Film Review: THE NIGHT FLIER (1997, Mark Pavia)

Stars: 4 of 5.

Running Time: 93 minutes.

Notable Cast or Crew:  Based on the short story by Stephen King.  Starring Miguel Ferrer (TWIN PEAKS, ROBOCOP, TRAFFIC, son of José Ferrer, cousin of George Clooney), Julie Entwhistle (IN AND OUT), Dan Monahan (PORKY'S, PORKY'S II: THE NEXT DAY), Michael H. Moss (ROBOCOP 3, PASSENGER 57).  Produced by Richard P. Rubenstein (DAWN OF THE DEAD, CREEPSHOW, TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE).  Makeup and special effects by Greg Nicotero (ARMY OF DARKNESS, FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, THE WALKING DEAD, KILL BILL, DEADWOOD), Howard Berger (THE MIST, THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS, EVIL DEAD II, THE FACULTY, INGLORIOUS BASTERDS), and Robert Kurtzman (PREDATOR, HOUSE III, IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS, SCREAM).

Tag-line:  "Evil has a flight plan."

Best one-liner:  "Never believe what you publish, and never publish what you believe."

While it does lay claim to a small cult following, THE NIGHT FLIER is nonetheless a relatively overlooked work when it comes to the Stephen King film canon.  Is it a masterpiece?  No.  But it's a fun, gory thriller in the vein (no pun intended) of a long-form TALES FROM THE CRYPT or an X-FILES "Monster of the Week" episode that's held together with a strong, nuanced portrayal by snarky character actor extraordinaire, Miguel Ferrer.

Pictured: snarky character actor extraordinaire Miguel Ferrer.

Back in my review of THE DEAD ZONE, I wrote about the King character of "Richard Dees," a sleazoid reporter for a rag mag named "INSIDE VIEW," who makes appearances in THE DEAD ZONE novel and the short story "The Night Flier" (from the NIGHTMARES AND DREAMSCAPES collection).  Dees is an absurd caricature of "the amoral newspaperman," combining the privacy-invasions of the paparazzi with the hilarious, outright dishonesty of THE NATIONAL ENQUIRER.

He's the sort of man who says "never print what you believe, and never believe what you print," the original yellow journalist.  However, despite his outward lack of principles, you genuinely like him... sort of like every character Miguel Ferrer has ever brought to life!

Anyway, Ferrer's Dees is the protagonist of THE NIGHT FLIER, and he's seen here following a shadowy, cloaked figure who may or may not be a genuine vampire, an alleged blood-sucker who has adapted to modern times, jumping around from rural town to town overnight in a Cessna Skymaster, signing in as "Dwight Renfield" (alluding to Dwight Frye, the wonderful character actor who portrayed Renfield in the 1931 DRACULA), leaving behind unsolved murders, and always vanishing without a trace.

Part detective thriller, part morality tale, and part vampire horror, here's eight reasons why you ought to buckle up and take to the unfriendly skies with THE NIGHT FLIER, where evil has a flight plan, etc., etc....


#1.  The exquisite dickery of Miguel Ferrer.


A lot of movies have characters who are callous, hardened individuals whose gruff exteriors mask hearts of gold.  In the end, it is revealed that they always kept people at an arm's length because they really just needed some love and were afraid of rejection.  Conversely, the deeper meaning here is that Miguel Ferrer's Rick Dees keeps people at an arm's length because he despises them.

He may be a chain-smoking, heavy-drinking misanthrope, but by God, he's our chain-smoking, heavy-drinking misanthrope!

Piloting his own Cessna, Ferrer's Dees chases the Night Flier across the country, kickin' back with his Ray-Bans, dictating to a tape recorder, and looking down with disdain at the ant-sized people below.  Well done.


#2.  Ferrer's boss, Dan Monahan (PORKY'S actor and fusion of Jeffrey Combs and Charles Martin Smith), insists that he's perfect for this particular job because he's "good with the hicks."


This of course recalls Ferrer's legendary role on TWIN PEAKS as FBI Agent Albert Rosenfield, a man who hated yokels with even more fervor than Richard Dees, and a man who frequently unleashed incredibly verbose bon mots such as the following:

"Mr. Horne, I realize that your position in this fair community pretty well guarantees venality, insincerity, and a rather irritating method of expressing yourself. Stupidity, however, is not necessarily a inherent trait, therefore, please listen closely. You can have a funeral any old time. You dig a hole, you plant a coffin. I, however, cannot perform these tests next year, next month, next week or tomorrow - I must perform them now. I've got a lot of cutting and pasting to do, gentlemen, so why don't you please return to your porch rockers and resume whittling. "

It's too bad that all that TWIN PEAKS season 3 talk ended up being hogwash, because I dearly would have loved to see Miguel Ferrer come back as Albert Rosenfield and do his snobbish thing.  Anyway, let's get back on topic–


#3.  Poor man's Audrey Horne.

