Viking Night: Night of the Comet
By Bruce Hall
April 3, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Next up, you have Tier Two. They're not quite the same kind of chameleons, but they somehow manage to elevate everything they touch. You'll find as many people love them as hate them, because as talented as they are, they can't do everything - they just seem to think they can. So sometimes they're brilliant, and almost as often a poor choice brings them back down to earth. Cruise. Nicholson. Jodie Foster. And for your grandparents, I'll throw in Elizabeth Taylor.
After that are your character actors - Tier Three. These are people who excel at a narrow range of roles. They're good at what they do, provided they don't push their luck. Like an old muscle car, they're good on straightaways - not so much on corners. These are your Walkens, your Marky Marks, your Samuel L. Jacksons. And let's not forget the ladies…Penelope Cruz….Lucy Liu. Cate Blanchett. They're all lovely people, and we love them all back.
Which brings us to the bottom. Regular actors, regular roles. They do buddy cop shows, they play sitcom parents, they star in USA original programming, they do Pepsi commercials. Down here is where it really happens. Tier 1 is the shiny coat of paint, tier 2 is the Rich Corinthian Leather; Tier 3 is the rumble out the tailpipe. And Tier 4? That's the gas that makes Hollywood go. Here are all your ham and eggers, punching a clock and paying their dues. You may not know their names, but you know their work.
But hold on…have I missed anyone?
Ah yes...come, this way...through the door in the floor. Watch your head; don't mind the humidity. What you see before you is Steerage. A solid plurality of the warm bodies in Tinsel Town have no business trying to act, but they're still better looking than you or me. Either that or they know someone in the personal, or even Biblical sense. Or maybe they were just the first person off the bus. These people do find work, usually in soft core porn or direct to DVD Steven Seagal flicks (you decide which is worse). But once upon a time, there was still a home for them on the Silver Screen. There were movies MADE for Steerage folk to shine.
And Night of the Comet is one of them.
First of all, action and horror movies with boyish female leads who go by the male version of their name are nothing new. It's not that girls like that don't exist, it's that in Steerage movies, they only exist because they were created by men. The reason is probably because if there's one thing creative dudes like, it's a girl who can just be “one of the guys.” She won't judge us for playing video games, mock our knowledge of Middle Earth, or roll her eyes when we remind her that the Jedi Mind trick only works on the weak. With any luck, she might even know the Riddle of Steel!
Which is why the best thing about Night of the Comet has to be Regina "Reggie" Belmont (Catherine Mary Stewart) totally destroying a game of Tempest back in 1984. According to Atari, there is no known instance of a girl EVER so much as touching a Tempest console [citation needed], so needless to say, Reggie won my heart about ten seconds into the film. Her authentic, glassy-eyed stare and spot-on, slack-jawed state of trance captivated me as she totally crushed my favorite arcade game ever. She seals the deal moments later as she ruminates on the intricacies of Superman's x-ray vision while her boyfriend Larry (Michael Bowen) paws at her like a drunken ape.
Girls who are good at video games and can name all the members of the Justice League don't usually end up with guys like Larry the Ape unless they're as ridiculously cute as Reggie. Nerds spontaneously combust in her presence, leaving her to the vile clutches of the Meathead Set. And speaking of meatheads, Larry works the projector at the theater where Reggie works as an usher. Being the horny teens they are, they decide to spend the night fooling around in the film room the night the earth passes through the tail of a mysterious and previously unknown comet.
Around the world, crowds are gathered to witness the event - clogging Times Square on the East coast, and filling Hollywood Boulevard on the Left coast. Adults take off from work, kids skip school and the media has a field day with the celestial event of the millennium. People buy souvenirs, get drunk in the streets and have sex in movie theater projection rooms. It's all fun and games, until the comet disintegrates almost everyone on earth. Except for the ones who get turned into zombies…for some…reason.
Why does this happen? Because just shut up and eat your popcorn, that's why.
The next morning, it doesn't take Reggie long to figure out why Larry has vanished, and why she is attacked by a flesh eating mutant that looks suspiciously like Mac from Night Court. Luckily, like most teenagers, Reggie knows a little Krav Maga and can ride a motorcycle. Since Larry doesn't need his anymore, she hops on and heads into the deserted, heavily red lens-filtered streets of Los Angeles. At home, she finds her dopey sister Sam (Kelli Maroney) alone, wearing her drill team outfit, chewing gum and listening to awful synth pop on her boom box.
Realizing someone must be alive at the radio station, they head downtown to find the very generically named Hector Gomez (Robert "Chakotay" Beltran), packing heat and looking all Flock of Seagulls with his feathered hair. The trio find themselves scared, alone, and facing a city full of Comet Zombies and crappy music with no hope but each other. But of course, there's more to it than that. They're being observed by mysterious forces, little but pawns in a very large, very stupid, and slightly confusing game of life or death.
This is without question a Steerage Flick, and a superbly derivative one at that. It uses, abuses, morphs and mocks just about every apocalypse trope in existence up to the time, and it takes great delight in doing so. In a handful of spots, Night of the Comet even flirts with being legitimately clever, well planned satire. The dialogue is witty at times, and delivered with all the panache our plucky Steerage crew can muster. The second act nearly sags under its own weight, but is subsequently redeemed by a mostly entertaining climax of apocalyptic tomfoolery. The movie gleefully apes everything and everyone from George Romero to George Miller to John Carpenter - with all the subtlety of a pink gorilla at Sunday brunch.
Like your Uncle Larry, Night of the Comet talks a big game, yet secretly seems to know how much it actually sucks. Yet it doesn't forget that it's making fun of the end of the world. There are some genuine laugh-out-loud moments, along with the requisite genre jabs at the government, consumerism and adolescent libido. And lest you forget what decade you're in, there's a healthy dose of Ray-Bans, shoulder pads, post Vietnam hand wringing, Reagan Era backlash, and more references to "Sandinistas" than you can shake an AK-47 at. The movie turns the riff gun on itself before all is said and done, bookending with a final shout out to the original video game generation.
Another cult classic in the can. Game over.