History Film / TheNightFlier

* IronicEcho: At the start, Dees tells Katherine to "never believe what you publish--never publish what you believe". [[spoiler:She repeats his words back to him when she goes along with the FrameUp and identifies Dees as the Night Flier.]]

* BloodMagic: Dees visits the grave of one of the vampire's latest victims at night time, then cuts open his thumb to smear a bit of blood on the tombstone, allowing him to see where the Night Flier is going. This warlock routine sorta comes out of nowhere, as Dees was shown to be nothing but [[HorrorStruck a cynic of the supernatural]] before. However, there's a possibility that Dees was making the tombstone look desecrated for his photograph, and that this triggered the magic by accident.

* AnAxeToGrind: Dees uses an axe to defend himself from a horde of vampires. [[spoiler:This eventually turns out to be a hallucination, implicating Dees for the vampire's crimes because he's been hacking up his victims just before the police arrived.]]

* PyrrhicVillainy: [[spoiler:Dwight Renfield escapes in his airplane after slaughtering dozens of people, with all his crimes being pinned on Richard Dees. However, he did ''not'' want Dees to die in the process, and Dwight actually hates his own existence as a bloodsucking fiend.]]

* AssholeVictim: Dees is such an unpleasant, amoral jerk that it's hard to feel sorry for him [[spoiler:when he gets shot to death and framed as the Night Flier.]]

* JerkWithAHeartOfJerk: Dees is inititally an outright asshole, but he seems to be willing to put aside his beef with Catherine to help catch Dwight, and just as they're getting ready to go to the airport, he ambushes her and traps her in the hotel closet.

* RedBaron: The vampire's name is Dwight [[Literature/{{Dracula}} Renfield]]. "The Night Flier" is a monicker given to him by Dees to sell his story.

* CorruptTheCutie: Catherine starts out as a sweet and idealistic, and is repulsed when Dees tells her about Dottie Walsh. [[spoiler:By the end, she, possibly through Dwight's influence, takes a picture of Dees' corpse, getting the front page and implying that she's become just as corrupt as him.]]

* {{Jerkass}}:
** Richard Dees is, at best, frankly an asshole who treats everyone like shit and will screw over his colleagues to get his name back on the front page.
** Richard's boss Merton Morrison takes it up a notch. He's the sleazy editor of the paranormal tabloid magazine ''Inside View'', and has even less standards than Dees about what to print or investigate. At one point he loudly declares that he hopes the killer takes more victims, because it will make for a better story.
* JerkWithAHeartOfJerk: Dees seems to be willing to put aside his beef with Catherine to help catch Dwight, and just as they're getting ready to go to the airport, he ambushes her and traps her in the hotel closet.

-->'''Dwight:''' As real as you are... for now, at least.

* HumanoidAbomination: Even by vampire standards, there's something really inhuman about Dwight. His hypnotic abilities are to be expected, but Dees accidentally draws his attention via BloodMagic, and he also has the ability to send people to their own personal Hell with a taste of his own blood.

* OminousOperaCape: A prominent part of Dwight's ensemble is his massive Dracula-style cape, red as a fire engine inside, black as a woodchuck's asshole on the outside.

* NotSoDifferent: The vampire, Dwight Renfield, says that Dees's interest in blood is not so different from his own. He then goes out of his way not to kill Dees. [[spoiler:At least not until he's provoked, and even then, he doesn't ''directly'' kill him.]]

-->'''Dwight:''' I suppose it was inevitable. You've been looking for me all your life. In the morgues, in the graveyards, in the faces of the dead and dying. Your whole existence has been a search for me.

* VillainOutShopping: Dees catches up to Dwight at the final airport in the bathroom. Initially he doesn't even see the vampire due to looking in the mirror, but he then sees a stream of bloody urine being peed into a urinal.

* BloodMagic: Dees visits the grave of one of the vampire's latest victims at night time, then cuts open his thumb to smear a bit of blood on the tombstone, allowing him to see where the Night Flier is going. This warlock routine sorta comes out of nowhere, as Dees was shown to be nothing but [[HorrorStruck a cynic of the supernatural]] before. Note: There is a good chance that Dees is making the tombstone look desecrated for his photograph, and that this invokes the magic by chance.

Richard Dees is the lead reporter for a [[LuridTalesOfDoom low-fodder conspiracy and urban legend-newspaper]] called the ''Inside View''. After years of investigating bloody crime scenes, Dees has become particularly burned out with his job. When reports of a mysterious killer start circulating, who travels from airport to airport to slaughter everyone present, Dees goes out in pursuit of the "Night Flier"--finding far more than he bargained for.

* TheBadGuyWins: [[spoiler:Played with. Dwight Renfield escapes in his airplane after slaughtering dozens of people, with all his crimes being pinned on Richard Dees. However, he did ''not'' want Dees to die in the process, and Dwight actually hates his own existence as a bloodsucking fiend. Along with Katherine's corruption, if you think about it, basically ''everyone'' involved actually loses.]]