that before although he's always good. But here his ruthless and unscrupulous reporter really looks different and just awesome. His methods and black humor will make you grin and shudder.
"The Night Flier" is not a milestone horror picture but it's quite decent and I'm pretty sure you'll enjoy it if you are not expecting something extraordinary.
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