Tag Archives: Dawn of the Dead

Night of the Comet (1984)

Night of the Comet (1984) DVD cover
If you can’t tell already that this is an incredible movie…

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.

Robert Beltran as a cowboy
Robert Beltran — YEEE-HAWW!!!

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.

Street party aftermath
Okay, who’s gonna clean up this mess?!?

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…

"Daddy would have gotten us Uzis." ~ Samantha Belmont
“Daddy would have gotten us Uzis.” ~ Samantha Belmont

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.

Officer Friendly gives you a hug
This doesn’t actually make me feel better about cops in dark places

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.”

So there you go — Night of the Comet — put that in your coffee and drink it!

Night of the Comet LINKS

Dawn of the Dead (1978 and 2004)

Dawn of the Dead 1978Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Red Blood

…AND…

Dawn of the Dead (2004)
Green Ooze

I own both of these films.  In my opinion the 1978 Dawn of the Dead hurts — it’s poorly made, the make-up looks like garbage, and if the zombie extras were volunteers I would say that they were over-paid.  In fairness, this is typical of 1970s zombie films — there weren’t all that $upported.

Dawn of the Dead 2004

By contrast, I thought the remake Dawn of the Dead was a considerably better film, but after seeing the extras I think that some of the reenacted lines and details that were cut from the original film would have made the remake better.  If you’re watching the 2004 version on DVD, be sure to see the extras about the guy who owns the gun store — oh, and don’t skip the credits at the end of the film.

The premise of both of these films …

At the Dawn of the Dead people wake up and the zombie apocalypse has started.  Some people do the journey thing and take shelter in a mall that was closed when the everything started breaking down.  On one hand they have everything they need in the mall and everything they didn’t have before, they have things pretty easy … on the other hand, their feeling of security proves to be an illusion when people — living or dead — start to find their shelter.

Links