Night of the Comet

Intensity

Stupidity:Nudity Ratio

7:1

Budget

Medium

 

Zombies, comets, last man on Earth plot and 80's Fashion!?! What can go wrong?

After watching a bright object fly across the screen, we are treated to a narrator explaining that a celestial body was returning to Earth after a 65 million year absence. Some people took this as a reason to party, but others thought that hiding in a bunker was a better idea. We are introduced to sisters Regina (Catherine Mary Stewart) and Samantha (Kelli Maroney) and their step monster, Doris (Sharon Farrell). Regina ends up missing the comet and spending the night in a movie theater projection booth with some guy. When the guy opens the door to the theater in the morning, he is quickly brained by a zombie. After Regina regains her sole possession of the high score list on her favorite video game, she wanders outside and vaguely notices that there are clothes and red dust scattered about. After being attacked by a zombie herself (and it should be noted that she seriously kicks the zombie's ass), she hops on a motorbike and heads home. Samantha spent the night in the tool shed after getting punched out by Doris. By this time Regina has noticed that something odd is going on, and she and Samantha head downtown to the radio station that seems to be broadcasting live. It turns out to be an automated DJ, but another survivor has followed the same signal and after a little exposition, they join forces. While Hector (Robert Beltran) heads out to check on his mom, the girls hit the mall. Samantha dances around in her underwear for a while, then girls are captured by some proto-zombies. Fortunately, they are rescued by the scientists who hid in the bunker during the comet's passage. Unfortunately, the scientists managed to get exposed to the comet dust and are slowly turning into zombies but think they can use the girl's blood to create a cure. They manage to extradite themselves from the bunker with a minimal amount of blowing things up and start to rebuild civilization.

It is important to have the right headgear when a killer comet is approaching.

Or maybe not. Note the red sky. This was a universal sign that the world as we know it has ended.

Everyone in the world is dead. Oh, well, let's go shopping!

What can I say? I have a soft spot for this movie. It is pretty low key for a monster movie, but still manages to be entertaining. Released a year before the most recent return of Haley's Comet, the movie was intended to ride the coattails of it's publicity. Of course, because everyone needed to be outside watching the comet, the filmmakers were unable to play on the fear and predictions of disaster that historically greeted Haley's Comet. If everyone were afraid of the comet and hid inside, too many people would survive for the storyline the writers wanted. So, after a quick glimpse of a group of scientists hiding underground, we see lots of people going to "comet parties" and wearing silly head gear. Regina apparently works at a movie theater, though it seems her boss can't get her to do anything other than play a video game. In fact, instead of "walking the theater" like her boss tells her to, she heads up to the projection booth and makes plans to spend the night there with some guy. I say "Some guy" because she barely acknowledges him and even though she presumably has sex with him, when he goes missing the next morning, she does not even look for him. Not even later on when it looks like he might be the second-to-last man on Earth.

Doris (Sharon Farrell). Notice the white sweater dress that she is wearing.

Oh, no! A white sweater dress and spike heels! Could it be?

Geez, Regina, a little respect for the dead.

Samantha finds her dog's leash and a pile of red dust.Poor Fluffy.

Regina is pretty upset to find that someone else almost beat her high score.

Oh, man, wait till she finds out who is dating her little sister.

This happens a couple of times in the movie, we are shown things and then the characters act as if they know the same information. We are reasonably sure that the guy is dead though we are never shown a corpse, so we are not bothered by Regina's behavior. Later we will be told that the blood donors are already brain dead, so that we don't feel bad that they die when the good guys kill the power to the bunker. When Aubrey (Mary Woronov) gives them some information about the bunker, it must have been incredibly detailed as they soon are running around the facility and flipping breakers with ease.

Even though the sister's dad seems to have spent a lot of time out of the country, he did impress upon his girls the need to be able to take care of themselves both with hand-to-hand fighting and guns. After Regina beats the crap out of a zombie, she and Samantha raid a store and pick up a couple of MAC-10s. After the gun jammed a couple of times, Samantha looks at Regina and says "Dad would've gotten Uzis". I have long been an advocate of equipping yourself properly for a situation whenever possible. For example, if the weather suddenly turns cold because of some natural disaster, get some coats. Flooding? Boats. Zombie? Guns. My preference would be shotguns based on my long hours of playing Doom, but, hey, submachine guns work too. And no, I don't have any guns in my car trunk. I am reasonably sure I will never be attacked by zombies, though once the snow hits, I do throw my snowshoeing gear in there. So, when the girls not only arm themselves but test the guns as well, I just sigh with contentment.

