Movie Monthly - Night of the Comet

Welcome back to Movie Monthly where we spend a whole month talking about movies of a particular theme.  This month is October, the scariest month of the year, so to celebrate the spooky season this is going to be the Month of the Zombie.  Yes every Monday in October I’ll be showcasing a different zombie movie, category which will be left entirely up to my own definitions of the term.  Basically I’m saying I won’t be playing that hard and strong with the definition of the term “zombie” in these flicks, there’ll be talking zombies, voodoo zombies, smart zombies, basic infected, pretty much anything I deem zombies gets to be showcased.  I bring that up because the zombies in our first film probably wouldn’t be considered zombies by most folks in the classical sense in that they talk, use tools and weapons, and don’t come in horde flavor.  However, it’s my blog so we’re gonna talk about it, this is Night of the Comet.

Night of the Comet is actually a member of a decidedly rare breed, the ‘80s zombies film.  The truth of the matter is that if you’re looking for zombie films prior to the boom years of the mid to late 2000s you really aren’t finding much.  Yeah there’s the Romero “of the dead” trilogy but that’s the exception not the rule.  Most of the other films in the vast gulf were either forgotten no-budget flicks that aren’t worth your time, or genuinely weird and worthwhile offerings like Night of the Comet.  The ‘80s in particular was a thoroughly flavorful and bizarre time for zombie flicks.  At the time mainstream horror was overrun with slashers and ghosts so zombies ended up more on the sleaze and cheese circuit of indie horror.  This was right at the time when indie genre pictures were finding a new home in video stores as well as the growing counter cultural movement of ‘80s punk.  1984, the year Night of the Comet was released, was the same year that Toxic Avenger debuted and more or less changed the face of low budget horror permanently and the two films end up on harmony if not on melody.

Night of the Comet is sort of a weird combination of post-apocalypse film and zombie monster movie.  The basic pitch is that a comet is passing Earth and promises to be a spectacular event.  Basically the whole world is turned out to see the comet which turns out to be a major mistake when it emits a deadly radiation that turns everyone who’s exposed to it into dust.  The few survivors split into two groups; those who were fully shielded from the deadly rays and are normal and a second group who are slowly dehydrating and are being driven insane by the radiation.  There’s also a physical effect left over as well as the sky has now turned red for no explained reason.  Our main character is Reggie Belmont, a young woman who survived the comet alongside her sister Sam.  Reggie is a pretty fun protagonist all around and may actually be the first geek girl hero in horror.  I’m not sure if that was intentional but I do like the character trait, as it overall feels thoroughly genuine and well rounded. 

The two sisters spend a good chunk of the movie playing around in the now abandoned city in a very fun sequence.  There’s a kind of chipper liberation that goes alongside the end of the world that I like, especially with how much the girls just sort of refuse to admit that the world has actually ended.  Oh they adjust to their new situation like taking advantage of the deserted city but in a lot of ways they just follow mundane routines.  Eventually they run afoul of a group of punk zombies and become the target of a group of slowly zombifying scientists with their only source for help being truck driver played by Chakotay from Star Trek: Voyager. 

While Night of the Comet is overall too polished and shiny to really fall into the same category of punk horror that Toxic Avenger or Return of the Living Dead fall into it does come off as decidedly pop punk.  Where the other films I mentioned had a decided edge aimed thoroughly against the mainstream Night of the Comet embraces a more flighty and artificial approach of the same idea.  That’s not to say it’s a lesser film because of this just a decidedly different one.  The whole idea of Night of the Comet does boil down to the remnants of the old establishment being turned into literal zombies clawing at the youth of tomorrow, it’s just that the youth of tomorrow also find a lot of comfort in the trappings of previous conformity.  That’s part of the key “joke” of the girls sort of refusing to totally accept the world has ended, what they cling to in the face of complete societal collapse are the left over scraps of a consumerist society.  It’s sort of like Dawn of the Dead accept where that film treated the mall as a crucible of angry social commentary and satire Night of the Comet takes a more congenial approach.  It’s not like the girls are ever punished for still enjoying the materialism that punctuated the pre-comet society, if anything the way they embrace it is kind of celebrated.  Like a lot of pop-punk the central aesthetic is that while the establishment is unquestionably evil what it produced isn’t, after all the establishment produced our two leads as well.

 

I don’t want oversell this to be sure, Night of the Comet is a fun curiosity elevated by the fact that we really don’t make movies as conceptually unhinged as this is anymore.  Nowadays we’ve done so much to boil the zombie genre down to its base elements most of our zombie films tend to bleed together but Night of the Comet is just completely free of anything close to convention.  It’s also seriously elevated by the amazing soundtrack, which is made up of a huge collection of great ‘80s pop songs.  So if you’re looking for the kind of zombie/post-apocalypse film we just don’t make anymore with just enough anti-establishment undertones to fulfill your primal punk indulgences Night of the Comet is a really fun watch I highly recommend.   


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