Night of the Comet (Thom Eberhardt, 1984)

The obvious problem with this teens-navigating-the-apocalypse turkey is that Eberhardt didn't have enough script for a 95-minute movie, even though he wrote the thing himself. So when Reggie (Catherine Mary Stewart, Bibi in my beloved The Apple) drives through an empty metropolis after a comet has vaporized most of humanity, we're treated to a painfully slow shot-reverse shot sequence of Reggie looking at deserted buildings - first Reggie, then a deserted building, Reggie, building, Reggie, building, on and on, argh!, until a long shot (and looooong take) catches her driving off into the distance. Instead of conveying crucial narrative information, the sequence says, "whew - that ate up two minutes." The remainder proceeds in this lumpy fashion with a criminally anonymous soundtrack which goes for even more criminally exorbitant sums on Discogs. Mary Waronov and Geoffrey Lewis show up as was de rigueur in the 1980s playing maybe sympathetic, maybe not scientists, I forget which even though I watched this three days ago. Pure video-store fodder, Night of the Comet exists solely for Bad Movie Nights, allowing for plenty of space to talk over it and throw popcorn at the screen.

Grade: D