After acquiring some guns, the girls practice.

Samantha gets off a few rounds, and then the gun jams.

At which point she whines about not having an Uzi. Some girls are just never happy.

I get the feeling that the director wanted to put a little nudity in the film, but could not find a way to do it logically. Catherine Mary Stewart was not going to be any help. The couple of scenes where she is wearing a T-shirt, she clutches the blanket around her chest like she is freezing to death. Kelli Maroney gets down to her underwear a couple of times, but her character is supposed to be barely 16 (Kelli was actually 24 at the time) so probably not the best choice. As there are not really any other female characters but Doris and Aubrey any nude scene would have to be even more gratuitous than normal. Or it could be that they wanted to keep that PG-13 rating.

Perhaps the conversation went like this:

Producer: Then you and the guy have sex.

Catherine Mary Stewart: No.

Producer: Okay, no sex, so you're lying in bed nude.

Catherine Mary Stewart: No.

Producer: Okay, no nudity, then how about dancing around in a T-shirt and panties?

Catherine Mary Stewart: No.

Producer: Ya know, let's just go PG-13.

Samantha in her underwear in a dream. What a coincidence.

And later at the mall.

Not to be outdone, Regina shows a little skin too.

Mules and MAC-10s.

Hiding in plain sight.

Regina empties a clip at the proto-zombies at point blank range and misses them all. To be fair they aren't any better shots. Except of course when it is plot specific. Later when she attempts to exchange a hostage for her sister, the head proto-zombie fires one shot and kills him across the mall.

Mary Woronov puts in a great turn as Aubrey, one of the scientists. Turns out that while the scientists did manage to be underground for the comet's appearance, they apparently had the fans going and so got a lesser but still deadly variation of what killed off the rest of the population. Even though I really liked her speech, I was wondering how anyone survived. Hector was in the back of his big rig, Samantha was in a tool shed and Regina was in a projection booth. If the contaminant had an air borne component, seems a bit of a stretch that any of these hiding places would have been sufficient. I am not sure about you, but I don't keep my weed whacker in a hermetically-sealed, steel building with it's own air supply. Needless to say, suspension of belief is a requirement for any film and really it is not too much to ask of us to go along with this.

Aubrey (Mary Woronov) expresses concern about the way things are going.

A little foreshadowing. The first hint that the scientists have not escaped the comet's ravages.

Samantha has been showing signs of dry skin and Aubrey seems to be injecting her with poison.

After telling Hector that she wrote everything down Aubrey injects herself with the actual poison. This is when we find out that the scientists are all infected and are going to die.

I believe I mentioned Samantha dancing around in her underwear. After the girls have a heart to heart about how Regina got the boy and there aren't any others for Samantha, she is a bit depressed. In order to cheer her up, Regina announces "the stores are open". Suddenly we are at the mall with a Cindy Lauper sound alike singing "Girls just want to have fun" while the sisters try on clothes. Regina tends towards high necked, floor length dresses, while Samantha settles on a little blue miniskirt once she gets tired of running around in her skivvies. There is something I like about that girl.

Minder discussing that these guys are brain dead already and can give over 300 ml of blood a day which is about 200 ml less that an average donation. You've only got 24 hours to live unless you can create a cure from their blood. Just bleed them dry and be done with it.

Trying to convince the kids that sniffing nitrous oxide will let them go live with Santa forever.

After rescuing the kids, Regina tries to restore civilization by waiting for a walk light.

Samantha waiting on the other side of the street.

Getting tired of waiting, she runs into the middle of the street, only to have a car come down the road.

Well, what do you know. The second to the last man on Earth!

So is it worth watching? Yeah, I enjoyed it. There are a few little moments that border on cliche but fit in just fine. Subtlety is not a key concern for the filmmakers and we never really fear for the good guy's lives. Samantha spends a fair amount of time in a cheerleader outfit, some lingerie and a miniskirt before getting into some 80's rock influenced commando outfit for the big shoot out. Regina seems to have been picking her outfits from the leftovers on the "Dynasty" set when she was not wearing those Billy the Kid shirts (you know, the ones that button way over to the side instead of down the middle). And it goes without saying that you will be listening to a lot of the worst type of 80's music on the sound track. In my case, these add to the "charm" of the movie, but other people may simply find it too irritating to put up with.

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