The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2019: Night of the Comet (1983), directed by Thom Eberhardt

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "A Comet Appears", by The Shins

       You know one of these days I’m going to run out of sci-fi/horror movies from the 80s to review. It’s a well I’ve gone to again and again over the years, and even when I start things out trying to diversify my film choices, get a little something from as many different decades as I can, eventually I end up revising and rechoosing until the 1980s are the top draw. I mean how many have we seen on the list so far? Like 5? I’m not a child of the 80s, and yet I seem to be irrevocably connected to that period of time. Cinematically, musically...not fashion-wise though. I’m beyond time in that regard.

       Anyway, today’s film is something of a cult classic, Thom Eberhardt’s Night of the Comet. It’s almost Christmas time in Los Angeles, and an incoming comet that hasn’t passed by Earth since the time of the dinosaurs has got everyone excited as all hell. Well, almost everyone. For tough as nails teen girl protagonist Regina (Catherine Mary Stewart) the idea of seeing a 65 million year astronomical event is cool and all, but she’s got other things on her plate; Beating her high score in Tempest, slacking off at her job at the movie theater, and blowing off her shrewish stepmother Doris in order to have casual sex with her friend Larry the projectionist. Living the dream, basically. However that turns out to be the right move, as when morning rolls around Regina wakes to discover an empty metropolis under a blood red sky, the ground littered with the clothes and dusty remains of its citizenry. Those who haven’t been turned into bloodthirsty cannibal monsters that is. Luckily her sassy sister Samatha (Kelli Maroney) is still alive, and later the two meet up with a trucker named Hector (Robert Beltran, otherwise known as that dweeb Chakotay from Star Trek: Voyager), so all that’s left to do is wait to be rescued and fire submachine guns at cars. Simple enough, unless the people doing the rescuing don’t have your best interests at heart. .

       So it’s a zombie but not a zombie type movie, like our friend Nightmare City. Unlike NC however, which took the traditional ‘ungodly horde’ route, what’s interesting about Night of the Comet is how little the ‘zombies’ seem to factor into things. You get a few proper attacks and scares, but by and large the fact that there are even supposed to be proper monsters in the movie almost seems like an afterthought, thrown in to make the whole thing feel more ‘science-fictiony’. The real monster is as always Man, and in this case the absence of Man.

       In that regard, Night of the Comet brings to mind two of the best zombies movies, George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead and its sequel Day of the Dead. People living in a post-human world, where the familiar trappings of modern capitalist society become alien artifacts of an extinct species, the secret underground bunker where the last remnants of the old world desperately try to stave off the inevitable, protagonists that aren’t white guys, it slots perfectly between the two Romero films (and not just in terms of release dates). However, while Night of the Comet does dip into serious territory several times throughout the course of its story, it never feels as bleaky nihilistic as Romero's films, especially Day of the Dead. These are cute, wise-crackin’ ladies who know how to kick ass, and they’re not going to let something like the extermination of nearly all sentient life on the planet keep them from kicking said asses.

       Which I think is honestly what sold me on this movie in the end. Regina and Samantha are fun characters, and Catherine Mary Stewart and Kelli Maroney feel natural around each other. By the time the feeling that the movie might be a little too empty for its own good you’ve had a chance to warm up to Reg and Sam as characters, and at that point you don’t mind because you’re invested in their story. Not to say that no one else put work in this movie, Robert Beltran is way more charismatic here than he ever was in Voyager, but it wouldn’t really be half as enjoyable a movie without our leading ladies. Especially since they have all the funniest and most memorable lines, aside from the stock boy gang at the mall. Cut them out and you could fit the entire script on the back of a cereal box.

       Night of the Comet was a shot in the dark when I threw it on the list, but it turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Easy recommendation from me this time, it’s the kind of digestible film that’s equally enjoyable whether you’re on your own, at a party, or with the family this Halloween. At least until magical space radiation from a passing comet evaporates your body fluids and you crumble into dust that is, but by that point you probably won’t be all that interested in movies.