Being Film #1 for Hooptober 2023
Sometimes suspending your disbelief can be a chore, but sometimes – if the tone is just ridiculous enough – it can be a delight. There was a lot to suspend in Night of the Comet, a sci-fi horror comedy that’s more “Valley Girl survives the Apocalypse” than anything else, but when you have the charm of Kelli Maroney it’s hard to resist the silliness this movie pushes at you.
THE QUICK SUMMARY: The last time the ancient titular comet passed by Earth, the dinosaurs were wiped out. So what’s there to worry about? Everyone’s out partying except for Reggie and her sister Sam, stuck either at home or at work. Having for various reasons spent the night in steel enclosures the sisters wake up to a world where the skies are tinted red, and everyone seems to have turned to red dust. That is, except for the ones slowly turning into flesh eating zombies. What’s a pair of girls to do? Why, grab some Mac 10 machine guns (“practically made for a housewife!”) and head to the mall! Unfortunately there’s more than zombies to deal with. Those pesky scientists in their bunker have nefarious plans for our heroines…and what about the bigger problem of who gets to make it with the sweet hunk Hector?!?
As I said, there’s a LOT you have to get past. From silly stuff like watching Catherine Mary Stewart’s Reggie wipe out someone’s high score in Tempest (awesome except that is NOT how high scores work) to the insanity that is the radio station set, it can be hard to live in the fiction writer/director Thom Eberhardt (who also directed Mischief and Captain Ron) has concocted. So it helps to have leads as engaging as Stewart and Maroney…it helps a LOT. Despite my young crush on Stewart (she also played Maggie, the girlfriend in The Last Starfighter the same year) and her more badass agency in this film, it’s Kelli Maroney as the spunky, punky cheerleader Sam who steals every scene. From her impromptu DJ set to destroying a car with a machine gun to insisting that despite being needed to uphold civilization refusing to wait for the light to change before crossing the street, she’s a fiery delight from start to finish.
I wish I could say the same about the silly mechanics of the plot, which boils down to the dust from the comet infecting people, slowly disintegrating them…except if they’re only kind of exposed it turns them into zombies who will die anyway within 48 hours, or something like that? I don’t know, nor do I know the point behind an attack by a gang of former store employees in a mall, but Night of the Comet comes from a time where you’re not really supposed to ask those questions. You’re just supposed to go with it.
I went with it for the most part, and while it’s not the film I remember as a teenager, it’s still a fun piece of the past. In a time where people are ascribing the most far fetched meanings to every piece of media that comes out, it’s nice to turn your mind off and bask in some silliness, even when it’s not scary and you don’t know why when Reggie steps outside for the first time and sees all the discarded clothes on the street, the first thing she picks up is a pair of ladies underwear.
Let me assure you: in 1984 we knew NEVER to pick up a pair of underwear we found lying in the street.
Cinema Dual 
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