Night of the Comet (1984)

night-of-the-cometOne of the gems of 80s cult movies and the only film ever made that thinks that the end of the world is the perfect setting for a goofy teen comedy. It also reflects the mid-80s Halley’s Comet sensation, when almost everyone looked up at the sky at least once so they could get a usually disappointing glimpse of the once-every-76-years cosmic event. Here, everybody everywhere is out in the streets having a party on the day that Earth’s orbit is set to pass through the tail of a mysterious comet unseen since the time of the dinosaurs. Nobody expects anything more than a wild light show. Instead, everyone ends up dead and fried into little piles of ash by the cosmic rays, except for two Los Angeles teens and a trucker who happened to avoid exposure to the comet. Oh, and there are also the people who were only partially exposed to the comet and as a result became psychotic zombies who roam the streets. And, yeah, there’s also that group of evil scientists in an underground desert complex who are slowly mutating into zombies themselves and looking for healthy survivors to leach blood from. Classic 80s-movie babe Catherine Mary Stewart stars as one of the teens. Kelli Maroney is her perky, gum-chewing cheerleader sister. The great Mary Woronov classes things up as one of the scientists with a conscience and her Eating Raoul co-star Robert Beltran plays the last man on Earth for the two sisters to argue over.