Continuing the TWIN PEAKS-ian chain of logic, I must note that the female lead here, Julie Entwhistle, is sort of a poor man's Audrey Horne, as depicted by these conveniently chosen screenshots.

 Julie Entwhistle inside a closet.


 Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn) inside a closet.

 The role she's playing (as an occasional victim and occasional foil) is not present in the original short story, but I get that they wanted to add some more female characters.  Also of note is that Julie Entwhistle only ever appeared in one other film (as "Student" in IN AND OUT) which was also in 1997.  Weird.


#4. Stephen King references galore.

This is truly for the SK nerds out there.  At one point, Julie Entwhistle's character is looking at a wall of old, framed INSIDE VIEW covers.  Each of them, only on screen for a few seconds, references a different Stephen King novel or short story:


"Satanic Shopkeeper Sells Gory Goodies"  = NEEDFUL THINGS  and "Naked Demons Leveled My Lawn"  = THE LAWNMOWER MAN


"The Ultimate Killer Diet!  Gypsy Curse Flayed at Lawyer's Flesh!"  = THINNER


"Headless Lamaze Leads to Successful Birth"  = THE BREATHING METHOD and "Springfield Jack Strikes Again" = STRAWBERRY SPRING

There's also "Kiddie Cultists in Kansas Worship Creepy Voodoo God!" in reference to CHILDREN OF THE CORN.  Furthermore, at one point, Ferrer's character discusses a school teacher who murdered some demonic five-year-olds (a reference to the Bradbury-esque King short, "Suffer the Little Children"), and he visits an airfield in Derry, Maine (the home of IT and INSOMNIA).

Finally, he visits Wilmington, North Carolina, which has now become the filmic equivalent of Derry or Castle Rock, Maine for Stephen King adaptations ever since CAT'S EYE, FIRESTARTER, MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE, and SILVER BULLET were filmed there, thanks to Dino de Laurentiis' studio being located in Wilmington.  So, whew.  I hope that's enough Stephen King references for you.


#5.  Expressionistic flourish.


There's a terrific black and white sequence that takes a little from NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, and tonally prefigures THE MIST!


#6.  Practical effects.

The legendary Berger, Kurtzman, and Nicotero are on the job (see some of their credits above), and they're having a helluva lotta fun.  I'm obviously not going to show you the best stuff, or the monster himself– you'll have to see the movie for that.  But let's take a moment to salute practical effects in THE NIGHT FLIER, which, in 1997, could have easily been replaced by terrible TV-worthy CGI.


#7.  A vampire that orders a Bloody Mary.

As he hunts the vampire, Ferrer receives several warnings to cease and desist his investigation.   My favorite comes in a local bar when a shadowy man orders him a drink and disappears.  The drink, obviously, is a Bloody Mary and the napkin has a message in red marker:  "STOP NOW."  A:  I love that the vampire actually ordered a Bloody Mary, because, of course.  B:  I love that the vampire was considerate enough to buy Ferrer a drink.  I mean, he could've just dropped the napkin on his lap or something.


#8.  The reveal of the vampire.  (I'm going to remain relatively spoiler-free here, and I'm definitely not going to spoil what the vampire looks like, despite the fact that it's an amazingly well-done makeup effect and has already been plastered all over the DVD case and the disc art and the menu screens and most of the posters.)

The first part is copied, nearly verbatim, from the short story– a wonderfully suspenseful scene where our hero sees a stream of blood flowing from an invisible source into a urinal, reflected in a bathroom mirror.


The inability to turn around and see the actual creature builds a kind of dreamlike tension that reaches a minor state of perfection. [ Also, this begs the question, is the vampire from the "popped-collar zone?"  (See #3 in my DEAD ZONE review.)]

Anyway, the film nails the final moments of the short story, and then continues for a few minutes more, straight into TALES OF THE CRYPT/TWILIGHT ZONE-style coda.  Though I thought the short story ended perfectly, I don't really mind the extension here– I mean, this is a story about a Cessna-piloting vampire– the filmmakers should be able to take a few liberties now and again.

YAHHHHHHH

Four stars.

