‘Night of the Comet’ (1984) Review | Kung Pew Edition

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Over on Kung Pew Video, I’ve been revisiting the direct-to-video relics that raised us. This week: Night of the Comet.

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Small Budget, Big Result

Every year, Hollywood cranks out dozens of movies with cutting-edge CGI, the hottest stars, and budgets the size of some countries’ yearly GDP. But despite every advantage, most of these movies fail to have any kind of cultural impact at all. No quotable lines of dialogue, no memorable characters or scenes.

And a few months later, the world has moved on to the next shiny object.

But then there’s Night of the Comet.

Made for $700,000 and starring actresses no one had ever heard of at the time, Night of the Comet manages to create a world that is both eerie and realistic. And over 40 years later, it still feels as real as it did when it came out. Not only that, but people are still talking about it—and discovering it.

And I know, because I saw it for the first time in the summer of 2020. Like The Wraith (which I reviewed earlier this year), this little zombie movie somehow missed me completely in the 80s.

Well I liked it instantly, but after watching the movie again recently for this review, I no longer like it–I love it. And if I’m being honest, I could watch it again right now.

So let’s rewind the tape and talk about…Night of the Comet.

Back of the VHS

Night of the Comet hit theaters on November 16, 1984 alongside Missing in Action, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and a little film called The Terminator. Written and directed by Thom Eberhardt, Night of the Comet is a post-apocalyptic zombie movie about a civilization-ending comet that passes by the earth, turning most of humanity into red dust and some…into zombies. 

That’s the plot, but what the movie is really about is Reg and Sam, two teenage sisters from LA, who survive the comet but then have to quickly figure out how to survive a suddenly empty world while navigating sisterhood, retail zombies, and a relic of the old world’s establishment designed to literally bleed them dry in order to keep itself alive and in charge. 

Reg is played by Catherine Mary Stewart, who starred in another favorite of mine–The Last Starfighter–that same year. Kelli Maroney plays her younger sister Sam. She went on to play Allison in Jim Wynorski’s Chopping Mall a few years later. 

When the sisters hear a DJ broadcasting on the radio, they head for the station, hoping to find someone else alive. There they meet Hector, a truck driver played by Robert Beltran who had the same idea. They say three’s company, but at the end of the world, you work with what you’re given, and the trio soon decide it’s probably best if they band together for the time being. 

In a different movie, this world might have a different vibe altogether. 

Like a favorite movie of mine with a very similar setup: The Quiet Earth. But where that one is quiet and contemplative and places its trio in a difficult love triangle, Night of the Comet manages to deal with the tension of two sisters competing for what might be the last man on earth while keeping things fun. 

And as much as I love The Quiet Earth, Reg, Sam, and Hector are a helluva lot more fun to hang out with than Zac, Joanne, and Api (check pronunciation). 

A Cozy Apocalypse

Night of the Comet opens in a movie theater and practically announces it’s a love letter to cinema. Posters for Death Race 2000, The Beastmaster, and Valley Girl line the theater lobby walls, and a Red Dust poster on the back door serves as a cute nod to humanity’s in-universe fate. 

As an aside, I just watched Neon Maniacs, which is another love letter to Hollywood genre movies that came out a few years after Comet. Maniacs reportedly had about twice the budget that Comet had, and yet, as much as I like Neon Maniacs, the two movies are in totally different leagues. Watch for a review of Neon Maniacs later this month. 

Anyway, I have the Shout Factory 4K of Comet, and the empty shots of LA…are just astonishing to look at. I kept rewinding the movie and wondering how you’d do this today without resorting to CGI. Eberhardt and his crew didn’t have the luxury of hiring computer wizards to digitally erase pedestrians and traffic with software. They planned the shooting schedule around the city’s rhythms, even going so far as to shoot on Christmas morning when downtown LA was practically empty. They planned and hustled and got the shots they needed, sometimes in one or two takes. And when things malfunctioned, like the MAC-10s the girls wield in the movie, Eberhardt told Stewart and Maroney to stay in character, allowing the jamming submachine guns to become a part of the narrative.  

The red sky, deserted streets, and little piles of left-behind clothes are simple practical tricks, but they all contribute to an eerie but strangely beautiful world. 

