By Geno McGahee
In horror, there are many bad nights. We have the NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, the NIGHT OF THE CREEPS, and the NIGHT THAT EVELYN CAME OUT OF HER GRAVE. In 1984, we had another night called ‘NIGHT OF THE COMET, an original zombie movie inspired by movies like THE OMEGA MAN.
Regina (Catherine Mary Stewart) works at a movie theater and is the queen of the video game. She also has a thing going with one of her co-workers and they plan to spend the night together there. Her sister, Samantha (Kelli Maroney), had a falling out with her stepmother and is sleeping in a shed the same night. As luck would have it, their choices of places to crash would save their lives. A comet traveled too close to the planet and wiped out most of mankind. There are some survivors that were lucky enough to sleep inside something metal while others were partially protected, but that would lead to them turning into zombies. They are relatively smart zombies, which makes this movie pretty unique and fun.
Regina and Samantha begin to believe that they are alone in the world until they hear a DJ on the radio. They immediately make it to the station and find a recording. No DJ, but they find Hector (Robert Beltran), another survivor. He’s a trucker that slept in his cab…which means that most truckers survived. Imagine that! Nascar would be the first thing to return I’m sure. Freaking truckers…of all things…truckers!
This trio is quickly discovered by a group of scientists that were exposed and are fighting the clock to find a solution to their problem. If they don’t get fixed soon, they are going to be zombies. So now the trio has two enemies: zombies and the scientists.
As far as zombie movies go, this is original and tame, but it’s still great fun. When Samantha and Regina go to a department store and begin trying on new clothes, they are attacked by zombies that believe that they have ownership of the store and must now punish the trespassers. This was an awesome scene with some very cool zombies. I really liked it.
NIGHT OF THE COMET is a fun movie. That’s the best way to put it. It’s not a classic and it’s not the best zombie movie of all time, but it has a certain charm to it and it’s a child of the 1980s…which was a great time for horror. I highly recommend this.
Rating: 7/10
