Retro Review: The Night of the Comet (1984)

Never heard of this one? Neither had I but the wife insisted it was cool so into the Netflix Queue it went. We watched it the other night and I was actually pretty impressed. You take your immediately post-apocalytpic setting, insert your strong female lead complete with uzi, and then add a few zombies and BLAM, there’s your science fiction fantasy. I won’t lie, the movie is far from perfect and includes some rather questionable dialog delivery. But at the same time, it holds up a lot better than a lot of high concept flicks from the mid-eighties. Let’s get down to it.

The show begins at a movie theater with our heroine, Regina ( played by Catherine Mary Stewart sporting the biggest hair ever), playing Tempest in the lobby.  Her wish to have the highest score possible is supplanted by her manager’s desire to have her walk the aisles in the auditorium to check for vandals.  We also learn that Earth is about to pass through the tail of a comet, an event that supposedly, at least in the world of this narrative, led to the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years prior.  Regina (or Reg as she’s mainly referred to) has a rebellious little sister, Samantha (Kelli Maroney), who is at home the night of the comet (!) with their step mother.  The mother character, for all intents and purposes, comes off as a royal bitch.  Through a series of events, both Reg and Samantha survive the comet while virtually everyone else is vaporized into dust piles.  Well, not everyone.  Some people didn’t make the full transition into dust piles and are, in effect, flesh eating zombies.  From there, the plot is a simple survival flick as our two favorite sisters endure the search for shelter, food, and, of course, commercialism.

So a lot of this may sound familiar to you, what with the deluge of post-apocalyptic flicks that have been released lately.  The beginning of the film certainly reminds me of I Am Legend with some great visuals of the desolation of the city.  Streets are vacant, traffic lights cycle for no one, and the clothes left behind by those vaporized roll through the city like tumbleweeds.  The difference of course is that this film demonstrates the immediate aftermath rather than Will Smith’s “years later” premise of IAL.  So we still see our characters stumbling about, shocked that no one is around.  For an older film that was clearly being made beyond its means, it does a great job of creating this world.

The portrayal of the zombies is where I really started getting my horror film chubby.  The zombies, although not as big in numbers as usual, are not the same lumbering flesh eaters that proliferated classical films of this horror sub-genre.  Instead, they’ve maintained all the faculties of their previously human lifestyle.  They don’t move as fast or irresponsibly as the “zoom-bies” from 28 Days Later, but they would smoke Romero’s dead any day.  Another feature they maintain from their human counterparts includes the ability to speak.  Now, I don’t expect them to give the keynote at the next Comic Con, but they do at least speak.  In this regard, the zombies actually resemble the vampires from The Last Man of Earth (1964), which coincidentally was based off the novel for I Am Legend. Mind=blown!  A cheesy movie from the 80s is actually referencing a 1960s Vincent Price vehicle?  Who the fuck would have thought?

Oh, but is it 80s!  And what film from my favorite decade would be complete without some sort of montage?  This one comes in the form of the girls finding themselves at a department store dancing and trying on clothes to a slightly “off” version of Girls Just Want To Have Fun.  Because, yes, I prefer the Cyndi Lauper version.  Let me get back on track here- So yeah, the movie takes about a 5 minute break to let the sisters dance away in a Macy’s or something.  It only sucks if you really, really hate the 80s.  The cheese factor is really high here, but man is it awesome!

So what didn’t I like?  As I mentioned in the opening, the acting is pretty subpar at times.  I also felt that the major conflict in the latter half of the 2nd act comes across as a little too shoehorned for my taste.  I won’t go into spoiling the details, but basically  it falls into the same trap that a lot of films with a similar premise do.   Make of that what you will, but if you’re at all familiar with any of the films I mentioned above, you likely know where this is going.

In the end though, I recommend this flick for fans of the genre.  I don’t think I’ll ever revisit the movie but if I happened upon it on a Saturday afternoon, I’d stop and check it out.  I’ll give it a half-hearted recommendation.  As for the DVD we watched, it actually had a decent print with vibrant colors.  The soundtrack wasn’t anything to go nuts about but it served its purpose.  Give it a rent if you get a chance.

Retro Review is a weekly column written by Dustin and occasionally other authors from the Breach. Here we take a look at films from yesteryear. 1989 and older to be exact. At times we’ll try and analyze how the film has influenced modern cinema, discuss the quality of the current release, or just do a traditional review of the damn thing and throw it up here. As always, requests for these reviews are welcomed.

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