The Life of an Ex-Hardcore Gamer

Back in high school and college DVD was a brand new format that let me discover all kinds of movies I missed out on as a kid. I would frequent many forums and one of the top movies that always showed up on people’s most wanted lists was Night of the Comet. It finally came to DVD and I finally got to see what all the fuss was about…

Night of the Comet is the story of a comet coming near Earth that everyone around the world wanted to stand outside and watch fly by. It stars Catherine Mary Stewart (many will recognize her from Weekend at Bernies and The Last Starfighter) who happens to be a girl too busy getting it on at the movie theater she works at to watch the comet. Said theater is lined with lead to protect the film. Why is that important? Well, you see, the comet actually killed everyone outside watching it: they all turned to dust as soon as it came around. She wakes up the next day to everyone but the boy she slept with being dead…. or so she thought. It turns out some of them have survived but have essentially become zombies and her boy toy of the night is the first to be eaten (that we see anyway) and she thinks she is alone. It is now up to her to find out what happened and/or survive.

It is not a spoiler to say she runs into her sister since it happens relatively early on and she is on the cover. The reason she survived is she slept in a tool shed. Yeah, that’s the kind of logic we’re working with in this movie. What follows is a very 80s zombie movie that is not going to quite be as awesome as you want it to be since it only PG-13. There isn’t really any gore and you really don’t see too many zombies how you would expect them to be (can’t say much more without giving up more plot points). It takes a few more random turns with an underground think tank coming out and trying to help as well as other nuttiness that will keep you saying "only in the 80s." For those that have seen 28 Days Later and felt like you had seen a lot of bits before in other movies, this is another one it seemed to borrow/pay homage to.

In the end, I did not see why there was all the love for this movie after all this years, but that could be due to my not growing up watching it. I am sure that something like The Last Starfighter may not be as "cool" to people watching it for the first time now, but since I grew up watching and loving it I can still appreciate it today. Or maybe Night of the Comet is just overrated. Unfortunately I can’t totally judge that for myself other than to say that I felt that the movie kind of dragged and had a lot of wasted potential. Zombie movies are easy to make: have lots of zombies, have zombies kill people, have people kill zombies. Really simple and yet this movie doesn’t really deliver on this and instead decides it wants to be something else that is definitely very Cold War influenced. Despite all that, I still enjoyed it and was glad I watched it.

This movie took a while to get to DVD and came out as a budget DVD that has no extras at all. The picture quality is pretty good considering the age, budget, and history of going through different studio hands (part of the reason it took so long to come to DVD). If you were to buy this movie, you’re not going to get any kind of crazy special edition to own, just the movie on DVD.

3.5/5 stars – A cult classic that was long awaited for DVD. Now it’s finally out and may not live up to expectations due to some odd story elements. In the end more worth a rental than a purchase especially with a barebones DVD being all that’s out. Can be found cheap if you do want to own though.