Plot
A comet wipes out most of life on Earth, leaving two Valley Girls to fight the evil types who survive.

Release Year: 1984

Rating: 6.2/10 (6,506 voted)

Director: Thom Eberhardt

Stars: Catherine Mary Stewart, Kelli Maroney, Robert Beltran

Storyline
Two pretty high school girls (one a cheerleader!) don't like their stepmother or her new boyfriend ("Daddy would have gotten us Uzis!"). One morning, they wake up to find that everybody in Los Angeles has been turned to dust by a Comet except them, a guy who looks like Erik Estrada, some zombies and the occupants of a secret underground government installation.

Cast:
Robert Beltran - Hector
Catherine Mary Stewart - Regina
Kelli Maroney - Samantha
Sharon Farrell - Doris
Mary Woronov - Audrey
Geoffrey Lewis - Carter
Peter Fox - Wilson
John Achorn - Oscar
Michael Bowen - Larry
Devon Ericson - Minder
Lissa Layng - Davenport
Ivan E. Roth - Willy
Janice Kawaye - Sarah
Chance Boyer - Brian
Andrew Boyer - Rogers

Taglines: They came. They Shopped. They saved the world!

Release Date: 16 November 1984

Filming Locations: 5515 Wilshire Blvd., Hancock Park, Los Angeles, California, USA

Box Office Details

Budget: $3,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend: $3,580,578 (USA) (18 November 1984) (1 Screen)

Gross: $14,418,922 (USA) (4 January 1985)

Runtime: 95 min

Trivia:
When her MAC-10 jams several times Sam says "See that's the problem with these things, Daddy would have gotten us UZI's" At the time the MAC-10 had an (undeserved) reputation in popular culture for jamming and the UZI had a (well deserved) reputation for reliability.

Goofs:
Continuity: On the morning after the comet when Regina and her boyfriend wake up in the projection booth, Regina is shown alone in the sleeping bag. It appears as though she is topless as there are no signs of her wearing a shirt or having anything over her shoulders. After a quick cut away to her boyfriend, Regina, still in the sleeping bag, can be seen wearing a "tank top" type of shirt as the shoulder straps are now visible. There was not enough time for her to put on a shirt nor did she leave the sleeping bag.

Quotes:
Sarah: I don't know, my parents told me never to breathe anything from strangers.

What if they gave a parody and nobody came?

Rating: 10/10

Trapped in a hellish copyright limbo for over a decade, Thom Eberhardt's "Night Of The Comet" is a film whose reputation is due for a serious rehabilitation. Generally--and wrongly--categorized with typical 80s teen horror films, "Comet" is in fact a smart, skillful parody of the low-budget sci-fi horror classics of the 50s, 60s and 70s--and a wry commentary on teen culture in the 1980s as well. For those familiar with the original films, the parody "clues" are all over the place--not least of which is that the early part of the film takes place in the back of LA's classically offbeat El Rey movie theatre, which is showing low-budget B horror movies. Most of the "scary" scenes are preceded (subtly or otherwise) by the famous "red light" warning used commonly in the 60s and 70s. And the apocalyptic plot, settings and dialog, especially among the scientists, are straight out of the 50s.

Catherine Mary Stewart is by far the centerpiece of the movie as Reggie, the only teenage girl in Los Angeles who's both a lowly-paid theatre usher and an expert with assault weapons. She is most definitely *not* a Valley Girl. A pre-"Voyager" Robert Beltran is Hector "date night in the barrio" Gomez, the classic b-movie hero, and far more engaging here than his stoic, dry-as-bones role for the McTrek franchise. Kelli Maroney brings the totally 80s camp value as Valley Girl Samantha, who realizes with horror that her pool of potential Izod-clad boyfriends has just shrunk dramatically. Geoffrey Lewis sheds his mostly Western image here as the deliciously megalomaniacal leader of the researchers, whose taste for superscience soon gives way to a craving for hot buttered gray matter.

Eberhardt is a canny director who doesn't miss a trick--the scares are rare, but when they come, they'll get you. The gore is minimal, but the atmosphere of malevolence gets progressively thicker until the climax. The tightrope between comedy and fright is skillfully toed--undead droog stockboys, anyone? The effects may not be the digitized visual pablum people take for granted these days, but in a way they're more engaging for their rawness. Anyone who thinks this was a low-budget movie has never tried to completely empty out downtown Los Angeles at 7 am for a film shoot. Thom Eberhardt should be hailed for his brilliantly sharp, funny script and his deft execution as director.

Veteran sci-fi/indie/horror actress Mary Woronov is "Night Of The Comet"'s direct physical and spiritual link to the golden days of the genre. She's passing the baton here to a new generation of camp sci-fi/horror fans. That nobody has thus far picked up that baton is a tragedy.

To address a distressingly common misperception: the comet in question is *not* Halley's comet. Both in-film plot elements and the film's tagline suggest this comet only appeared once before, when it wiped out the dinosaurs. Halley's comet, on the other hand, has had more comebacks than Cher.

"Night Of The Comet" works pretty well the way a lot of people view it--as a simple 80s cheesy sci-fi comedy. But as with "Rocky Horror," if you've seen the original material it's spoofing, the results are a hundred times more rewarding. A future DVD release is a must.

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