One that’s made even eerier by the fact that it still largely looks the same. 

The street Reg and Sam live on looks like it could be around the corner from Elliot’s house in E.T. or next door to the Freeling’s doomed family home in Poltergeist. And that visual familiarity should be comforting, but in this context it’s used to let us know something’s not quite right, that we’re not in Kansas anymore.

There are other little details that sell the loss Reg and Sam have experienced without having to coat everything in melodrama. 

Pop tunes are still broadcasting across the airwaves for an audience that has evaporated, by a DJ that has permanently left the sound booth. Christmas lights twinkle on the porch of Hector’s mom’s house while an album spins endlessly on a record player inside. The world of Night of the Comet didn’t automatically stop when the people disappeared and those details somehow make Reg, Sam, and Hector’s loss more tangible and real. 

But the movie never descends into the kind of morose, cynical tone that characterizes so many of its post-apocalyptic cousins. Eberhardt knew the movie needed to be fun and funny even when it was scaring the crap out of its audience. In the extras, he recalled a producer complaining that the girls seemed to be having too much fun during the mall shopping spree scene. Eberhardt ignored the criticism. And thank God he did, because that is one of its defining scenes. 

Sisters

But really, all of that’s window dressing if we don’t believe these two are sisters. 

And between Eberhardt’s deft writing and Stewart and Maroney’s pitch-perfect performances, these two characters not only feel like real sisters–they feel like people we want to hang out with. 

Reg’s mix of girl-next-door warmth and punk rock attitude is infectious. She’s gorgeous, approachable, and tough without coming across as invincible. Maroney plays Sam as quirky and vulnerable without turning her into a punchline or stereotype. They compete. They argue and get irritated with each other. But you never doubt that they have each other’s backs. 

And when the shit hits the fan, Reg and Sam can wield a machine gun with the best of ‘em. Turns out, their Green Beret dad made sure they knew how to take care of themselves. And the best part of that bit of backstory is that Eberhardt managed to slip it in in a way that doesn’t sound like exposition. 

In the extras, Stewart talks about how close she and Maroney became, remaining friends after the shoot ended and attending cons together years later when the movie found traction with newer generations of fans. The two seem genuinely proud of the movie, and there’s an affection between them that comes through in their performances. Which, as an aside, Robert Beltran says was no accident. In another interview in the 4K extras, he says the two worked hard to develop the kind of chemistry that eventually turned into a natural bond between them.

And if there’s one definitive scene in the movie that sells their relationship the best, it’s the one with them sitting on the cop car. Here, Eberhardt lets the movie slow down enough to allow the girls to come to terms with what they’ve lost. It doesn’t dwell on the macabre but lets them mourn for a moment. And just before emotion turns to sentimentality, the movie needle drops a cover of Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” while the sisters enjoy a bit of retail therapy. It’s a great transition, but the point isn’t to shove the sadness aside but to remind us that Reg and Sam are still vibrant and alive and very much teenage girls. 

Cult Classic Royalty

Besides our main cast, Night of the Comet is stacked with familiar faces and genre favorites that I just have to mention. 

Sharon Farrell plays the sisters’ wicked stepmother Doris, and she also plays Cindy Mancini’s mom in Can’t Buy Me Love, which is kinda strange because after Doris punches Sam, Sam spends the night in a lawn storage shed. And in Can’t Buy Me Love, Ronald Miller hunkers down for the night in his parents’ lawnmower shed after Cindy exposes him as a fraud at the New Year’s Eve party. Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not. But it’s exactly the kind of weird connections between movies that I love finding.

Stanley Brock plays the owner of the theater that Reg works at and he also turns up in Hard to Kill, Life Stinks, and in UHF as Weird Al’s uncle. His part is small in this, but I can’t imagine anyone else making it as memorable as he did. 

You’ve also got cult royalty Mary Woronov playing a scientist. She played two totally different characters in Rock ’n’ Roll High School and its sequel Rock ’n’ Roll High School Forever—the latter I reviewed on this channel. And she reunited with Kelli Maroney in Chopping Mall. Woronov’s is a supporting role, but she makes a huge impact while onscreen. She could have easily been typecast as the mad scientist here, but that’s not at all what we get. But the movie isn’t upfront about her motivations, and when it pulls the rug out, her character’s arc just guts you.

