NOTE: Yeah. I know. A note before the review, that’s weird, right? Well, I just want to reiterate that this is my original review of Night of the Comet from 1997-ish. Clearly I was drunk when I wrote it. Clearly I was wrong because I’ve been getting shit for this for nearly 13 years. So, my plan is to post this and then re-watch this movie and give it a chance this time. Yeah, that’s right. I’m not such an asshole that I can’t admit when I might have made a mistake. Ok. Enough hedging, here’s the original review:
Ladies and Gentlemen. Announcing a cage-grudge-death match. In this corner, we have Dawn of the Dead. In opposite corner, Day of the Triffids. And in our third corner, Valley Girl.
This is what Night of the Comet is. If you are wondering who wins in such an unusual match, the answer is no one. I watched this movie in the same weekend as Warriors of the Apocalypse and it took me three attempts to get all of the way through it. Whereas I just breezed right on through “Warriors“. I think that much speaks volumes.
Now, don’t get me wrong. A lot of the movies I’ve reviewed for these pages have looked and been much, much worse. I think this one bothered me because it was almost like a real movie. I mean, the only thing you can really bitch about is the plot. There aren’t minor filming, acting, effects flaws to distract you. Therefore you can focus your full hatred on the plot. Does that make sense?
Anyway, this is your basic Up-All-Night movie, only without the nudity and quirkiness that makes them so charming. Comets fly over the planet and instead of turning everyone blind (a la Day of the Triffids) they turn everyone into dust. Somehow, though, some people are turned into zombies instead. I have to admit that I liked this, even though there was absolutely no explanation given for it. I mean, there is no movie that is so bad that zombies won’t make it worse… umm.. yeah.
O.K. To top it all off, there are some wacky plot twists in this movie that they actually did pretty good. I won’t ruin it for you. Course, if you have a half a brain you’ll prolly figure it out way before I did. Well.. actually I never figured it out until they revealed it. See, I am dumb. Anyway, I forgot to talk about the “Valley Girls” in this movie. Maybe that is because they are about as Valley-ish as a drunken monkey. Huh?
Anyway, you can prolly afford to skip this one. That is, unless you want to hear cool 80’s-ish music and a wicked cover of “Girls just wanna have fun” that sounds just like Cyndi Lauper, only different.
Okey doke. I’ve gotten a lot of crap about my review of this movie. My advice, avoid criticizing 80’s nostalgia movies. Anyway, here’s a guest editor comment from Gene Splicer:
Guest Editor’s Note: You reviewed Night of the Comet, and stated that no explanation was given for some of them turning into zombies. The explanation was that exposure to the cometery radiation (bleeeeach) messed up your brain chemistry, making you prone to outbursts of anger. This didn’t really matter, because it also caused rapid and fairly impressive dehydration (in the lose ALL your water content and turn into dust manner) (paraphrasing madly here) Somehow this effect is blocked by steel, so people who were in airtight, steel containers were saved. People with partial protection (unsealed containers, sleeping under sheet metal) weren’t affected so badly, and started dehydrating verrrry sloowly. They didn’t actually turn into zombies, though. Just a bunch of soon-to-be-dead psychopaths with flaky skin.
Besides, the REAL point of this movie is to watch Chakotay swear.
