Night of the Comet (1984)

"Hey, I'm sorry if the end of the world makes me a little nervous." A lot of 80's movies just have this unique combination of camp and seriousness that I've never seen in flicks from any other era. Sometimes that combination results in a pretty good movie, sometimes it results in something that's hilariously (and enjoyably) bad, and occasionally the result is an unwatchable mess. I'd say that Night of the Comet is somewhere between the latter two categories. It certainly isn't good, but it had some moments that kept it from being a complete waste of my time. The story is amazingly cheesy. A comet approaches the earth (it's implied that the last time it came through, it was responsible for wiping out the dinosaurs). As our planet passes through the comet's tail, the people exposed to it are instantly turned to red dust, or turned into zombies, or they'll eventually turn into red dust. Unless they happen to be enclosed in a steel building as it goes by, like our protagonists are. A pair of teenage sisters find themselves seemingly all alone in Los Angeles the next morning, but they eventually meet both allies and enemies in this empty new world. Let's see, there are also evil scientists who want the blood of one of the girls for a vaccine to save themselves (we know they're evil because they wear dark glasses ALL THE TIME), a gang of evil, gun-toting zombies (we know they're evil because they wear dark glasses ALL THE TIME), a random trucker who joins up with the sisters, a bunch of guns and dynamite that comes from somewhere, the obligatory arcade scenes that legally had to be in any movies featuring teenagers in the 80's, and the required cheesy 80's soundtrack. There's your movie. I didn't think Night of the Comet was that bad, though it never ascended to the heights of campiness that I hoped to see. The girls are cute in that spandex and heavy makeup kind of way, and once they get their hands on some weapons, the movie virtually turns into Rambo by way of Jem. If you happen to catch this on tv and would like a reminder of how random 80's movies could be, give it a shot.