Raise your hand if you are personally familiar with how much the first half of the 1980s sucked. If you’re not raising your hand, watch this film. Oh, and by the way, I rated Night of the Comet as Yellow Puss.
I’m not sure if this film was supposed to be a serious Z-horror flick in its day or if the producers were taking a bit of a jab at the period — commercial music, warmed-over 1970s fashion, big bad hair, excess consumerism and narcissism, and … like … valley girls! Still, ya gotta love the superficial cult-film line of “Daddy would have gotten us Uzis!” and seeing Robert Beltran cut his teeth before he was the respectable Chakotay on Star Trek’s Voyager.
A comet from deep space passes through Earth’s atmosphere while everyone — not just Eddie Murphy — wanted Michael Jackson’s red leather jacket. Bright red dust from the comet pollutes the atmosphere, vaporizing people who were directly exposed while turning those with little exposure into cognizant talking mutants (er, I mean, zombies), and probably inspiring the survivors to start neon fashion that came soon after.
Refreshingly…
… Night of the Comet is devoid of nudity &/or depicting sex. In place of that the under-age sister-character is viewed twice in undergarments, which when you think about it feels pervy. Still, the romantic relationship in Hard Rock Zombies is WAY more disturbing.
This Z-film falls under the it’s-so-bad-it’s-good classification, and I suspect could be great if it got the Dawn Of The Dead remake treatment, but in present form doesn’t particularly hold my attention. While watching this flick I tend to wonder “If this was shot in LA, how did the production get empty streets? And if most of the population died instantly due to a passing destructive comet, it sure was nice of everyone to park their cars first … except for that one jerk with the Mercedes. Maybe this didn’t take place in LA but in Canada where everyone parks their cars before a comet causes an apocalypse.”
Surprisingly I have not seen gratuitous breasts yet — hey, it is an 80s horror film — but I have seen a number of little known actors in their early days who later went on to be ever so slightly better than little known actors. Watching this I’m half tempted to honor this flick by pulling out those 2 Shaw Safari shirts hanging in the back of my closet that have been waiting to come out for the right retro party. Frankly, maybe something that would have turned us more mindless like this back in the 80s would have been better, helping us to chill out instead of wearing all that obnoxious crap we used to wear and listen to that music, 1/2 of which was worse than our hair-doos.
The first time I heard Tom Petty – and I mean REALLY heard Tom Petty – was at a ski condo where I spent many winter weekends during high school. If you consider a lot of his songs being in high school could not have been a more fitting time.
One night during the winter of ‘89/90 some folks down the hall at the condo building had a party. They put on 
Every week the concert would pick up where it left off, and over a number of weeks I caught most of the performance. Something about the music and the presence the musicians had caught me. To this day I don’t know what the specific concert was or much reference to make for the footage – and I would love to see it again. All I recall was that there was this HUGE tree prop behind the band on stage, and I think chandeliers hung from the branches. Their performance was engaging, electrifying, authentic, and the roots of rock’n’roll were palpable.
I get the impression that some folks think that because I play bagpipes that I’m not a musician, that I don’t tie in with the rest of musicians the same. While I hold the opinion that there is a vibe every musician experiences that comes with their genre of instrument, there is a vibe that all musicians share. I didn’t start out as a bagpiper, I’m not now only a bagpiper, and with that I’ve always viewed myself as a musician first. When you appreciate the work of another musician both from an audience standpoint and from musician standpoint …. when someone who’s work was incredible and they move on … it hurts in two ways. You lose a star in the night who was a point of great creation, and you lose someone you understand because of the vibe you shared with them.