The Night Flier

I love horror, I enjoy Stephen King's tales, and even enjoy most of the film adaptations (yes....I liked "Maximum Overdrive"). "Night Flier" seems to have all of the pieces in place to be a great horror film, but for some reason it just doesn't quite come together. The idea of a vampire flying around the country to all these podunk air fields, offing his victims is a neat idea. I also liked the idea that only a tabloid along the lines of "The Weekly World News" is onto the vampire's game and sends out their seasoned and cynical reporter to find him. The entire idea of the film is pretty innovative and give a nice twist on a tired horror genre.
I think where things fell apart for me was in the character of Richard Dees played by Miguel Ferrer. Ferrer is great as the sarcastic and evil henchman. I loved his work in "The Stand" and "Robocop", but as the star of "Night Flier" he is so unlikable, we are left with no one to root for. The vampire, cleverly named Dwight Renfield, has no charisma, no personality and nothing that would get the audience to root for him as the anti-hero. The special effects are decent, and the final showdown between Dees and Renfield is very good, but just comes too late to do much for the film.
When watching this movie I had the feeling I was watching an extended episode of "Tales from The Darkside", it has the same feel, and production values. And it's no surprise to see the man behind "Darkside" was also responsible for "Night Flier", Richard P. Rubinstein.
If you are a die-hard King fan, you can do worse looking for a film adaptation (The Mangler), but you can also do so much better (The Stand) than "Night Flier".

This movie is quite good but it is too short and lacks detail. I want to know how the night flier became the way he is and why he targets certain people. Why does that woman want to be ready to die? Alittle more detail goes a long way. Other than that I would recommend this movie.

When my son purchased Night Flyer for his Steven King collection I really didn't take an interest as it looked like a second rate production. This was based on the appearance of the DVD art work and was an error on my part. One night in a fit of "nothing new" to watch on DVD I watched the film and was pleasantly surprised. I don't think the DVD jacket should have illustrated the creature as poorly as it did. In fact I think that may have hurt sales of this very good DVD.

The story is actually not too bad, original even for King and a well made for TV movie. The DVD transfer was excellent and was filmed in exactly the right 1.85 aspect ratio to fill my large screen HDTV with a clear, crisp and colorful picture that was like a night-out at the movies. It was so clear in fact that I took a second look to see if it was an enhanced DVD, or filmed in Blue Ray.

Bought because it was a Stephen King movie. I'm collecting all his movies and books.

Now, I had read alot of the reviews on this movie and was skeptical, there are a few negative remarks. Being an avid King fan I thought well, gotta at least watch it once. "I LOVED that movie", I wasn't expecting that ending at all. Once again, "Stephen King is the man"!!! It was an awesome movie and I thought a totally great ending.