Before he became known for Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin wrote a 23,000-word novella titled “Nightflyers,” which was published by Analog Science Fiction and Fact. A few years later, encouraged by his editor James Frenkel, Martin turned it into a longer story which was published in a split book with Vernor Vinge’s True Names as part of their Dell’s Binary Star series.

You don’t need to know this, but this is in the same “Thousand Worlds” universe as other Martin stories such as Sandkings, A Song for Lya, The Way of the Cross and Dragon, With Morning Comes Mistfall, the short stories in Tuf Voyaging and Dying of the Light.

Director Robert Collector (Red Heat, the Linda Blair and Sylvia Kristel one) left shooting before the movie was finished and used the name T. C. Blake. Writer and producer Robert Jaffe (he wrote Demon Seed, Motel Hell and the deranged Scarab) took the short version as his inspiration.

First off, kind of like Fulci with Conquest and his fog, this entire movie is supposed to look this misty. It was a deliberate choice by the producers, director and cinematographer who wanted the movie to look like a dream. Seeing as how it’s never been released in any high definition media, the VHS look of this makes it appear even more phantasmagorical.

The Volkryn are ancient space gods kind of like Kirby’s the Celestials, as they go blindly through the galaxy creating stars in their wake. An unseen pilot named Royd Eris (Michael Praed, Prince Michael of Moldavia on Dynasty) has brought together a crew of scientists with Miranda Dorlac (Catherine Mary Stewart, who seriously rivals Jessica Harper for being in multiple cult movies that lunatics like me obsess over; as for her, she’s in movies I go wild over like The Last Starfighter, Night of the Comet and The Apple) as our heroine. There’s also Michael D’Brannin (John Standing), Audrey Zale (Lisa Blount, forever from Prince of Darkness), Keelor (Glenn Withrow), Eliza (Annabel Brooks, who replaced Bianca Jagger), Glenn Withrow (Michael Des Barres, yes, the guy from the band Detective who was on the remade WKRP In Cincinnati) and Darryl (James Avery, the voice of the Shredder and Uncle Phil).

Royd and Miranda are into one another, which has some issues, as he’s a clone of his mother Adara, who is also the computer that runs the ship and decides that this woman — in a power suit with mirrored shades — is going to take her son away from her, so she goes all HAL and kills everyone. This would fit in well with a lot of Alien clones, even if it’s not all the way on Alien. Maybe a late Galaxy of Terror? An early Event Horizon? It’s flawed, sure, but so is Lifeforce and both of these movies would go together well.

I mean, take a look at Stewart in that outfit. Murder computer mom is so correct.

This was also a SyFy series in 2018. It lasted for ten episodes.

You can watch this and so many of the films at CFF by buying a pass on their website. I’ll be posting reviews and articles over the next few days, as well as updating my Letterboxd list of watches.

You can also watch this on YouTube.