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The Night Flier

  • 1997
  • R
  • 1h 37m
IMDb RATING
6.0/10
13K
YOUR RATING
The Night Flier (1997)
Home Video Trailer from HBO Home Video
Play trailer0:31
1 Video
99+ Photos
TragedyFantasyHorrorMystery

A reporter is on the trail of a vampiric murderer who travels by plane.A reporter is on the trail of a vampiric murderer who travels by plane.A reporter is on the trail of a vampiric murderer who travels by plane.

  • Director
    • Mark Pavia
  • Writers
    • Stephen King
    • Mark Pavia
    • Jack O'Donnell
  • Stars
    • Miguel Ferrer
    • Julie Entwisle
    • Dan Monahan
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    6.0/10
    13K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Mark Pavia
    • Writers
      • Stephen King
      • Mark Pavia
      • Jack O'Donnell
    • Stars
      • Miguel Ferrer
      • Julie Entwisle
      • Dan Monahan
    • 105User reviews
    • 56Critic reviews
    • 36Metascore
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 1 win & 2 nominations total

    Videos1

    Night Flier
    Trailer 0:31
    Night Flier

    Photos133

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    Top cast36

    Edit
    Miguel Ferrer
    Miguel Ferrer
    • Richard Dees
    Julie Entwisle
    • Katherine Blair
    Dan Monahan
    Dan Monahan
    • Merton Morrison
    Michael H. Moss
    Michael H. Moss
    • Dwight Renfield
    John Bennes
    • Ezra Hannon
    Beverly Skinner
    • Selida McCamon
    Rob Wilds
    • Buck Kendall
    Richard K. Olsen
    Richard K. Olsen
    • Claire Bowie
    • (as Richard Olsen)
    Elizabeth McCormick
    • Ellen Sarch
    J.R. Rodriguez
    J.R. Rodriguez
    • Terminal Cop #1
    Robert Leon Casey
    Robert Leon Casey
    • Terminal Cop #2
    • (as Bob Casey)
    Ashton Stewart
    • Nate Wilson
    William Neely
    • Ray Sarch
    Windy Wenderlich
    • Henry Gates
    General Fermon Judd Jr.
    General Fermon Judd Jr.
    • Policeman
    Korbi Dean
    Korbi Dean
    • Linda Ross
    • (as Deann Korbutt)
    Rachel Lewis
    • Libby Grant
    Kristen Leigh
    • Dottie Walsh
    • Director
      • Mark Pavia
    • Writers
      • Stephen King
      • Mark Pavia
      • Jack O'Donnell
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews105

    6.012.7K
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    10

    Featured reviews

    8claudio_carvalho

    Along His Professional Life, Richard Dees Had Looked For Hell... and He Found It

    Richard Dees (Miguel Ferrer) is a nasty and bitter senior reporter from sensationalist tabloid Inside View. When a mysterious pilot starts killing persons nearby the airports, Richard's boss Merton Morrison (Dan Monahan) invites him to cover the matter, but he is not interest. However, rookie reporter Katherine "Jimmy" Blair (Julie Entwisle) studies thoroughly the story of a serial-killer that killed his victims Claire Ellis Bowie in Maine; Buck Kendall in New York; and Ray and Ellen Sarch in Maryland. But Richard steals her research and gives the following advice to Katherine: "Never believe what you publish...Never publish what you believe". He flies to each place in his plane and realizes that the killer might be a vampire due to his style and calls him "The Night Flier". Meanwhile Merton assigns Katherine to follow Richard to give a different view of the same story. When Richard finally finds The Night Flier, he descends to the hell in his insanity and Katherine follows his advice.

    "The Night Flier" is one of the best adaptations of Stephen King for video, with an interesting horror movie with a different vampire story. The plot is well constructed, and the story is very simple, but also very frightening. Miguel Ferrer has a good performance in the role of a scum reporter. Unfortunately, Julie Entwisle has a very weak performance in an important character. The contrast between the final black and white scene and the following bright colored one is visually impressive. My vote is eight.

