“Oh right Reg, why should I be weirded out? My sister, who swiped every guy I ever had my eye on, has now swiped the last guy in the whole freaked out world!”
1984 was a bit of a watershed for independent genre films. We had the first Nightmare on Elm Street, Blood Simple – the first Coen Brother film – This Is Spinal Tap and The Terminator. Most of them would even launch careers and franchises. Maybe I’m stretching it calling Spinal Tap a genre film, but the point is that 1984 was a great time for innovation and fresh takes on conventions.
Even in the middle of this year of cool, new films, Night of the Comet stood out. It was a sci-fi horror comedy at a time when mixed genre films were not prevalent, or even desired. Writer/Director Thom Eberhart had a tough time convincing his producers that the combination would work, and only got the job because the parent company, Atlantic Releasing, was looking for a way to quickly spend money from surprise 1983 hit Valley Girl (in order to hide the cash from Valley Girl investors).
I don’t know exactly when I first saw Night of the Comet, but I know it was on VHS and that it was 100% better than anything else I had rented that weekend. It was creepy, funny and action packed. It had a sardonic sense of humor that stood out from the one-liners and puns of other horror films. It had two capable women as the leads – the ultimate final girls, given the post-apocalyptic theme. I loved it, and it entered the rotation of “if there’s nothing else” 80s films that I could watch at any time, like Return of the Living Dead and The Terminator.
The movie did fairly well in theaters (and drive-ins, which still existed in 1984) and made 14 million in the US on a $700,000 budget. It might have done better than that, but two weeks into its release, it ran smack into The Terminator. It was one of the first films to make a VHS release part of its initial production plan, however, and made money in that market as well.
Unfortunately for fans, that VHS release was pretty much it for a decade. Rights issues prevented a DVD release until 2006, so if you wanted to see it, you pretty much had to catch it on cable or have kept that VHS player.
The Medium
I’ve somehow never picked up a copy of either the 2013 Blu-ray, or the 2023 4k release from Shout Factory. I ended up watching Night of the Comet on Tubi. I’ve added the film to my to-buy list, though – I think it’ll be worth listening to the commentary, if nothing else.
For streaming options other than Tubi, you can see it with ads on PlutoTV and it’s available for subs via Fubo, MGM+ and Philo. Night of the Comet is currently NOT available for rent or purchase via digital channels.
The Movie
It’s Christmas season, 1984, and the world is getting ready to watch the passing of a comet. One that hasn’t been seen since the time of the dinosaurs. In fact, it hasn’t been seen since the time the dinosaurs were wiped out. “Almost overnight.” Nobody is really picking up on that right now, though, despite the news reports that the first areas to witness the comet passing are no longer sending out communications. They’re all having block parties, or out in Times Square with their comet bopper hats on.
Not Reggie (Catherine Mary Stewart), though, she’s stuck working as an usher at the local movie theater. Well, “working.” Mostly she’s racking up high scores on Tempest. She spends the night with her boyfriend in the projection booth, missing out on the celestial fireworks. At home, her little sister Sam (Kelli Maroney) also misses out after an altercation with their stepmother. She “runs away” to the metal garden shed.
The next day the sun rises through a heavy, red haze in the sky. The city is quiet, empty, and the streets contain only piles of discarded clothing and red dust. When Reggie tries to find her boyfriend, she runs into something that can only be called a zombie, before escaping on her boyfriend’s motorcycle.
Tom Eberhard has talked about how he wanted the movie to be something of a love letter to the genre films of his youth. Post apocalyptic “empty city” films like Target Earth and The Last Man on Earth. I love those films too, and the film manages a lot with a little. The production shot most of the city scenes early on Christmas day, and the empty locations and vacant streets are eerie – especially with that red tint to the sky. We don’t spend a lot of time with the post-apocalyptic city, but what we do get sets the tone. It’s the end of the world, and the valley girls are all set to inherit it.
Reggie and Sam are maybe a little more capable than your average high school kids – their dad is in the military, after all, and has given them some basic self-defense training – but they’re still at that age where everything revolves around them and their needs and concerns. I mean, Sam is planning on running away, but not until she has breakfast and goes to pep squad practice. Yes, the end of the world sucks – when they finally realize that’s what’s going on – but hey, no homework. Eberhard had done some research talking to teenage girls (including actors in the Afterschool Specials he worked on) about how they would handle the end of the world. He was struck both by their narcissism – they were pretty focused on how it would affect them – but also in their practicality. What if bad guys show up? Just get guns. I mean, there are guns everywhere. It’s America!
The pair head out to the local radio station, which is still broadcasting the hits despite, you know, apocalypse, but find that it’s mostly automated. Then Hector (Robert Beltran), a truck driver, shows up at the station for the same reason. Meanwhile, a group of scientists at an underground facility overhear the trio talking live on the air and form a plan to go pick up any survivors.
Hector’s arrival is the first dissonant note in the sister dynamic as the girls, Sam in particular, realize that he just might be the last boy on earth. While Hector heads to San Diego to check on his mother – promising to return soon – the girls have it out while practicing with their new Mac 10s. (I love Sam’s reaction to the machine gun jamming. “Dad would have gotten us Uzis.”) While there is some sisterly tension, they can’t really stay mad at each other long. And besides, what do you do when the apocalypse is getting you down? You go shopping!
While the scenes in the shopping mall are reminiscent of scenes in George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, Eberhard isn’t really interested in satirizing consumer culture so much as he’s showing us the resilience of the average teenager. Sam and Reggie aren’t immune to the downer that is the end of the world, but they just can’t stay depressed. There’s an upside to everything, really, and what are you gonna do? Cry about it? (Kelli Maroney’s machine gun toting, wise-cracking cheerleader has to be at least part of the inspiration for Buffy the Vampire Slayer.)
The scientists arrive to take Reggie and Sam to their underground redoubt, but they’re not quite the rescuers the girls have imagined. There will be more zombies, rescues, explosions, the return of Hector, endangered kids and the always welcome presence of Mary Woronov as a scientist who rebels against the group. Nice to see Woronov and Beltran reunited. (I’d honestly forgotten he was in Eating Raoul until I saw the scene with them together – I always associate Beltran with Star Trek Voyager now.)
It would have been easy to end Night of the Comet on a down note, but again, Eberhard is with the girls on this one. The end of the world doesn’t have to be the end of the world, if you know what I mean. It can be the start of something too, maybe something better without all that adult baggage about politics and religion and crap like that. The movie ends with a date and a game of pass with a football in the center of an abandoned LA street. Looks like fun.
The Bottom Line
It’s been a while since I’ve seen Night of the Comet, and I’d forgotten how just plain enjoyable it is. There’s an energy and brightness to it that seems to fly in the face of the setting. It makes the end of the world entertaining. Reggie and Sam are great, and the dialogue is sharp and funny. It’s a tongue-in-cheek sci-fi movie, with a capable pair of teenage girls managing the apocalypse quite well, thank you. Eighties independent genre filmmaking at its best.
There have been multiple attempts to remake Night of the Comet, with the most recent currently making its way through development hell at Orion pictures. I’m not sure it’s a movie that needs a remake, but I’d watch a period accurate TV show!
