Nightflyers

• Directed by Robert Collector (as T.C. Blake)
• October 23, 1987
• Based on the 1980 novella Nightflyers by George R. R. Martin

An expedition investigating mysterious signals must contend with a jealous computer that learns the captain is in love with a passenger. That is the plot.

Nightflyers is one of many extremely loose adaptations of books that were done back in the day that nobody ever blinked an eye over. Aside from being a space horror based on a book written by George R. R. Martin it has the distinction of containing James ‘Uncle Phil’ Avery so if nothing else it’s worth watching for that.

Viewing it though is a little more difficult than most. Why? Because the film itself is not available for official streaming anywhere nor has it been released beyond a video cassette decades ago. In other words, I watched it on YouTube because there’s nowhere else to get it.

Even when the source material got converted into a one season show for the Syfy Channel it didn’t get a token release from whoever the rights owners are to capitalize on it. That’s really weird to me. I’m not saying it needed a physical release, but they didn’t even dump it on streaming somewhere. If you need a reason to own physical media lack of availability is a good one.

If you choose to watch this on YouTube one thing you’ll notice is that there’s a hazy, and even out of focus appearance to the footage. This is not because of a poor quality transfer from any of the offerings. It was reportedly a deliberate choice by the producers. They were attempting to communicate a dream like quality. 

It’s certainly on the cheaper side. It doesn’t have the set quality of any of the Alien films or Star Wars. Despite the time when this came out, even the special effects are a little iffy. There are few external shots of anything. It is a film whose sets often suggest more but if you take a moment to look at the background will notice just how empty things are.

The thrust of the story is a mission to make contact with a mysterious alien race called the Valkrens. Toss in the mix a captain that mostly only ever appears to the mission members as a hologram and Nightflyers becomes plenty of weirdness mixed in with attempts at deeper concepts.

James Avery aside, Catherine Mary Stewart as Miranda Dorlac and Michael Des Barres as Jon Winderman are probably the two most recognizable faces. The cast as a whole works well together and they just sell the material even if it’s not great material.

There is a lot of good stuff introduced in this movie. There’s a body that pops up every now and then that is the telepath Winderman. The funny part is it’s missing the top of the head and it keeps doing things because it’s being controlled by the evil of the story. It’s a little silly looking but this is something the 80s could get away with.

Lotta weirdness and unusual acts of creativity but in roughly 90 minutes it’s hard to cover any or all very well. This movie needed at least another hour. Huge jumps in logic to get to the next leg of the film occur that needed more time to set up are made. This engages in a few disaster movie tropes like the person that panics under mild stress just so the writer can have a problem for the characters to handle.

Royd Eris (Michael Praed) is a cross-sex clone of his mother which is I think is something very rarely used in filmed science fiction. He was created to be the lover according of his source material. That’s gross but Miranda’s reaction to that is completely muted. I don’t think she does anything at all. You would think that might elicit at the minimum a flinch.

The clothing the cast wears is nothing too weird but also nothing that stands out. It largely looks like what you would wear today. The villain of the story when we finally see her is dressed in something that looks like it stepped out of the 1800s. I wish they had done something more like that for the rest of the costuming. A retro future Victorian vibe.

This gets into very guilty pleasure very easily. It maximizes its a low budget and squeezes everything it can out of every dollar. The acting is far better than it should be. The problem is there’s so much interesting stuff dropped in yet it goes for blood and explosions over exploring these interesting ideas while including blood and explosions. 

Though it certainly needed more time to delve into some of the ideas it dropped in Nightflyers is entertaining. It’s not great, but there’s enough enjoyment in it that you want to see it again. I suggest finding a copy on YouTube.