Richard Dees is a cynical Tabloid journalism reporter whose motto is "Never believe what you publish and never publish what you believe". Merton Morrison, its editor-in-chief at the tabloid ''Inside View'', confides a case to him about a bloody murder in a rural airfield, committed by a passing aviator who thinks he is a vampire and registered under the name of Dwight Renfield. Dees refuses but reverses his decision when two more murders are committed in another airfield, the victims drained of their blood. He recovers the case from Morrison, who in the meantime had entrusted it to the novice reporter Katherine Blair, and leaves in the footsteps of the killer aboard his own light aircraft.