The Night Flier

Rating:
Summary: Are planes the new vampires of our world?
Review: This video is one more (and they are rare) vampire story by Stephen King. His vampire is absolutely normal in the genre. But he is living today. So Stephen King twists the model to adapt it the modern world. He associates the vampire to a magic machine that is both phenomenally useful and indredibly feared by so many people. It is a plane. A plane that comes to small airports and air strips carrying the vampire who, first charms his victims under a human look, and then, during the second night, kills all those he can. The second trick King introduces is the fight between the two pulpy journalists. This gives a picture of this world of the paparazzi as being crual, and totally cynical. The third twist is the fact that the vampire hypnotizes the male - why not the female? - journalist into believing he is in hell, and into axing all his (the vampire's) own victims till the police arrives and hence shoots him down as being the Night Flier, just at the very moment when he, the real Night Flier, is walking back to his plane and flying away, under the eyes of the other journalist, who will make the front page of her publication by accusing her colleague with being the Night Flier, as the police wants everyone to believe. Are journalists the real vampires of the phantasms of simple-minded audiences? Or are they the toys of the police, hence the state, to make people believe the good news that will avoid all kinds of difficult panics? Probably both and some other nice things too. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU Paris Universities IX and II

Rating:
Summary: Bloodiest movie by King
Review: This was one of the bloodiest movies I saw by King. I think it was very well made, the story is a nice horror and suspense, and, like all works by King, the end is very unexpected, very impressive... Its just like "Desperation". I didn't read the original work, so I don't know if the movie is just like the book, but certainly the movie is great for itself.

Rating:
Summary: Poor Story Line
Review: Very disappointing, at the end you'd say "That's it", there is no excitement or story at all.

Rating:
Summary: Bloody great vampire flick
Review: 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.




Rating:
Summary: I guess disfigured monsters are cool
Review: Well let's just say I wouldn't recommend eating during this film. The whole blood and gore thing got a little out of hand... looked as if the directors went a little catsup happy all over the airport walls. So if you enjoy watching scary zombie things and a hideously disfigured monster trying to eat people, this is your movie. The plot was pretty good, but it wasn't really what I expected. The bloody scenes were just there to kind of give you that nausiating-scared feeling King usually emits in his movies/books... The only thing that kept me from giving this movie a 5 was the fact that the plot was a little gay... it could've used a little more spice and conflict and a little less fake blood and zombies.

Rating:
Summary: Oh what a great movie! So close to the original story!
Review: When I first saw this movie it kept me glued to the television. The twist at the end was excellent. Didn't see it coming at all. That's what makes a good story, keep the watcher/reader guessing. The blood and gore was necessary to show how brutal the vampire was in his "eating" habits. Man, when that thing opened his mouth to the reporter, you could have put a bicycle in there. Don't even get me started about those two huge teeth! Much better than little pointy canines. I found the book after watching the movie and liked it even more because it was a pretty faithful interpretation. His power of hypnotism must have been extremely powerful to be able to wipe out a whole airport. Great movie.

Rating:
Summary: Horroriffic
Review: You usually see in vampire movies of some dude that looks like human except he has sharp teeth, and bulgy eyes. But that doesn't count for Nosferatu, that scared the heck out of me too. But Stephen doesn't want it to be just another vampire movie, but a movie that is much more diffrent and more strange. The gore is in the movie is so realistic, it seems as though they used real blood in the shots, and it makes you more afraid of the vampire, or I should say beast in the movie. Stephen makes the beast not like a vampire, except for the blood sucking, but more of some type of supernatural being, like SpringHeeled Jack, or someother true story humanoids. The cape kinda makes it a little less scary, but how when that old man tells how the cape looks like bats wings, makes it more frightning. The beast doesn't turn into a bat, but a dog, a very common house pet. That should make you start watching your back when you see a chocolate lab retriever. To say the least, this is the most horrific movie I've seen, next to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.