Lousy Lottery #3 - Night of the Comet
Welcome, friends, to the Lousy Lottery! Here’s how it works. First, I post four movies to a poll on Twitter. Fans vote to pick which movie to make me watch that week. I watch it, review it and spread the word about an amazingly awful, terribly terrific b-horror flick.
This is week three! This week’s wonder is 1984’s sci-fi, karate chopping, mall going flick, Night of the Comet!
Many of you may not have been alive in the ‘80s, so allow this geezer to set the scene. In the ‘70s, things had gotten mighty loosey goosey out there and by the end of the decade all the uptight, conservative folks in the US were panicked. They thought the world was coming to an end and the word from all directions was doom and gloom. The early ‘80s came with huge amounts of fear about America’s soul and the safety of the good and decent. In comes cold war phobia, satanic panic and best sellers about the end times and the apocalypse.
For many, the year 1984 especially was symbolic for when the bottom would fall out and the lord would return to usher in Armageddon. No, seriously, millions of Americans thought the world would end in 1984. There were marches, sermons, books, TV series and, of course, movies. So, it makes total sense that 1984 would bring forth a wonderful movie about the world being taken over by nefarious creatures who arrive on a comet from some otherworldly locale.
Rather than take all these fears seriously, the wonderful writers and creators of Night of the Comet decided to mock it. The creatures are as scary as my dog and the heroes aren’t morally upright church goers but gum popping, mall shopping valley girls who, like, totally don’t take it seriously, m’kay? While the filmmakers don’t take all the ‘end of the world’ panic very seriously, they do take the task of filmmaking seriously. The characters are surprisingly well written and flushed out. The plot is thoughtful and deliberate, with a few silly moments. The end product, overall, is a legitimately good flick from the sub-genre that really deserves more attention than it gets. It also helped spawn a much larger franchise that would vastly eclipse it, but, before we get to that, here are the basics of the story.
A comet is going to zing perilously close to earth, with the planet actually passing through the comet’s tail. The public thinks this may lead to human extinction or the return of a deity or who knows! So, they gather and eagerly await the event. Teen Reggie decides to use all this distraction to spend the night with her boyfriend in the movie theater where she works, playing video games, illegally copying movies and straight bumping uglies in the projection booth. Reggie is played flawlessly by Catherine Mary Stewart, who I had fallen in love with that same year in the movie The Last Starfighter. Meanwhile Reggie’s sister Sam is home getting into trouble thanks to a fistfight with her parents. Sam, played to absolute perfection by scream queen Kelli Maroney, is punished and locked in a shed in the backyard for the night.
The sisters being locked away, be it by choice or not, for the night, turns out to be the best thing that could’ve happened, as they both wake to find the earth has indeed experienced a cataclysmic event. They find no signs of life, just fog, mist and piles of red dust everywhere. In true ‘80s fashion they go to some scientists, which always seemed to just be around, and learn demon zombie creatures are roaming the earth and much of life was eradicated that first night. So, what do the teens do? Well, they head to the mall, of course! Sure, they buy guns, but why not also go on a shopping spree!!!!!
Now that the teens have fresh threads and weaponry, they are ready to save the earth by kicking some alien zombie ass.
Writer/director Thom Eberhardt (Captain Ron) deliberately set out to make a movie with strong female protagonists. Other than the occasional scientist and a teen they meet along the way, played by Commander Chakotay from Star Trek: Voyager, the heroes are all solid women. Eberhardt wanted to make an apocalyptic flick, as mentioned before, but that was only the vehicle for getting good female characters out there. This is a big part of why this movie seems so grounded, despite being a silly romp. He wanted the two leads to be full, well-rounded characters and not just stereotypical ‘80s horror bimbos. Lucky for him, the two actors playing those leads were just fantastic and knocked it out of the park.
It ended up making back all of it’s budget plus $13 million to boot! A young man saw it in the theater and was blown away by these bad ass ladies. According to him, he was so inspired by Sam that he started working on a story of his own with a strong female in the lead. He watched all the horror he could find with tough leading ladies, from Alien to Blastfighter. He finally created his own character based on Sam and a hodgepodge of the others he’d researched. The character he came up with was called Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the young man’s name was Joss Whedon.
In the end, is Night of the Comet a perfect movie? No, but it is a fantastic glimpse into a period of our history when folks were convinced the world was coming to an end. It is a glimpse that does a great job of maintaining that delicate balance between satire and scares. It’s funny, it’s fun and, hey, it’s just required watching. The focus on hysteria and fatalism, mixed with a focus on female heroes makes it ripe for current times. In fact, a remake is currently in the works. So, head over to Tubi and check out Night of the Comet.
Don’t forget to see what’s coming next in the Lousy Lottery. Make sure you tune into Twitter later today and vote for Lousy Lottery 4! My handle is @MrJosh79, look for it and don’t forget to vote!
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