Night of the Comet (1984)

Let's talk about some nostalgia! I remember seeing this when it first came out. I was ten years old and much of the dialogue went over my head. Since then, I'd seen it maybe half a dozen or more times. It held a place in my head as a reasonably decent post apocalyptic movie.

So when I saw that it was on Amazon Prime, I had to give it another shot. This case proved nostalgia had it mostly right. I had a good time, even if the movie is far more ridiculous to watch now. All around, I would say Night of the Comet is a worthwhile time capsule.

Now, that's not to say you're in for grand cinema here. No, there's a lot of silly going on. Many events take place off camera. In fact, what DOES happen is pretty sparse and spans essentially 2 full nights. I compared this to a role playing group.

For example, they hear something on the radio and figure 'hey, that guy's still there, let's check it out', never stopping to wonder 'maybe he's bat shit insane since everyone's dead and he's still broadcasting shit about it being only 11 days til Christmas'.

They gather guns off camera, shoot up a car then go to the mall. They argue about what's actually happening a couple times, but not with any real conviction. Ultimately, I'll break down what someone was thinking when they made the movie:

1) We want a couple of hot ladies running around a mall.
2) We want those hot ladies to be capable of kicking ass.
3) We need a shady organization to add some menace.
4) Zombies.

This formula served them mostly well. The organization supposedly consisted of genius scientists who didn't think to leave the fans off while the comet passed by overhead (whoopsie!). Zombies could talk (pretty well in fact). Not sure what the first one was thinking when he demanded the lead actress 'come here'.

Now, above I said that it's a worthwhile time capsule. I think you'd have fun watching it. This is not to say it's a good movie. It does have Commander Chakotay in one of his early roles (and he's pretty cool) and Geoffrey Lewis is a bad guy. The real problem is there's just no sense of plan in what's going on or what will come after.

I recommend it for a fun 80s retro night but I'm rating it kinda low for being...well...ridiculous.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5.

Final trivia: all the LA empty street scenes were filmed early in the morning when traffic wasn't so bad yet. They waited for cars to be stuck at traffic lights and caught the footage they needed. Apparently, some of it was done on Christmas morning.