General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Nightflyers (1987 film)

Nightflyers is a 1987 American science-fiction horror film directed by Robert Collector and based on the novella Nightflyers by George R. R. Martin. It follows eight scientists who charter the space freighter Night Flyer for an expedition to make contact with a legendary alien intelligence, only to find a malevolent presence aboard the ship itself.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Release	October 23, 1987, with Los Angeles and New York openings that day¹
Director	Robert Collector, credited onscreen under the pseudonym T. C. Blake after he asked to have his name removed¹
Writer and producer	Robert Jaffe wrote the screenplay and produced; his father Herb Jaffe was executive producer¹
Source	The novella Nightflyers by George R. R. Martin; AFI records the short story as published in 1985, while other accounts describe it as a 1980 novella¹^•³
Physical properties	89 minutes, color, sound recorded in Ultra-Stereo, MPAA rating R¹
Box office	$1,149,470 domestic, from a limited release by New Century Vista Film Company⁴
Availability	Never released on DVD or Blu-ray, and not offered on streaming services as of recent checks⁵^•⁶

Spoilers

Plot

In the 21st century, at the Avalon Spaceport, eight passengers board the Night Flyer, an old space freighter, on an expedition to find a mythical entity that, according to legend, has the power to create new star systems as it travels through the galaxy. Most scientists do not believe it exists, but Doctor Michael D'Branin, who has studied the entity for twelve years, believes cryptic radio signals that periodically come through originate from it.¹

Sources disagree on the entity's name: the AFI Catalog calls it the Bulcrind,¹ Richard Harrington's Washington Post review calls it the Valcryn,⁷ and a HorrorNews review calls it the Volcryn.⁸ The voyage quickly turns into a stalking story as a malevolent force begins killing the crew. The force turns out to be a woman who has become the ship's computer, antagonized because her cross-sex clone, a hologram who is also the ship's captain, is drawn to the leader of the scientific team.⁷ In the climax, the survivors Royd and Miranda fight their way back aboard, destroy the manifested presence, and escape in a small craft as the Nightflyer explodes; they then continue on toward the alien contact.⁵

Cast

Catherine Mary Stewart plays Miranda, the team coordinator; Michael Praed plays Royd, the ship's hologram captain; John Standing plays D'Branin; Lisa Blount plays Audrey, a cryptologist; Glenn Withrow plays Keelor; James Avery plays Darryl; Helene Udy plays Lilly; Annabel Brooks plays Eliza; and Michael Des Barres plays Jon Winderman, a telepath.¹^•⁶

Production

The project began well before the film's release. In 1982, producer Herb Jaffe announced a science-fiction film named Night Flyers as part of a three-picture package that also included Electric Castle and Sand Kings, with a total budget of $9 million for the three films, to be shot back-to-back with the same crew and special-effects house.¹ Herb Jaffe's son Robert Jaffe wrote the screenplay and served as producer.¹

Fritz Kiersch was originally slated to direct but dropped out before work began, and the Vista Organization filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit against him for $50,000 in actual damages and $500,000 in punitive damages.¹ Principal photography began on June 11, 1986, in Los Angeles with Robert Collector directing.¹ Before release, Collector asked to have his name removed from the picture, and the pseudonym T. C. Blake appears onscreen as the director.¹ Shelly Johnson was the director of photography, Tom Siiter the editor, and John Muto the production designer.¹

Reception

The film opened to negative reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes it holds a Tomatometer score of 19 percent from two critics, with an audience rating of 2.3 out of 5 from more than 100 users.² Michael Wilmington of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the filmmakers' ambitions, drawing on Ridley Scott's Alien and Blade Runner and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, coagulated into "barely coherent glop," calling the film "too smart to be camp and too shallow to be good."⁹ The Washington Post's Richard Harrington judged that it "moves with the speed and grace of a space buffalo," while crediting the special-effects team of Roger George, Robert Short, Bob Harmon, and Bob Weisenger with effects that are "special indeed" though not spectacular.⁷

Commercially, the film earned $1,149,470 at the domestic box office from its limited release.⁴ It has remained difficult to see: it has never been released on DVD or Blu-ray,⁵ and streaming availability checks find no current offer.⁶

Legacy

For Martin, the adaptation carried personal weight. In a 2018 interview with the Los Angeles Times, he said that when the film was made he thought his career as a writer was dying, and that "in a very real sense, it saved my career, and everything I have written since exists in no small part because of that 1987 film."¹⁰ The story returned to the screen as a 10-episode Syfy television series, Nightflyers, which premiered in the United States in fall 2018, with Jeff Buhler as showrunner; Robert Jaffe, the 1987 film's screenwriter, was attached as a producer of the series.³^•¹¹

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026