Geoffrey Lewis is a “that guy” you might recognize from Salem’s Lot, Double Impact, or episodes of The A-Team, X-Files, and Walker, Texas Ranger. The dude was everywhere back then.

Robert Beltran, I’ve already mentioned, but he’s worth mentioning again because he’s just great in the role of Hector. He’s handsome, sympathetic, easygoing, and has charisma to spare without coming across like he’s trying to convince everyone he’s one of the good guys. And when he meets the sisters, it’s like Lego blocks fitting together. They just click. 

Before They Live

Now I’ve mentioned more than once that this movie is fun. And it is. But this time I noticed what I think is a critique of 80s culture running throughout the film. It’s nothing earth-shattering. Mostly Eberhardt seems to think American culture in the 80s was shallow, vapid, and built on consumerism and greed. 

And I think the evidence is pretty clear if you know what to look for. 

The comet has reduced people to dust. And what’s left behind? Literal empty suits. How’s that for a metaphor for “all style, no substance”?

And the rest of the world is just as fake and hollow.

The radio station looks like an interior designer was set loose with a blank checkbook, but the DJ is just an automated recording. The place is a hollow shell. 

At the mall, a scientist calls the place an “absolute monument to consumerism.” And the mall zombies that capture Reg and Sam? Do they want to kill them for sport or use them to thicken a zombie stew? Nah, they’re protecting their investment. The leader explains how only the day before they were stock boys but now have climbed the corporate ladder and own the store. I think he says something about the American dream or something like that. 

Everyone’s dead and these jabronies are still running the rat race.

But the biggest swing Eberhardt takes might be at the establishment, represented by Woronov’s scientists. They’ve got a bunker and the resources and expertise to potentially save mankind, and what do they do instead? Try to save their own asses. That’s right. They are literally draining survivors’ blood in the hopes of developing a serum to reverse the effect that is slowly turning them into zombies. 

Which makes Night of the Comet a zombie movie about vampires. 

Woronov argues with Lewis’s character, calling into question the validity of “majority rule”. Anyway, it’s not heavy-handed, but I think the anti-authority angle is pretty clear.

And in some ways, this movie feels like a spiritual predecessor to They Live to me. That’s another movie I could watch any time. Both share a healthy disdain for consumerism and authority, but neither movie lets its social commentary get in the way of the fun. And both have relatable characters who interact with each other in similar ways: Nada and Frank argue and fight like brothers; Reg and Sam bicker like sisters. 

But where They Live ends on a cynical note, Night of the Comet is a little more optimistic. 

By the end of the movie, Hector’s stuffing the gang’s machine guns in a trash can while Reg poses for a “family picture” with the kids they rescued from the scientists. They’re all dressed in their Sunday best. They smile and mug for the camera while the kids look annoyed, but one thing is clear: Reg and Sam and Hector are choosing to move forward in peace, hoping to carve something better out of what remains.

But don’t worry, Night of the Comet’s not beating you over the head with whatever it’s trying to say. It seasons the light, fun tone of the movie with some headier ideas, and if you notice–cool. But it’s not gonna affect your enjoyment of the movie too much one way or the other. 

Discovering Old Favorites

So if you want something spooky to watch this October without spending 90 minutes horrified, depressed, and miserable, Night of the Comet is a great option. 

It’s a fun, effective, and entertaining ride with plenty of neon and 80s style. The characters are great, and the movie doesn’t make the mistake so many movies make by hurrying the audience on from one set piece to the next.

There are movies like this that I missed and found later that just don’t land for one reason or another. But Night of the Comet is one of those new discoveries that feels like something I’ve loved all along. 

And in some ways, I’m glad I missed movies like this and The Wraith, because I get to visit a familiar place and time and still feel like I’m discovering something fresh and new. If that makes any damn sense at all.

But whether it does or not, I love this movie. If you’ve seen Night of the Comet, let me know what you think. And if you haven’t, take this one home tonight.