–Sean Gill

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Film Review: THE WARD (2011, John Carpenter)

Stars: 3.2 of 5.
Running Time: 88 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Amber Heard (ZOMBIELAND, DRIVE ANGRY 3D), Jared Harris (NATURAL BORN KILLERS, NAJDA), Mamie Gummer (JOHN ADAMS, HEARTBURN), Danielle Panabaker (FRIDAY THE 13TH reboot, THE CRAZIES remake), Lyndsy Fonseca (HOT TUB TIME MACHINE, BOSTON PUBLIC), Mika Boorem (HEARTS IN ATLANTIS, ALONG CAME A SPIDER). Music by Mark Kilian (TSOTSI, BONE DADDY). Cinematography by Yaron Orbach (THE TEN, PLEASE GIVE). Written by Michael and Shawn Rasmussen (LONG DISTANCE).
Tag-line: "Only Sanity Can Keep You Alive."
Best one-liner: I don't know, it's not really that kind of movie.

I'll take a break from the countdown to share my thoughts on Carpy's latest effort. I saw it two nights ago, in Times Square, in the only New York theater showing it, on the penultimate day of a week-long, mere seven-screening run. This screening was attended by myself and three other people, one of whom was a classic "frequent flier" who obviously had stumbled into the theater after a long day spent at the multiplex (at the cost of a single ticket). The others were, I assume, Carpenter die-hards, but one never does know about these things. I don't know if the poor attendance is due to bad marketing, or the fact that it's on-demand concurrently with the modest theatrical run (and with the DVD soon on the way), but it all sort of depresses me.
Now, THE WARD is not a bad movie; in fact, it's a pretty good one, all things considered. Sure, it's third-tier Carpy, but it's almost as good as VAMPIRES, and probably at the same level as GHOSTS OF MARS, VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED, and CIGARETTE BURNS, all of which grew in stature with the passage of time. In fact, that's one of the best things about Carpy's films- you can never really judge them in the year they came out; they almost all seem to improve with age, even MEMOIRS OF AN INVISIBLE MAN. Yes, even that.

I'll begin with the bad so we can end with the good. The script, by Michael and Shawn Rasmussen, is often boneheaded, generic, and possessing a finale that is...well, I'll get to it in due time. The banter for the female mental patients ("Sorry, I don't converse with loonies," "If I were you I'd watch out, new girl!") sounds like it was written by a couple of dweeby guys who've played so many poorly-plotted video games and watched so much third-rate television that the half-baked ramblings of female clichés in Sci-Fi original movies begin to sound to them like poetry. This ties into larger theories I've expressed about the clandestine dumbing-down of society by inundating us with bottom-of-the-barrel programming– if you surround yourself with soulless, counterfeit "humanity," pretty soon you're going to be writing stories about soulless, counterfeit humanity, and because it's invaded your mind like a cliché of a cliché, you're going to think it's naturalistic; perhaps even poignant. Then there's a twist ending which cashes in on a craze which was just as hackneyed a decade ago as it is now– a twist for twist's sake, the sort of conclusion that elicits a collective groan, a shifting of seats, a rolling of eyes, and the desperate thought that If only they'd take back that dumb twist, this could be a much better movie!...but, alas, they can't take it back.
Also, there's a little unnecessary CGI (not a lot, but it becomes all the more maddening because it doesn't really serve a purpose), and the film employs a multitude of modern "flash-scares" (Carpy used them in CIGARETTE BURNS, for example), which are markedly different from his tried and true "jump scares" (like in HALLOWEEN, IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS, THE THING, etc.) in that they're extremely short, abrupt, loud, and not altogether successful. I suppose that a "flash-scare" is sort of like a mad-ape, homerun swing– but without the necessary follow-through.

But onto the good:
The opening makes ya tingle inside– low, ominous corridor shots like in THE THING,

and then WOOOSH!– that good old Albertus font that Carpy loves so much announces that we're watching:

It's just nice to see that on the screen again, ten years after GHOSTS OF MARS. I'd have given a standing ovation, but there were only four people in the theater, and I didn't want to out-crazy the frequent flier.

It's largely up to Amber Heard to carry the movie, and while it's nowhere near being a "genius horror-heroine performance" like Angela Bettis in MAY or Mia Farrow in ROSEMARY'S BABY or Sissy Spacek in CARRIE, I was still impressed by her ability to shoulder the burden through the dry stretches.

