Night of the Comet

1984

This movie is so 80s, I should be being born instead of watching it. First of all, let’s start off by learning that the original working for this film was Teenage Mutant Horror Comet Zombies. So right there you know you won’t be seeing any Oscar-worthy performances. And the entire cast stands and delivers as such.

The movie begins with news reports of a comet that will soon be passing through earth’s orbit, promising a spectacular light show. In as such L.A. fashion, parties are planned around the city (on rooftops of course). Except for a few squares who decide being underground is more important. Through “math,” some of the film’s fans figure out the date is Friday, December 13. This movie is should be called Camp Squared.

The main character is Regina, a high school Valley Girl senior who works in a movie theater. She also uses her time in the theater to get all the high scores on a arcade game and bang her boyfriend in the projection booth. She was lucky she wasn’t fired before this, because the projection booth ends up saving her life.

When the comet passes by, it ends up releasing a radioactive dust that disintegrates every living thing. Well, mammals and people. Trees stay. Not sure about fish. Can’t say one way or another for people in airplanes. However, since Regina is getting it on (or “making it” as apparently in the 80s called it) with her boyfriend, they end up staying in the steel and lead projection room, therefore protecting them from any fallout. Score one for whores! That never happens; the “whore” is usually the first one to go.

Unfortunately Regina loses her boyfriend almost immediately to the appetite of a non-Thorozine patient zombie. In fact, these zombies are quite lively, a nice break from the shuffling zombies we normally seen. The moaning/slurping sound of their undead mouths is the same though. Good to know some things never change.

Regina runs home to find her younger teen sister, still alive. Still annoying. And still self-absorbed. It takes the sister, Samantha, quite some time to grasp the reality of the situation. And she never really does. The two overhear a still working radio, and figure someone must be playing music, because payola is a bitch to get out of.

However, the only thing they find at the radio station is a Latino trucker/drifter with Erik Estrada hair. The actor wasn’t Erik Estrada, but that would have been awesome. The girls find out the only reason he is alive and not a zombie is because he was ALSO banging (sorry, “making it with”) a girl in the back of his steel truck during the comet. Unfortunately, his one-night stand was zombie breakfast and he headed towards the radio station for the same reason the girls did – to find out who keeps requesting “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.”

Total bummer! The radio station was just a tape deck on a recorded loop in what looks like a discarded gay night club. The trio tries to reach out through the airwaves to see if there are any non-zombified hotties out there. They get a call, but it is from the square scientists who hid themselves underground during the radioactive shower.

Now these scientists seem like they would be the bad guys. But actually, they were just the idiot victims. They accidentally left the air vents open during the comet passage, and everyone underground was exposed to the “grody to the max” red dust. So instead of just saying “whoops” and dying with dignity, they send out troops to gather up any survivors with still-pure blood to create a serum (or is it anti-serum, I can never remember) for everyone still living in their still very exposed underground bunker. I don’t even leave my windows open when it looks like rain on Friday, how did these “geniuses” make such a mistake?

But that’s moot, because when the LA trio ends up the bunker, it’s all about kicking ass and lighting things up with dynamite and gasoline (not sure why they needed both, but then I forget people like explosions). They are able to escape the clutches of the now zombie bunker and head back to L.A. with two other survivor children. They are now a “family.” The type of “family” that will need to repopulate the earth.

Ewwww! Gag me with a spoon!