NIGHT OF THE COMET

Starring: Catherine Mary Stewart, Kelli Maroney, Robert Beltran
Writer: Thom Eberhardt
Director: Thom Eberhardt

Let me take you back to the mid-1980s. A time when there was a video shop on every corner and I would rent any old rubbish just because it was available. I was there when Night Of The Comet appeared on the shelf and I rented it gleefully. Okay, it was probably going to be terrible - some hokey plot about a comet turning most of the people on Earth to dust and leaving two teenagers in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. But hey, it sounded cool and my video rental quality control was non-existent. I even rented Inn Of The Damned. I'd watch anything.

Weirdly though, once the CBS-FOX logo had vanished and the film had run for a few minutes, I was struck by the fact that the film actually had something. Amusing dialogue. Engaging performances. I was actually enjoying it in a thoroughly non-ironic way. Ninety-odd minutes later, I wanted to rewind the tape and watch it again.

Fair enough, the plot's undeniably cheesy in a 50s sci-fi end of the world way but here it's skewed to give you two teenage girls as the initial survivors and they have their own distinct and memorable personalities: Catherine Mary Stewart as the thoughtful Regina and Kelli Maroney as perky cheerleader Samantha. In all of their scenes together they bounce off each other in a hugely entertaining way and they would make the film worth watching all on their own but no, there are other things going on. They also have to save what's left of the world and stay alive with the help of trucker Hec Goldman (Beltran putting in a winning turn).

Despite the low budget, it looks great. The shots of a deserted Los Angeles are effective and there's a comic book feel to the film which assigns specific colour schemes to specific characters. It may be a simple aesthetic but it really works. The tone of the flick is generally jokey but the creepy moments work terrifically well too, maybe because you're not expecting the plot to lurch into horrific territory so suddenly.

I know people who really don't like this movie but I'm happy to be outing myself here - I love it. It has such a sense of fun that any negative comments about it just seem unnecessarily mean to me. How can you not like Stewart and Maroney's characters going on a shopping spree in a deserted department store? How can you not like Mary Woronov showing up as a scientist? How can you not like the classic video game Tempest being featured so prominently in the first twenty minutes? What do you mean, what's Tempest? Go wash your mouth out!

At this point I probably ought to admit that this movie was responsible for the huge crush I had on Catherine Mary Stewart at the time, a crush that I still have almost thirty years later. There, I've outed myself again.

Catch it whenever you can, all you teenage comet zombies. It's been re-released on DVD and Blu-Ray so you've no excuse.