Night of the Comet (1984)

How did make it through my teen years without seeing this? How did make it out of the 80’s? So many slumber parties where Evil Dead 2 was rewatched for the 100th time. This is prime Valley Girl/Horror/sci-fi comedy. And good. It’s funny, it fucks with the genre cliches, breaks rules for Zombie movies, and 28 Days Later was definitely taking notes.

During Christmas Season a comet flies by the Earth and everyone that isn’t inside a steel enclosure is turned into a pile of red dust or a Zombie depending on their exposure level. Our hero Reg, is asleep in the projection booth of the theater she works at, her cheerleader younger sister is asleep in a shed. The two of them go to a radio station to try to contact other survivors and find a nice, but gun wielding man named Hector there. Not a dj, a trucker who is doing the same thing they are.

The younger sister begins playing Dj and an underground government think-tank out in the desert hears them and come to get them, but not to save them. They want them for terrible experiments to make a serum to save those that were only partially exposed to the comet and are turning into zombies slowly. Along the way there is a great subplot in an abandoned mall, including a shoot out with the former employees (now a strange gang). But not before they take a break from killing Zombies for a  shopping montage set to the tune of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”.

I couldn’t have enjoyed this movie more. The specifics of how the Zombie Comet Apocalypse work aren’t spelled out in lame exposition, you just figure it out. The main character Reg is a girl who is good at video games, can shoot a gun, gets laid and lives to tell about it and smart. Also the supporting cast is great, Mary Woronov (Principal Togar!), Geoffrey Lewis (Everywhich way but Loose), among other familiar faces. Also, there is so much smoke and neon everywhere it’s amazing!

Fun references to other movies too, big ones like the Dawn of the Dead mall sequences, and the theater Reg works at has posters for Red Dust (hardy-har), Death Race 2000 (starring Mary Woronov), and Valley Girl.

The best Christmas/Zombie/Comedy film ever made?

“Daddy would’ve gotten us Uzi’s”