Jared Harris is solid, as usual, as a well-meaning (...or is he?) staff doctor, and the rest of the girls are serviceable as well, despite not quite looking era-appropriate (it's a 60's period piece).
The soundtrack, by Mark Kilian, ain't bad. It's sort of Danny Elfman-children chanting-by-way-of-Ennio Morricone, and it lends a ghostly vibe to the film that's quite effective, for the most part. And there are a few "thump-thump... thump-thump..." classic Carpenter bass riffs (think THE THING) which Carpy admitted to tapping out personally.
Yaron Orbach's cinematography isn't as good as Gary Kibbe's (and it goes without saying that it's not as good as Dean Cundey's), but it's still pretty evocative, and manages to inject a sense of menace into a film which is illuminated by sunlight at least 60% of the time.

There's foreboding exteriors, some nice Greg Nicotero makeup (though to a certain extent it's marred by that unnecessary CGI!), eye trauma worthy of Fulci, a clip from Bert I. Gordon's TORMENTED, a random free-style "impromptu wacky girls dancing" scene (long live the 80's!), some real jolts, and some genuinely exciting setpieces.
In the end, I have to say (while not sounding like too much of an apologist) that Carpy did the best he could with the material. Despite a cookie-cutter, straight-to-video style script, he's made a movie that's often gripping, occasionally frightening, and always bearing a stamp of Carpenter craftsmanship, even if it can't always live up to the days of yore standards of Carpenter quality. It's not a classic, but it's still a new addition to the Carpy canon, and after all this time, by God, that's GREAT. Here's to Carpy's next one– I only hope I don't have to wait until 2021.

-Sean Gill

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Film Review: TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE- THE MOVIE (1990, John Harrison)

Stars: 4.2 of 5.
Running Time: 93 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Debbie Harry (VIDEODROME, "Blondie"), Matthew Lawrence (BOY MEETS WORLD, MRS. DOUBTFIRE), Christian Slater (HEATHERS, GLEAMING THE CUBE), Steve Buscemi (MYSTERY TRAIN, RESERVOIR DOGS), Julianne Moore (SAFE, PSYCHO '00), William Hickey (ONE CRAZY SUMMER, PRIZZI'S HONOR), David Johansen ("The New York Dolls," SCROOGED, 200 CIGARETTES), James Remar (THE WARRIORS, RENT-A-COP), Rae Dawn Chong (COMMANDO, CHAINDANCE), Mark Margolis (THE WRESTLER, THE COTTON CLUB). Cinematography by Robert Draper (HALLOWEEN 5, DR. GIGGLES). Screenplay amalgamated from work by George A. Romero, Stephen King, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Michael McDowell (BEETLEJUICE, THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS). Special makeup effects by Howard Berger, Greg Nicotero, and Robert Kurtzman. Visual effects supervised by Ernest D. Farino (THE THING, THE ABYSS, THE TERMINATOR).
Tag-line: "Brace yourself for some KILLER stories."
Best one-liner: "I've never blown a hit yet, kitty cat."

Well, my anthology horror series has given me an excuse to take this lofty tome off the shelf, dust it off, and flip through its brittle, musty pages once more.

Considered by many, including Tom Savini, to be the real CREEPSHOW 3, it features stories from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Stephen King, and ancient Japanese folklore adapted by the likes of Michael McDowell and George A. Romero. Its director, John Harrison, did the electrifyingly spooky score for the first CREEPSHOW, and the crew features many series regulars. Additionally, many of the cast (i.e., Christian Slater and Debbie Harry) were alumni from the TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE TV show.

Divided into three segments, each part has a thoroughly distinctive feel. "Lot 249," a tale of mummies and revenge, has the visual consistency of an old Republic serial with post-RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK production value. "The Cat from Hell" sees a hitman going after a cursed black cat, has a very Vittorio Storaro-esque texture, and becomes very theatrical, not unlike the "Father's Day" segment from CREEPSHOW:

"Lover's Vow," which sees a struggling artist make a pact with a monster to avoid evisceration, feels most like it's embracing a contemporary style, and it features a thick, 'desolate yet metropolitan' atmosphere. The wraparound story is basically "Hansel & Gretel" meets "Scheherazade" in suburbia. With Debbie Harry.

So, while giving away as little as possible, I shall thumb through the veritable reams of these darkened pages- TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE features immeasurable insights into a number of scholarly disciplines. Prepare to have some thoughts provoked:

The Wrap-around Segment:

PHILOSOPHY: Is Debbie Harry a good actress? I don't know. Can we say for sure? ...Should we say for sure?

How about this: if a radio is playing "Rapture" in the woods and no one's around to hear it, does it still have that schweet rap part?

