31 Days of Fright, Day 21: Night of the Comet

Welcome to day 21 of 31 Days of Fright here at Road To The Movies! In today's episode, Gabe finds himself in the fight of his life as he struggles to describe the...

NIGHT OF THE COMET
1984
Rated PG-13

If you've stuck with me this far, you know I'm a man who seldom finds himself at a loss for words. I have something to say about damn near everything, and can usually carry on at length about even the most trivial of subjects, but as I sit here at my keyboard and consider how to articulate my feelings about the 1984 valley-girl apocalypse film Night of the Comet, I'm drawing a blank.

While I tread water and wait for my brain to throw me a lifeline, here's the setup: A comet that hasn't passed near Earth for nearly sixty-five million years (you know, back around the time the dinosaurs went extinct) is about to make an appearance, and the whole world is excited. In a plot twist only a psychic detective could predict, the comet ends up wiping out nearly everybody on Earth, leaving behind only piles of dust dressed in the latest (1984) styles. The few people smart or lucky enough to have stayed inside got a lower dose of whatever the comet was handing out, and only turn into uber-violent zombie types instead of drying into powder. The fewer still who were shielded by steel at the time (this bit comes out later) were spared entirely, and are left to deal with the psychotic freaks who didn't have the good sense to sleep inside a suit of armor. Among these lucky, lucky handful are a pair of teenage sisters who - among other things - happen to be trained from childhood in hand-to-hand combat and the use of firearms. They team up with a hispanic trucker and... But I don't want to ruin the plot for you. Let it suffice to say that an group of less-than-trustworthy scientists, a small clan of murderous stock clerks, and a disembodied disc-jockey all factor into the story at one point or another.

All right, enough stalling. I'm still not quite sure how to describe what I feel about this movie. There are some really great moments - the brief repartee between the sisters while test-firing their newly acquired submachine guns leaps to mind - and there are some really crap moments - the utterly suspenseless scene where Hector searches his mother's house, for instance - but overall, my feelings are very confused. I honestly don't know whether I love this movie, hate it, or don't care. It pulls in so many directions at the same time that I can't tell which direction I'm moving in. Maybe none at all.

This is an '80s movie, so right there I don't really know how to take it. It seems like every movie made between 1982 and 1992 was a roughly equal mix of crap and fun. I'm generalizing unfairly, of course, but I mean aside from the really big films of that era that everyone already knows about. When it comes to small, independent or low-budget movies, the '80s were a very strange time. It's obvious that everyone involved in cinema back in those days was doing a LOT of blow.

It's also an apocalypse movie, and - with very few exceptions - I love apocalypse movies. But it doesn't feel like an apocalypse movie. It feels like the apocalypse happened, but nobody in this movie noticed or cared. I think this is probably due to a lack of acting skill, but it really feels like these characters are not taking any of what's going on seriously. But is it bad acting, or is it great acting? Are the characters just that vapid? I don't know. I just don't know.

The strange shots of the red sky aftermath of the comet is a rather confusing element as well. We are treated to shot after shot of the empty city, drenched in red from whatever the comet did to the atmosphere. The problem is, the effect - while a good idea - is so damn inconsistent. All of the shots that don't show the sky are in regular light, but when we see the sky, everything is red. It's very obvious how the effect was created, but my question is, why didn't they light this movie consistently? If the sky is red and the sunlight filtering through it is red, why isn't everything red? I guess it's sort of symptomatic of how I feel about this movie as a whole. I just can't wrap my mind around it.

In the end, I feel that I liked the movie while I was watching it - I certainly never felt the desire to turn it off - but in looking back at it, I just don't know what to think. I'd like to say, If you like This Movie or That Movie then you'd love/hate Night of the Comet, but I have no freaking clue what to compare it to. A Boy and His Dog maybe? Even that feels wrong.

I guess the best I can say is that this is a movie for the curious. It's the kind of movie you should look into if you don't really know what you want to watch. Maybe it's exactly what you're looking for. Maybe it's not. And maybe, like me, you'll look back at it and say, What the hell do I even think about that?!?

5/10

-GABE


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