Two valley girls against the world. That’s the central plot of Night of the Comet, a 1984 sci-fi horror comedy that has grown to become one of the most beloved cult classics of the decade. Reggie and Sam wake up one morning to discover that almost all of humanity is gone, thanks to a nearby comet. They then navigate a spookily empty Los Angeles, populated only by the occasional bloodthirsty zombie. From its clever dialogue to its captivating lead performance and overall loving ode to B-Movies of generations past, Night of the Comet is a pure gem with a history and legacy that deserves its own ode.
First, let’s travel back in time to the film’s production era, which was not without its share of difficulties. When Thom Eberhardt set out to write the script for Night of the Comet, he had his eyes on the science-fiction films of his childhood. He was specifically interested in tales where characters woke up one day to find themselves alone in a massive, seemingly abandoned city. “I always liked empty city movies, and there were quite a few of them around when I was a kid,” he explained on the Jed Talks podcast. In particular, he drew inspiration from a 1954 film called Target Earth. “The first 10 minutes is riveting,” he said. “They shot in city streets, downtown LA, and this young lady wakes up, there’s nobody around, and it’s like this ‘Where is everybody?’ growing panic. I just liked the haunted feel of an empty city.”
Eberhardt was able to use what he called “student filmmaker tricks” to make the small $700,000 budget of Night of the Comet stretch as far as it could. The film is filled with scenes of a chillingly empty Los Angeles – and surprisingly, they were able to accomplish this without actually having to shut down streets, an extravagance well beyond their financial means.
“We shot first thing in the morning on Christmas morning,” remembers Stewart in Valley Girls at the End of the World. “We had to shoot during a time where nobody would be there – it helped our performances because it was a little eerie.” Eberhardt singles out one wide angle shot of the city as being particularly serendipitous. Because of the film’s limited budget, his director of photography Arthur Albert was sharing a hotel room with the camera equipment, and he happened to capture a great shot at sunrise out the window of his hotel room.
Makeup effects designer David B. Miller recalls working out of his one-car garage to create all the prosthetics and character designs for the zombies in the film. Crawford and Lane’s previous film, Valley Girl, which spent a large chunk of its budget licensing the rights to popular songs. But Night of the Comet had to create a similarly trendy feel on the cheap. Music supervisor Don Perry worked with several artists to produce 19 original songs for the film, as well as a cover version of Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”
“I’m very proud of the quality of the artists and songs and remain disappointed that we couldn’t make a deal with a major record company. I still think Learn to Love Again could have been a hit with a major release,” he said on the Night of the Comet Facebook group page.
But despite the guerrilla-style filmmaking approach of Night of the Comet, the shoot itself seemed to go relatively smoothly. “Working with Thom Eberhardt was great because he was very calm,” said Miller in the documentary short Curse of the Comet. “I had worked with directors before who were not so calm when things didn’t go right, he was very calm and he seemed very professional about everything.”
But if production went well, that didn’t mean their post-production experience was without a few bumps in the road. “At a certain point, the producers were trying to decide whether they wanted it to be a serious horror movie or as written, which was much more tongue in cheek,” said Maroney at Iconicon 2021.
Eberhardt maintains that Atlantic Releasing was always nervous about the fact that the film mixed genres. This would seemingly make it more difficult to promote. “They thought it was the kiss of death.” His intention was always to make the film an homage to the B-Movies he grew up watching, something he claims his producers didn’t get. “Luckily, nobody had any money for reshoots, so they were stuck with what I gave them.”
Although Night of the Comet didn’t achieve the fame of other 1980s films of the same genre, it was far from a disaster. It earned $14.4 million at the box office, making it a moderately successful film if only because it cost so little to make. In fact, the biggest stumbling block for Night of the Comet’s success actually had nothing to do with the film itself. It simply had the bad luck to come out two and a half weeks after The Terminator, a defining science fiction classic that sucked up all the oxygen in the genre space. It “played on double bills with Terminator at drive-ins,” Eberhardt explained. “Guess which picture was on the bottom half of the bill.”
“It kind of went into a black hole in the late ‘80s, and I assumed it was forgotten,” said Eberhardt of the film. But many film critics responded positively to it. Siskel and Ebert even included it in their 1984 wrap-up episode of “At the Movies.” Siskel especially expressed fondness for the film, despite his weariness with the science fiction genre as a whole, calling it “a real pleasure” and “a buried treasure” that would continue to find new audiences in the years to come.
Siskel’s comment ended up being right on the mark, because Night of the Comet has developed a cult following over the years that never fails to stun its stars. “I loved it very much, but if you were to tell me, ‘OK, it’s going to be 2023 and you’re going to be talking about Night of the Comet all the time’…I would not have believed you,” Maroney told The Nightwatch Zone.
It found a new life on cable, where it was put in front of a new generation of viewers, and then later on the internet. “Maybe people watch it for the camp value,” Eberhardt mused when asked about its reappraisal. “It would be nice to think that the sweetness of the movie is engaging, because at its heart, it is a very sincere, sweet little movie.” You can see the fingerprints of Night of the Comet on popular culture, especially in its nuanced depiction of horror’s final girl trope. Samantha, in her now iconic cheerleader outfit, is a blueprint for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. “I was walking down Hollywood Boulevard back in the day and I saw that [Buffy] ad on a bus and I went, ‘That’s me! They ripped me off!” Maroney said laughingly.
It’s a testament to the film’s likeability factor and cultural impact that for years, there have been rumors of a new Night of the Comet movie or television series. In fact, Eberhardt claims that he was approached by the Fox Family Channel to adapt Night of the Comet for television, not realizing that he had actually directed the original film.
“I asked if the original writer-director might have some sort of deal concerning sequels and remakes. They said whoever he was, they were sure they could buy him off and get rid of him.” But a remake or sequel is something the cast and crew are wary of. “Remakes always make me very nervous, because they’ll never be anything like the original,” Stewart said at Iconicon 2021. “What makes these ‘80s movies so charming is the kind of innocence of the time and the relatability. I can imagine a remake would be some superhero girls going out shooting zombies somewhere – that’s not what it’s about.” Eberhardt concurred: “Part of the charm of Comet is its funkiness and tackiness. I can’t conceive of anyone pumping big bucks into something like Comet II.”
Still, the concept of a new Night of the Comet continues to persist. In 2018, Orion Pictures hired Roxanne Benjamin to begin work on a potential screenplay for a remake of the film. It is a project that is – ironically enough – not quite alive or dead. In an interview with Slashfilm, Benjamin said that the version of the script she originally submitted to Orion would not be moving forward. But the idea for the project was in a “weird limbo [but] still out there.”
Whether or not Night of the Comet ever sees new films or TV shows added to the lore, it remains a seminal example of the endlessly charming 1980s B-Movie. And its legacy means a lot to director Thom Eberhardt. “I have a vision of myself on my deathbed just before I’m about to check out with friends and relatives around me,” he said in the film’s audio commentary. “And just as everything is going dim, I hear a voice in the back of the room saying, ‘Wait a minute—he directed Night of the Comet!”
