the audience applauded

Strong and Moving!

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

For the original work that this is based on and several others, pick up a copy of the anthology "The Reel Stuff" edited by Brien Thomsen and Martin Greenberg, Daw Books Inc. 2008. This, "The Minority Report" by Philip K. Dick and "Who Goes There" ("The Thing") by John W. Campbell are the best of the lot. I'm sure Amazon has it.

Nightflyers (1987) directed by Robert Collector, and written for screen by Robert Jaffe, from the novel by George R.R, Martin. Before I begin, I should mention I saw this as an upload on You Tube. The choppy sound quality almost made the film unwatchable, it always drew attention to itself and was very distracting. None the less, I shall attempt to be objective in my review.It stunk.But in a grand overblown manner. Should you watch it? Sure give it a try but keep in mind, it gets worse. Spoilers ahead, I will be mentioning plot details, to a degreeThe concept of a computer running a spaceship, and going out of control had been done many years before, with much more élan. Still, I will give this attempt credit where credit is due,First a mention of the plot details, A Professor, played by John Standing, Rents out a Space Freighter, "Nightflyer" to pursue his research: To trace an Alien signal, and have a crew that could interpret it, He hires a handful of professionals, from all fields, to assist him in his research. The group that he assembles is a rag tag bunch and few seem very gungho on the missions success, especially when they discover that the pilot, "Royd", is isolated and connected to ships mother board. No pun intended. The term Mothership takes on a new perspective, here.Actually until the computer turns homicidal, the movie works quite well; In it's favor is the set and production design. these are the real heroes here. They gave us a Art Nouveau set design a throwback to the Thirties, Even the ship itself is styled like a classic car, Smooth curved lines, The interior set piece is elegant, a drawing room more akin to Nemo's Nautilus then to the Enterprise lounge. Pipe organ included. The Computer display stuff was pretty advanced for it's dayThe score was composed by Doug Timm, and was performed on synthesizer. It reminded me of the works of Alan Parsons, and Rick Wakeman. too bad the upload sound quality was over all crappy. So much for the good.The movie was overall stupid, repetitious and juvenile. It becomes evident that the cast is to be fodder for the Killer Computer. Things get much worse when the computer is aware of attempts to shut it down. The overuse of the "Wind Machine is almost comical. It should get top billing. By the time we get to Royd shooting blue beams out of his head to combat the red beams being shot from the mother computer, do we realize how ludicrous the movie ultimately is. out of Power rangers, man! There was no way to edit this monster short of blowing up the ship after the first forty minutes. Six out of Ten Stars for the design crew, ,

Is it just me, or is this movie basically "Event Horizon"? It makes me wonder if Paul Anderson saw this movie as a kid and then subconsciously recreated it later. A crew of expendable caricatures head for deep space in a mysterious and uniquely experimental vessel which is secretly both sentient and malicious. The evil spaceship begins to throw spooky vibes and lethal accidents at them in equal measure, and a guy who is very "in tune" with the bodiless lurking evil gradually becomes obsessed and consumed by it, eventually graduating into a full-blown zombie possessee. He is killed in a messy, disfiguring way and yet because he is the ship's puppet/mascot he comes back again and again. Eventually what's left of the hardy crew manages to circumvent the "evil core" of the ship and explosions ensue. Does any of this sound familiar? It makes me wonder if EVERY contemporary genre film has its own obscure eighties counterpart that nobody remembers.-H

When I enter Nightflyers as my keyword in Google, all I get is references to this movie. That's a shame, since the George R. R. Martin novel, novella, whatever, is a wonderful, intriguing, scary, intelligent mystery story, whereas the movie is the palest ghost of the book's greatness. Martin's book predated Alien by about five years, and I wonder if Ron Shusett or Dan O'Bannon might have gotten some inspiration from it.The movie is a typical '80s gore-fest, complete with misty, foggy sets, ridiculous dialogue and caricatures, and an explosive climax that totally ruins of the book's thoughtful ending. I like the actors who play Royd Eris and Professor D'Branin, and I admit I enjoyed Michael Des Barres's performance as the whacked-out telepath. But most of the acting was subpar. I thought Catherine Mary Stewart did what she could, but the script stripped away all the complexity of her character, who was much more richly drawn in the book. The movie also completely misses the book's subtle sense of humor. The book is closer in tone to John Carpenter's movie Dark Star, plus a great sense of mystery and spookiness. The movie spills the beans on Royd's backstory far too early and off-handedly, as opposed to the book's climactic revelation.So don't let this movie turn you off of Nightflyers -- read the book. By all means, read it!