Catherine Mary Stewart

(In French, On Cable TV, June 2021) I’m not sure how I went so long without seeing Night of the Comet, but here we are — even in a far more saturated genre environment than the mid-1980s, it still has a pleasant looniness and period charm. Nominally about the apocalyptic passage of a comet transforming many into red dust and others into dangerous zombies, the film is at its most distinctive in taking a decidedly breezy approach to the apocalypse. Our two sister protagonists take the near-eradication of human life on Earth in stride, appreciating what it means for shopping while being perhaps most concerned about what it does to their dating prospects. As could be expected, the opening set-up and immediate fun-and-games of two young women in a traffic-free Los Angeles are better than the rest of the film, especially after nosy scientists and more survivors make their appearance. The plotting remains crazier than the norm, but there aren’t as many opportunities afterwards for our heroines to be as insouciant about the entire thing. Still, the result does remain more memorable than many films of the time — while Night of the Comet’s smart-aleck tone has become far more prevalent in the past few decades, it’s something else to see it done with primary-source 1984 fashions and aesthetics. Mary Woronov shows up at one point to make it all more interesting, but really the film belongs to Catherine Mary Stewart and Kelli Maroney as the two unflustered sisters. Well worth a look, especially in a late-night-movie frame of mind, Night of the Comet remains a minor reference for 1980s Science Fiction for some still-valid reasons.