NIGHT FLYER

Stephen King has his critics but I am a confessed fan. Of his writing there have been great adaptations and there have been terrible ones. A lot of his stories (particularly his horror work) are more visually effective in writing and are so often let down on screen. The stories which work in movie-form are generally the psychological and weighty ones with greater drama (his horror can have incredible drama, ie The Shining, Dead Zone, Carrie etc) and so last night I watched one of the few King movies that i'd never seen before, The Night Flier. It's a vampire story about a black plane which travels during the night, stopping at regional airports and killing whoever resides there. Conceptually its great and the novella works really well... but this movie doesnt. Surprisingly there's some great gore and the creep-factor works in it's favor for the first half, but the whole thing is let down by some really stodgey writing, lousy acting and just about every cliche of the genre. When the vampire's face is revealed its laughably pathetic and what could have been a modest and effective little movie was actually a big waste of time.

---