Night Of The Comet (1984)

Director: Thom Eberhardt

Writer: Thom Eberhardt

Starring: Robert Beltran, Catherine Mary Stewart, Kelli Maroney, Sharon Farrell, Mary Woronov, Geoffrey Lewis, Peter Fox

Taglines: “It was the last thing on earth they ever expected.”

“They came. They Shopped. They saved the world!”

“The comet’s coming, and the world will never be the same.”

“The last time it came the dinosaurs disappeared”

Story

The Earth’s orbit is about to take it through the tail of a comet not seen for 65 million years (not-so coincidentally, at about the time the dinosaurs died out). Most people are outside watching this once-in-a-lifetime event, but a few people including Regina (Stewart) and her bimbo sister Samantha (Maroney) are stuck indoors.

The next morning, everyone who was directly exposed to the comet’s light has been turned to dust and those only indirectly exposed have become murderous zombies. Regina and Samantha piece together what happened, while a secret government agency who were aware of the comet’s power try to use the survivors for their own nefarious means.

Opinion

Night Of The Comet is a movie I’m finding myself liking more and more every time I see it. When I first watched it, I did so after having read the set-up, and probably built the film up in my mind a lot more than it deserved. Despite a few impressively staged shots of a deserted Los Angeles, the movie is rather small-scale, revolving around a small group of central characters and only having them face small groups of zombified people rather than the hordes we were more used to seeing in movies like The Return of the Living Dead and Day of the Dead. The focus of comical exploits rather than actual horror was also disappointing to me. But, once you know what you’re in for, it’s a pretty entertaining movie. It’s bright and colourful, never taking itself too serious.

In fact, the film’s probably at its best with the character scenes where they wander small areas of the city looking for other survivors and places to be safe from the zombies – mainly an abandoned radio station.  Well, I say zombies, but the concept is quite interesting with them basically turned into red dust like the others, only more slowly due to their non-direct exposure to the comet’s light. The scientist group are rather clumsily introduced partway through as a bunch of idiots who managed not to seal their bunker properly so have become infected. It’s a shame, as I’d much rather have seen Maroney and Stewart wielding Uzis like they do at one point (after being caught out while shopping… typical!) that sit through the stupid motivations of these “scientitsts”. Still, the movie manages to be cheesy 80s fun throughout and doesn’t outstay its welcome unlike some recent movies with similar end-of-the-world concepts…

Director Thom Eberhardt seems to be quite talented and destined for great things in horror and cult cinema, but sadly it wasn’t to be. After this movie and its predecessor, the interesting Sole Survivor, he delved straight into comedy with the pre-Bill & Ted Keanu Reeves movie The Night Before, the decent Sherlock Holmes comedy Without a Clue and the godawful Captain Ron. After that, he seems to have been relegated mainly to TV work. The two female leads fared a little better with their cult movie credentials. Maroney is best known for her role in Fast Times at Ridgemont High as well as the fun cheesy horror Chopping Mall. Stewart played the love interests in The Last Starfighter and Weekend at Bernie’s.

Rating:

Availability

To my knowledge, there has never been a region 2 DVD release of this movie, and the region 1 is a typically barebones release from MGM. A shame, as this looks like a fun movie and several people involved do have cult followings who would appreciate some behind-the-scenes info.

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