    Title (Brazil): "Vôo Noturno" ("Night Flight")
    9le canard

    Serious, gory stuff!

    Richard Dees is a reporter and he is a vampire because he works for a tabloid and earns his living by writing lurid stories and taking sordid pictures. He's got a despicable job and he is getting sick of it. Dwight Renfield is the Night Flier and he is a vampire too, but he is a "real" one – an evil and supernatural creature feeding itself on humans. He flies from one airfield to another across the U.S. on a black, private aeroplane. Of course he always leaves bloodless corpses behind him and Dees ends up chasing him with his tape recorder and camera. When they eventually meet, the vampire doesn't really feel like killing one of his kind, and he is ready to let him go. Yet Dees proves his curiosity will always make him chase people like the Night Flier and he will bitterly regret it. At the end of the film, everybody will see and remember Richard Dees as what he really was, that is to say a nasty character living on people's suffering. Well, this film is a great B-movie. The story is exciting, Miguel Ferrer is excellent and the film has no Hollywood-like happy ending. I strongly recommend it to anyone looking for a nice thrill and a few gallons of blood.
    6InfoGod

    A notch above most King films.

    This movie is a notch above most King films.

    I own the DVD of this film and I have to say that Director Mark Pavia did an excellent job with this film. Especially with the end. The end is a great tribute to George A. Romero's style but it goes further and becomes creepier than anything I've seen in recent memory. I caught the last fifteen minutes of this film on cable one night and I was hooked. I remember thinking wow what a stylish film what the hell is this? So I researched and found out the title and bought the film.

    The film suffers from a lame screenplay and some stiff acting. Miguel Ferrer was excellent, as was Dan Monahan. Michael H. Moss and Julie Entwisle were a bit stiff. All in all this is a good horror movie and the DVD transfer is sharp and the colors are precise. The sound balance is natural, without over-placement of artificial sound effects.

    Watch it alone on a stormy night!
    9SodaCan

    An interesting, though slightly flawed take on King

    I'm not going to say that this is a great movie, or even a great horror movie. A more appropriate way of saying it might be that it's an interesting movie. Those poor filmmakers, they're starting to run out of Stephen King novels to make into movies, so they have to turn to his short stories. Usually this means what should have been a 30 minute movie is drawn out into an hour and a half or longer. But in the case of Mark Pavia's "The Night Flier", story works because Pavia is able to expand on King's original story, and he also seems to have a bit of talent as a director.

    Most people complain that Miguel Ferrer's character, Richard Dees, is too mean, or something like that. QUIT COMPLAINING PEOPLE! He's suppose to be an utterly heartless, sleazy, sorry excuse of a person. You're not suppose to feel sorry for him at all as he descends to insanity. Instead having such a terrible lead character is suppose to pose the question whose the real monster? Or, actually I think it'd be more accurate to say, whose the real hero? Is there a hero? Ferrer pulls off the performance perfectly, making a character that could make James Woods or Clint Eastwood whimper in fear. Unfortunately the rest of the cast doesn't do so well, and this pulls in the movie down a little way.

    Anyway, Pavia himself has a talent for gloomy atmosphere, with his overcast, gray skies and quiet music and always just slightly-off-angle photography. He expertly subdues the beginning 2/3s of the movie and then throws a bloodbath at us. It's a very well planned and a shocking move on his part.

    "The Night Flier" kicks into major gear towards the end. The final, final conclusion is a little weak, but it really couldn't have ended any other way.

    Overall, the couple flaws drag "The Night Flier" down to a good but not great movie, but the really cool climax and other elements make up for it, and make it a good time. Be warned, it won't leave you feeling happy or good.
    the_last_shadow_2000

    One Of The Best... The Bottom Line

    This movie was absolutely great. Of course it had some bad clips but overall, the scenery, plot, and charactors were far out the best. The ending was really strange and hard to understand but you got to love it. Oh yeah, and check out the villians face... some freaky stuff... nine out of ten!!!

