Written by: Mark Pavia & Jack O'Donnell (screenplay), Stephen King (story)
Directed by: Mark Pavia
Starring: Miguel Ferrer, Julie Entwisle, and Dan Monahan
Reviewed by: Brett Gallman(@brettgallman)
"He was wearing a big cloak he was. Red as a fire engine inside, black as a woodchuck's asshole outside. And when it spread out behind him, it looked like a goddamn bat's wing it did."
Even if they don’t always bear the most succulent fruit, it’s hard to ever knock the imaginative seeds of most Stephen King stories. The man just has a knack for clever hooks, even when he’s working within the framework of existing lore. Case in point: The Night Flier might be yet another vampire story, but it’s quite unlike any other, simply because its bloodsucker flies a plane from town to town to seek out and devour its victims. It might not sound like much, but it has enough mileage for a pretty solid short story. A feature film adaptation, on the other, hand? The mileage definitely varies, but first-time director Mark Pavia did a fairly respectable job of it on a limited budget back in the late-90s, when the King adaptation scene wasn’t quite what it once was. You won’t mistake The Night Flier as one of the absolute best King adaptations, but it’s one of the better ones from this era.
Like the short story, The Night Flier is framed by an investigation by Richard Dees (Miguel Ferrer), a deeply cynical tabloid reporter whose shameless methods and cantankerous disposition precede him. He’s seen better days: once the star of the front page, his irrelevant stories are now buried in the margins of the Inside View. Sensing an opportunity for his star reporter to get his groove back, editor Merton Morrison (Dan Monahan) comes to Richard with an irresistible story involving a serial killer that’s left a trail of bodies up and down the eastern seaboard. What’s more, the guy calls himself Dwight Renfield and claims to be a vampire. Unconvinced, Richard passes on the story until newbie reporter Katherine Blair (Julie Entwistle) starts to uncover evidence confirming the rumors. Rather than work with his new co-worker, he swipes the beat from her and embarks on an investigation that soon becomes a swirling descent into madness.
The Night Flier is one of those mystery movies where only the characters themselves are in the dark. We know Richard is actually chasing a vampire because we see a mysterious man fly into rural airfields and leave the attendants ripped to shreds. Our eyes--and the eyewitnesses Richard interviews--confirms he wears a cape and is so furtive that nobody who encounters him can even recall that he was there. Clearly, something bizarre is going on, and, even though the script lays out everything for the audience, it’s still somewhat compelling to see the pieces fall into place as the full picture comes into focus. It helps that Ferrer is our guide through it all: he was one of our most unsung actors who rarely landed leading roles despite his immense, versatile talents.
He brings an absolute conviction to Richard, a self-admitted, unrepentant asshole with no qualms about exploiting sordid material for a headline. He dives headlong into the reporter’s growing mania, starting the ordeal as a jaded burn-out but ending it swept up in this impossible tale. Spitting bizarre, film noir-esque dialogue into his tape recorder, he narrates his journey and paints the portrait of an increasingly desperate man. When he must finally confront the impossible, his sudden vulnerability sells the horror more than the outbursts of graphic violence. Rich isn’t exactly a good guy, yet Ferrer brings the lightest touch of warmth and humanity, putting the film on a bit of a different trajectory. Its climax is more of a bummer than it is a rousing, crowd-pleasing crescendo of gory comeuppance, Without Ferrer at its center, I doubt The Night Filer leaves so strong of an impression.
Pavia does a nice job otherwise, staging some vicious violence (with a nice assist from KNB’s visceral gore effects) and capturing some moody atmospherics. There’s a great moment during Richard’s investigation that he catches a glimpse of a dog peering down from a rooftop, implying that Renfield is using supernatural powers to keep tabs on the reporter. The Night Flier itself is the movie’s one concealed card, so Pavia patiently reveals the particulars surrounding the vampire. We get a glimpse here and there of his Dracula-style garb, plus hints of other strange powers, like telepathy and hypnosis. Renfield remains an enigma until the climax, when Pavia’s camera playfully reveals the vampire, playing up his invisibility in mirrors when a puzzled Richard sees blood impossibly pissing into a urinal behind him. It’s a prelude to Renfield’s ultimate, ghoulish reveal, where he also unveils his nefarious plot to drive Richard mad. Not content to just suck his blood dry, he subjects the reporter to a black and while hellscape where undead ghouls roam through a foggy, mirror netherworld of an abandoned airport.
Pavia’s stylish flourishes here provide a worthwhile payoff to an otherwise creaky affair. Arriving at this burst of panache first requires sitting through the often repetitive routine of Richard interviewing witnesses and piecing together accounts of Renfield’s exploits. Some prove to be more interesting than others, such as the side story that finds the fiend pulling an ederly couple into his orbit before feasting on their flesh. The woman is so held under his sway that she swoons for Renfield, adding an unexpectedly tragic dimension to a story about a flight-by-night vampire draining people of their blood. Katherine’s presence creates another layer of conflict that isn’t present in King’s story; she’s a total invention of a script that never quite figures out what to do with her. At best, you might expect her to be the protagonist: a wide-eyed new reporter who isn’t ready to glimpse the horrors of the world. At worst, you might expect her to become the Scully to Richard’s Mulder (or vice versa, I guess), with the two forming a team for this bizarre investigation. Instead, The Night Flier kind of punts, keeping Katherine around mostly to fulfill a bleak ending that tries to say something about the cynical, cyclical nature of human behavior. It’s an ambitious leap that doesn’t quite stick the landing just because Katherine isn’t well-developed enough as a character for it to land.
As such, The Night Flier leaves you with the familiar feeling that it might have been better off as a short, or, better yet, as a segment in a King anthology. I wouldn’t be opposed to someone revisiting it in that format (maybe even as an episode of the revived Creepshow), but I also have the nagging feeling that there is just enough meat on the story’s bone that it might not be any better served that way, either. Instead, let’s just say Pavia gave it his best shot and left us with a cool, often unsung little King adaptation from an era that was mostly lacking them. It’s certainly good enough that I still can’t figure out how it took him nearly 20 years to direct the equally unsung Fender Bender. Apparently, though, if he had it his way, he and King were going to produce Fear of Flying, a direct sequel to The Night Flier that would have continued the story and peeled back the curtain on Renfield’s origins. Maybe it’s for the best that didn’t happen: one thing I love about The Night Flier is the title character’s enigmatic nature, something King especially emphasizes in the short story. The film thankfully follows suit, leaving viewers with that signature King insistence that true horror is inexplicable. It flies in under the cover of moonlight, lurks among us, then strikes without leaving a hint of where it came from--or where it’s going.
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