“Why do all the weird ones have to fly at night?”

Story: Richard Dees, a tabloid “journalist” who seems out to be the poster boy for disgusting paparazzi, wants to get back on the front page of the rag he works for. Lucky for Dees, seems there’s been a string of gruesome murders at small airports. The victims were drained of blood, and the suspect is a pilot that goes by Dwight Renfield. Unlucky for Dees, his plan to meet this killer might succeed.

Scares: Not many, just standard nineties cable stuff.
Splat Factor:  heads almost “ripped clean off”, various people in various stages of dead-itude, lots of the red stuff.

Subgenre: Stephen King TV Adaptations
Year Released: 1997
Remake, Sequel or OG (Original Ghoul)?: Based on the Stephen King story of the same name.

Trick or Treat?: I have no idea why Flier isn’t on more people’s Stephen King movie lists. Okay sure; HBO/MAX/whatever pulled it from their original programming lineup years ago, and it hasn’t been released on Blu-ray yet. But it’s one to check out, and not just for the King completists.

Flier is a different take on vampires from Uncle Stevie, so folks who are thinking that this’ll be someone from The Lot will be disappointed. (Though the film does say ol’ Dwight hails from Derry, making this film officially part of King’s Maine Universe. As you can tell by the poster – yeesh, spoilers, people – this is one vampire that couldn’t smolder if his unlife depended on it… Though there is a brief moment where we see who the vamp was before all this. And y’all? Not too shabby at all. (Actor Michael H. Moss plays both the FX laden vamp and Gerard Butler‘s vampire predecessor.)

Miguel Ferrer plays Dees with a balance of smarm and determination only this excellent character actor could have portrayed. It’s kind of funny riff on his Lloyd Henreid in The Stand, but before Captain Trips, and Lloyd’s ultimately ineffective wake up call. As Dees’ foil Katherine “Jimmy” Blair, Julie Entwisle is basically just the young kid breaking into the business, but is barely given anything to do. It is fun to hear people talk about “that computer of hers” as she uses the shiny new internet for research. In DOS. Ah, memories.

The cat-and-mouse storyline is repetitive, but just gory enough to be an entertaining hour and a half. Director/screenwriter Mark Pavia doesn’t have much under his IMDb belt, but he does a fine job with this cable production. And the suitably gory aftermaths of Dwight’s kills are really good when the camera is allowed to focus on things. (A man’s head is almost “ripped clean off”, and damn it’s amazingly well done.)

This is a fine one to leave on in the background, as long as you get the gist of things as the story unspools. Just focus on the last twenty minutes or so, in order to get that sweet, sweet vampy payoff.

Score: 4 out of 5 pumpkins. (Blood, gore, Miguel Ferrer, and DAT VAMPIRE TOOF. Yeah.)