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      In the scene where Katherine is looking at all of Richard's bylines, the framed copies of "Inside View" contain many references to other stories by Stephen King: "Springhill Jack Strikes Again!" (Strawberry Spring), "Headless Lamaze Leads To Successful Birth!" (The Breathing Method), "Kiddie Cultists in Kansas Worship Creepy Voodoo God!" (Children of the Corn), "Satanic Shopkeeper Sells Gory Goodies!" (Needful Things), "Naked Demons Levelled My Lawn!" (The Lawnmower Man) and "The Ultimate Killer Diet! Gypsy Curse Flays Fat Lawyer's Flesh" (Thinner).
    • Goofs
      Richard is leaving a small rural airport when he swerves to avoid hitting an oncoming pickup truck. As he does this you hear the squealing tires but he is driving on a dirt road.
    • Quotes

      Ezra Hannon: What paper you say you're from?

      Richard Dees: Inside View, you know it?

      Ezra Hannon: Oh yeah. My wife Martha reads your paper. After she's done with it, I use it to line our kitty's toilet box. Soaks that cat piss real good.

    • Alternate versions
      The U.K. DVD includes a few more seconds of gore in the massacre sequence at the end. 1) The camera pans over the corpses on the floor a second time (right to left), and we get a closer shot of a black man, cut in half. The reporter stops and takes a photo of this. He then looks to his right, before proceeding further into the room. Duration: Approx. 18 seconds. Now, this is how the scene plays in the US cut: After the reporter enters the building, the camera pans over the corpses scattered on the floor, from left to right. After that the film cuts to a close up shot of the reporter holding his flash light and looking around. Instead of the insert mentioned above however, the US cuts directly to the next two corpses on the floor (a woman with a neck wound). 2) A close up shot of Dees holding his flashlight and looking around is longer in this cut (after he walks away from the woman with the neck wound and the other corpse). In the US cut we see him look straight ahead and then the film cuts directly to the dead woman at the counter. However, the US disc omits the following: Dees looks to his left and there are three quick shots of a severed head on the floor. He walks further and looks down, and there's a severed arm there. The camera pans up from the arm and shows some more of the interiors in a wide shot. Duration: 14 seconds 3) Before the night flier feeds Dees his blood, there is a longer gore scene: The shot showing him cutting his arm open with his long nail has more spurting blood and lasts longer. Also, the camera pans / tilts from the wound and up to the Night flier's face. In other words: A one shot with a camera pan / tilt. The US cut on the other hand uses an alternate shot / take from a different angel, to make the scene less explicit. First we see the first second of the cutting & blood flow in a large close up, and then the US cuts to a front shot of the vampire finishing the cutting. Around 2 seconds of gore missing here. 4) The exploding head in the black and white sequence is longer.
    • Connections
      Features Killer Crocodile (1989)
    • Soundtracks
      Red
      Performed by Sister Machine Gun

      Written by Chris Randall

      Published by KMFDM Ent. (BMI)

      Courtesy of Wax Trax! Records / TVT Records

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    FAQ23

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    • What is 'The Night Flier' about?
    • Is 'The Night Flier' based on a book?
    • How does the movie end?

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • February 6, 1998 (United States)
    • Countries of origin
      • United States
      • Italy
    • Language
      • English
    • Also known as
      • El aviador nocturno
    • Filming locations
      • Wilmington, North Carolina, USA
    • Production companies
      • New Amsterdam Entertainment
      • Stardust International
      • Medusa Film
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Budget
      • $1,000,000 (estimated)
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $125,397
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $91,549
      • Feb 8, 1998
    • Gross worldwide
      • $125,397
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 37 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • Dolby Digital
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.85 : 1

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