No wait– I'm sorry I said that, Blondie. Er, I mean, Debbie Harry. Yes, I know Blondie is the name of the band, not you. Sorry.


Lot 249:

ZOOLOGY: TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE affords us an outstanding glimpse of the Slater Factor in its natural habitat. Not until KUFFS in '92 would we see it quite this unrestrained. Look at the following images. Rarely has the Slater Factor been captured with such gleeful, manic precision. And rarely has it been captured holding such a wicked electric knife.





SOCIOLOGY: How is it possible that I'm always rooting for the proletariat... unless the ruling class is Slater?

Look at that sweater. We should hate him. But the eyebrow has won us over. An important lesson. Conversely, Robert Sedgwick and Julianne Moore, in their respective squash court and aerobics attire, garner no such sympathy.

Smart-alecky-ness vs. pomposity. An age-old struggle, and one which is always won by the smart-alecks.

ARCHAEOLOGY: Julianne Moore handles an actual Zuni fetish doll, in an in-joke directed at TRILOGY OF TERROR's slaveringly (inaccurate) bundle of teeth.

Though I must admit, a small, polished stone carving of an animal is infinitely less fun than a 'YAAAAAH YAH YAH NUMMM NUM' yammering little fellow with a predilection for edged weapons.

PHYSICS: Can three heads occupy the space intended for two heads?

This case study shows that it is, in fact, possible.

LINGUISTICS: Why does uttering the ancient hieroglyphic curse in English cause the mummy to awaken?... More importantly, who cares!

Young Buscemi utters the malediction.

The Cat From Hell:

GERIATRICS: Is it possible for a human being to have never been young? I swear that William Hickey was like eighty years old for a span of about forty years.

"Bring me its tail, so I can throw it in the fire and watch it burn!"

And it's always the greatest actors, like Harry Dean Stanton, Walter Huston, Walter Brennan ...I could go on. Unless somebody can provide me with evidence to the contrary, I'll have to assume that Hickey sprung forth from the womb as an oldster–

I stand corrected. Though he kinda looks the same, even then (the 1960's).

MUSIC THEORY: Who'd have thought that one day we'd see New York Doll member-turned-Buster Poindexter songster David Johansen stalking a cat with a laser-sighted gun in a suspenseful horror anthology? Not I.


And who'd have thought that he would have such a subtle, classy Dirk Bogardish quality to his acting? Or that he could pull off the whole 'internal monologue externalized' thing like a true professional?

According to Harrison and Romero, Johansen and Hickey drained a great deal of gin in their down-time and held the cast and crew rapt with their constant banter and ridiculous anecdotes. Ah, to have been a fly on the wall on the set of TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE...

Lover's Vow:

ART HISTORY: Balsa wood artists are an angst-driven bunch. Theirs is a fleeting art, one that can be easily smashed in fits of impassioned fury.

To be fair, we see him work with different media, but our first glimpse of him is as he's smashing a balsa construction that looks culled from an 'Odyssey of the Mind' competition.

This is easily the most dramatic segment, as nearly every omnibus requires a straight-up tragedy. And James Remar, one of my faves, has been cast against (villainous) type as a sensitive artiste. I like it. Hell, I'm always rooting for him anyway. [See also: The Slater Factor.]

HISTORY HISTORY: Speaking of factors, the RDC factor is pretty high, too, and it's occasionally wearing a fringe hippie jacket. For the uninitiated, that's the Rae Dawn Chong factor. She was comin' into the home stretch of a pretty mindblowing run of films from '81 to '91. We're talkin' QUEST FOR FIRE, BEAT STREET, Ferrara's FEAR CITY, CHOOSE ME, AMERICAN FLYERS, COMMANDO, THE COLOR PURPLE, SOUL MAN, THE SQUEEZE, THE PRINCIPAL, and Ironside's CHAINDANCE.

This was one of her great last hurrahs, and I can't decide if seeing her romantically paired with James Remar makes me happy or uncomfortable.

CRYPTOZOOLOGY: The monster is great. A detailed latex n' rubber construction, you can only shudder to think of how they'd handle it today, maybe with a CGI creature that resembles DRAGONHEART or something. At best.


ALTERNATE UNIVERSE-OLOGY: A glimpse of James Remar in an eyepatch reveals what it would have been like had Walter Hill directed ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK.


In the end, one of the stronger horror anthology films. Not as good as the original CREEPSHOW, but it's leaps and bounds above CREEPSHOW 2. There's not a weak segment or a groan-inducing moment in the bunch, and that's the highest of compliments for an omnibus film. A little over four stars.

-Sean Gill

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