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| Credit: Pixabay |
Warning: Potential spoilers in this review.
Finally, the Book-To-Movie (BTM) review has returned! As I said in our January 7th post, I had taken a break from the BTM to focus more on my upcoming book of short fiction, "Bad Apps"’, which is nearing more to its release date each day. I have the latest progress on it below. But first let's get into our first BTM since two years ago! In a BTM we review a work of prose fiction and its movie adaptation, usually in the science fiction, horror and fantasy genres. I think I had said last time that I left a clue to what book and movie we would be going over in this post and asked if you could guess what they would be. Well, if you guessed Stephen King's short story, "The Night Flier", and its movie adaptation, then you were right! There have been some movies based on King's fiction that stray far from the original plot. "The Lawn Mower Man" is one. However, the movie adaptation of King's "Night Flier" does a good job staying faithful to the short story, especially since the aim of both is gore exploitation.
'The Night Flier': The Short Story
King's "Night Flier" was originally published in the 1988 anthology, "Prime Evil". In 1994, King included it in his collection, "Nightmares & Dreamscapes". "Night Flier" is about Richard Dees, a tabloid reporter, who is tracking down an aviating serial killer, the titular character, rumoured to be a vampire. Even though Dees is a skeptic, he will, (Spoiler Alert) later learn that the rumours are true. He traces the killer's path by piloting a plane of his own and lands at different airports along the eastern US, hoping to get photos of the killer and eye witnesses' accounts of the murders.
The story reads a bit reminiscent of a "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" episode, which isn't a bad thing and may even be a tribute to that 1970s TV series. However, Dees is more of an anti-hero than a hero, one that we can barely sympathise with. King seems to write him with a sarcastic sense of humour, but it's one that comes so directly from Dee's arrogance that it doesn't come across as funny. The protagonist downgrades the other characters regardless of their morales.
We are not called to sympathise with Dees until the end where we learn why he is so calloused and rude-speaking. He is so calloused to the point that he is overly bent on getting a story and snapshots of the killer even during a big slaughtering of victims at the airport where he finally meets the Night Flier.
Between the beginning and ending scenes, the story's structure is set up as a series of flashbacks of Dees interviews with the victims' relations. The flashbacks occur during his approach to the final airport that he tracks the Night Flier to. This structure of story-telling works for "Night Flier" since if it were structured in a more linear manner, it wouldn’t be a short story; it would probably be a 500-plus page novel, typical of King's long fiction.
It's said by many serious readers of fiction that King is a bad writer. I think that's a bit overstated. However, "Night Flier" is one of those stories that’s exemplary of that statement. The short story is loaded with gore scenes that don't seem to develop the plot which is insulting to hardcore vampire fans like myself.
Of course, blood is strongly associated with vampires. They aren't always the most clean, well-mannered of diners and so often really show their food, but normally that’s limited to their mouth area and victim’s neck. The Night Flier does not only drink his victims’ blood--he tears them apart just to do it. That's an indication that the story was written to appeal to an audience that cares more about sensuality than a well-told story consisting of plausible events. Why would your typical vampire, and so the one that drinks blood via fang punctures, have to mutilate his victims beyond a bite on the neck?
King has always been a writer that describes a lot of gore in his stories. This goes back to his works from the 70s, although his older short stories from that time and the early 80s don't seem to be as graphic. Even in certain novels such as “The Shining”, most of the graphic gore does not outweigh the quality of the plot and even enhances it. Not so with "Night Flier". I've read much better, more integral stories by him than that (including "Shining").
'Night Flier': The Movie
In 1997 director Mark Pavia came out with his movie adaptation of King's "The Night Flier" (using the same title). It starred Miguel Ferrer as Richard Dees and Michael H. Moss as the Night Flier. It featured an additional main character that wasn't in the short story, a rival reporter to Dees, Julie Entwisle, played by Katherine Blair. The plot is extended with Dees' competition with Entwisle, a race to get the story of the Night Flier's killing spree. That's the major twist on the plot, which I felt worked.
Overall, the movie is faithful to the plot of the original short story. Like the short story, it presents Dees as an unlikeable anti-hero, in this case too unlikeable. In the movie there is no call to sympathise with him at all. Many of the minor characters and secondary main characters, such as Entwisle, come across as more likeable.
Like in the short story, Dees is presented as a double or, pardon the expression, mirror to the vampire. Like the vampire lives off of blood, Dees lives off of (financially) robbing his readers of their intelligence by feeding off of their ignorance with sensationalised stories. In addition to that, he steals the Night Flier story from Entwisle, which is an assignment that is originally given to her. In the process of doing that, he is a kind of stalker to her like the Night Flier is to his victims. At the end of the movie, she even straight out identifies Dees with the Night Flier whereas in the short story Dees is mistaken by cops for the vampire.
Devices such as this work for the movie by enhancing the story and characters. What doesn’t work, although it helps the movie stay true to the short story, is the excessive gore. It was poorly thrown in and does not enhance the story in the same way that the gore in the short story doesn’t. Like the short story, the movie culminates in a slaughter scene at the final airport stop, except the Night Flier’s victims rise up as vampires and join in on the blood feast. This horde of vampires I thought was another good twist in the movie, but it is just too gory for the types of creatures it involves and, like with the short story, served an audience that thrives off of these scenes rather than enhance the suspense, character, and story.
When it comes down to it, both "The Night Flier" short story and movie were poorly done. They were both made to please a mass audience of their time, the 1980s and 90s, when there was an obsession with violence and gore (and still is today). It was all in the name of Hollywood and big publishers’ profits made from the masses’ craving for sensationalism which often consisted of shock and extreme gore. For these last two, thought-provoking art and storytelling are sacrificed for. More specifically, what is sacrificed is a lasting impression on the audience that would make them think about the story or film beyond its superficial details such as the violent scenes regardless of how extreme those scenes are. "The Night Flier" short story and movie adaptation, although the former is done a little more integrally than the latter, give not much more than a momentary impression to a reader or viewer. That impression won't last long after a person is done reading the story or watching the movie.
‘Bad Apps’ Progress
I’m getting close to working in revisions suggested by a second beta reader. I did work on a revision suggested by a third beta reader during the past week. I was glancing over his suggestions when I came across one that indicated that the idea of Artificial Intelligence should be reflected in one of the stories, one about a clairvoyant search engine. With AI becoming a major tool in search engines, this advice made sense. Now I’m back to working in the suggested revisions of the second reader. After that, I’ll have the rest of the revisions of the third reader to work in and then I’ll be putting the book through the publishing process.
Be here this Wednesday for another Insecure Writer’s Support Group blog hop post! Have you read Stephen King’s short story, “The Night Flier”, or seen the movie adaptation? What did you think of either?
Until next time . . .
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