NIGHT OF THE COMET

Another cult favourite of the 1980s makes its way onto the HD market, courtesy of Arrow Films Video. Prior to the opening credits, an enjoyably sombre male narration warns of a danger from outer space that approaches Earth once in a blue moon...

Then ... it's Christmas. We meet Regina (Catherine Mary Stewart), a refreshment attendant at a crappy cinema who's more interested in playing arcade games than serving her customers.

Staying late after work to shag the projectionist, Regina rings her younger sister Samantha (Kelli Maroney) to ask her to lie to their slutty mother Doris (Sharon Farrell) about her whereabouts. This fails, but all is not lost - Regina gets her fuck and Doris goes out to a street party with her new boyfriend to watch the passing of a comet ...

This just so happens to occur on the night that the Earth passes through the tail of Haley's Comet and, as a result, anyone exposed to the night air is evaporated into a small pile of red dust.

Having fallen asleep in the projection room and spent the night there, Regina is oblivious to this and even misses out on her boyfriend being bludgeoned by a zombified passer-by the morning after. It's only when she eventually ventures outside that she realises the streets are deserted.

She stumbles across the zombie and manages to use her knowledge of kung fu to fend him off, before racing home to check in on cheerleader sister Samantha.

Samantha's fine, but she won't believe Regina's warnings that there is something very wrong with the world. Not until she sees the barren streets for herself.

Hearing a DJ on their radio, they race in their car to the broadcasting station only to find an empty DJ desk and a dodgy Eric Estrada-lookalike called Hector (Robert Beltran) who reluctantly agrees to protect the girls from the "freaked out zombies" lurking outside.

From this point on, the trio work together to find a safe haven away from the marauding zombies (it transpires that anyone who'd been protected by steel was immune from the comet's effects, and those only partially affected became scabby murderous monsters).

Our heroes seem to have a pretty good chance of making it to safety - even taking in time for the girls to 'shop' at the newly empty mall - but the situation becomes less of a joke, even for numbskull Samantha, when a group scientists also start chasing them, eager to have their blood to test as a possible antidote to the zombie epidemic. Luckily the girls have karate skills and a crash-course in Uzi usage to fall back on...

NIGHT OF THE COMET is a snappy, taut and stylishly shot horror-thriller from writer-director Thom Eberhardt, who had previously given us the superb - and in its own way, equally apocalyptic - SOLE SURVIVOR.

The film benefits from appealing performances from the two female leads, and a good grip from Eberhardt on keeping things hectic in an action movie manner. The cinematography, aided by some distinctly 80s-looking filtered visuals, is often striking too, making this an aesthetically pleasing proposition.

Having said that, the big hairdos and stylised coloured studio lighting often make this look like a Motley Crue promo video. It's exceptionally dated in this respect.

However, a witty script that teeters agreeably between comedy and sci-fi thriller chills keeps things from feeling old. Throw in some decent make-up FX (as well as some cheesy optical FX), a rousing score and energetic cameos from Geoffrey Lewis and Mary Woronov, and you have a film that retains it's fun feel while never quite gelling in the way that the superior NIGHT OF THE CREEPS, from the same era, does.

The film was originally released onto UK DVD by Studiocanal back in 2010. Their release boasted a nice picture but was disappointingly barren in the extras department. Leave it to Arrow, then, to improve upon that DVD in every conceivable way...

Available as a 2-disc dual format release (DVD and blu-ray), we were furnished with a copy of the blu-ray disc for the purpose of this review.

Firstly, the new HD transfer from original negative materials is pretty stunning. Presented as an MPEG4-AVC file and in 16x9 widescreen, the 1080p restoration dazzles with bright, natural colour schemes, greatly heightened clarity and a wonderful sense of true, filmic depth throughout. Grain is evident and some inherent softness persists here and there, but overall this is a clean and highly impressive rendering of the film - if anything, the improved picture quality makes some of the visual effects look cheaper than ever before!

English stereo audio provides a rousing, evenly rounded and pleasingly consistent playback. Optional English subtitles serve the hard-of-hearing without typing errors or readability issues.

The disc opens to a garish animated main menu page. From there, a pop-up scene selection menu allows access to the film via 12 chapters.

Extras begin with no less than three feature-length audio commentary tracks.

The director's is the best in terms of pertinent information, of course, but we also get a highly engaging offering from Maroney and Stewart, and an additional energetic one from production designer John Muto, moderated by Michael Felsher - who appears to know more about the film than his interviewee does!

Next up is an enjoyable 15-minute featurette containing separate 2013 interviews with the film's two lead actresses. Both look good thirty years down the line, and speak fondly of the long shoots, their co-stars and being a performer in general.

"The Last Man On Earth?" is an enjoyable 12-minute chat with Beltran, who discusses how a title role in EATING RAOUL helped his chances of getting an acting gig upon his move to Los Angeles. He then goes into the lengthy casting process endured to bag his role in COMET.

Woronov is on hand for a 10-minute featurette entitled "End Of The World Blues", speaking candidly about her time on the film. She's great fun, evidently growing more eccentric with age.

Make-up artist David B Miller offers 6 interesting minutes of insight into his zombie FX work. Interestingly, he got the job after having worked as Rick Baker's assistant on MICHAEL JACKSON'S THRILLER.

"Did you ever wonder what it'd be like to be one of the last people on Earth?" asks the film's original theatrical trailer. This races by in an entertainingly brisk 75 seconds.

An excellent 24-page booklet rounds off this lovely selection of bonus features, with glossy colour photos, full cast and crew credits, notes on the transfer and a lengthy new essay by James Oliver.

If you're a fan of NIGHT OF THE COMET, you should be very excited as Arrow have treated it with the utmost respect here.

Review by Stuart Willis