Night of the Comet

Dir: Thom Eberhardt

1984

****

Night of the Comet is a cult classic that did what it wanted to do, rather than what it was supposed to. It is what you get when you mix Day of the Triffids, Dawn of the Dead and Cyndi Lauper’s ‘Girls Just Want To Have Fun’. It’s easy to see how it became the core influence for Joss Whedon’s Buffy The Vampire Slayer. If the film were made today it would be formulaic and you’d know what to expect, but Night of the Comet goes off on its own tangent, makes little sense and is all the better for it. When writing the script, director Thom Eberhardt wanted to merge the idea of strong female protagonists with his love of post-apocalyptic films set in empty cities. Further inspiration came from real-life teenage girls whom he met while filming PBS specials. Without telling the girls details about the script's premise, he asked them to describe how they would react to an apocalyptic event. The girls saw the scenario as an exciting adventure and only saw a downside to the experience when Eberhardt brought up the subject of dating. Using their answers, Eberhardt wrote the script to be lighthearted and adventuresome. The studio didn’t love the idea but decided to give Eberhardt as little money as they could to make the film, following the success of Valley and Repo Man. It was a troubled production but ultimately Eberhardt triumphed and made the film that way he wanted it, making a $14.4 million profit on a $700,000 budget. There is a lot to love about the film but at its core the best thing about it is Catherine Mary Stewart and Kelli Maroney. Stewart was already on everyone’s radar after starring in The Last Starfighter earlier that year – cult favorite Heather Langenkamp was due to play along side her but it is now impossible to see anyone but Kelli Maroney play Samantha Belmont. The story begins with 18-year-old Regina "Reggie" Belmont working at a movie theater in southern California. She’s too obsessed with the cinema’s arcade machine to do any work and knowing that her step-mom is holding a party later that day, she takes advantage of the fact she won’t be missed and decides to spend the night with her boyfriend in the cinema’s projection room. Meanwhile at home, Reggie's 16-year-old sister Samantha argues with their nasty stepmother Doris, who ends up punching her in the face for not helping with the party arrangements. She decides to leave home that night but doesn’t know where to go so spends the night in the backyard shed. The party in question is being held to celebrate the Earth passing through the tail of a comet, an event which has not occurred in 65 million years and coincidentally with the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs. On the night of the comet's passage, which takes place eleven days before Christmas, large crowds are gathering outside to watch and celebrate together. In true Day of the Triffid style (but without the killer plants) all those who witness the comet die and turn to dust. Those that don’t watch but are effected by the comets rays are turned to zombies and die a few days later. However, because Reggie slept in a steel-lined projection booth and Sam spent the night in a steel shed, the two sisters are unaffected. They wake to find they are pretty much the only people left in southern California. After figuring out what has happened, they hear a disc jockey on the radio and race to the radio station, only to find it was just a recording. They come across another survivor there, Hector Gomez (played by Star Trek’s Robert Beltran), who spent the night in the back of his steel truck. When Sam talks into the microphone, she is heard by researchers in an underground installation out in the desert. As they listen to Reggie, Sam and Hector debate what to do, the scientists note that the zombies, though less exposed to the comet, will eventually disintegrate into dust themselves. Hector leaves to see if any of his family survived, but promises to come back. Reggie and Sam then do the only thing teenage girl can in such a situation and go shopping at a local mall – Dawn of the Dead style. Unfortunately they come into trouble with some late-night shelf-stacking employees who have declared the mall as their own but are eventually rescued by the scientists. The girls are then split up, Reggie is taken back to their base while Sam is left with Audrey White, a disillusioned scientist whose actions become more and more questionable. Reggie, Sam and Hector all end up working separately to defeat the scientists who end up being the enemy rather than friends but in the end, California ends up as their playground. The soundtrack is full of now classic 80s pop and the special effects are cheap but amazing. You can clearly see all the films it was influenced by but all these years later you can see all the new films it has influenced itself. It was nearly named after a line in the movie whereby Sam is at the radio station and uses the radio to say "calling all you teenage mutant comet zombies out there". The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would be created soon after. There is a comic book sensibility about the film, the low-budget forced the production to be far more inventive and some of the best moments came from Eberhardt telling the cast to react to any unexpected occurrences as their characters would do, as time and money were tight and they needed to avoid unnecessary retakes. It’s something of an overlooked 80s classic and a positive example of women’s independence at a time when most films depicted women as the silent wife or the bikini-wearing object of desire. It's an 80s cult classic, a mainstream b-movie and a brilliant sci-fi oddity.