Weirdhouse Cinema: Night of the Comet

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
And this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema,
we're going to be talking about the nineteen eighty four
sci fi horror thriller Night of the Comet. Should we
throw comedy in there as well? I mean it is
a funny movie overall, maybe sci fi horror comedy thriller,
Night of the Comment starring Katherine Mary Stewart, Kelly Moroney,

(00:37):
and Robert Beltran, Written and directed by Tom Everhart.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Yeah, I would say quirky eighties comedy. But even that,
you got to couch it appropriately. I don't know, because
that could that could mean different things as well. And
this film strikes just a unique balance. I feel like
it is. You know, it's funny, it's heartfelt, it has
some thrills in it. In a way, I would almost

(01:02):
say that the film is a little uneven in the
way that it kind of veers around the road a
little bit thematically and genre wise, but it doesn't do
so in a way that feels completely disorienting. It remains
true to its core throughout the whole way, but there
are moments that definitely feel more like a horror movie
than others, and ultimately end up landing in a really

(01:25):
lighthearted spot despite the apocalyptic ramifications of the realm.

Speaker 3 (01:29):
Right right, So, this is a movie that multiple listeners
have requested we cover on the show over the past
few years. I don't remember how many times we've gotten
a Night of the Comment requests in email, but it's
come up a good bit and I'm really excited we
finally found an occasion to talk about it. As always,
we're going to be talking about the plot in some detail.
We might not do a scene by scene breakdown in

(01:51):
this one like we do with some films, and maybe
more of a rough sketch of the plot, but still
it will have extensive spoilers. So if you would like
to see the movie with no spoilers from us, you
should hop out here come back after you've seen it. Now,
if you've been keeping up with our movie selections over
the past few weeks, like Day of the Beast and
Santa Claus, the movie you might wonder is Night of

(02:14):
the Comet a Christmas movie? I would say medium, yes,
not one hundred percent, but medium, yes, sort of in
the blue sunshine zone. It isn't about Christmas, and I
don't recall if an on screen character ever says the
word Christmas, though I think the narrator does. But we

(02:35):
can tell from the set decoration that the story takes
place in the weeks before Christmas, and I think this
is actually a big part of what makes people come
back to this film over and over. So Night of
the Comet rough sketch. It tells the story of two
teenage sisters from the San Fernando Valley trying to deal

(02:58):
with a sudden, almost wrap sure like apocalyptic death and
disappearance of basically everyone on earth, which is caused by
the passage of a strange comet. And of course it
goes lots of weird places from here, involving zombies, department
store raiders, or I don't know, mall pirates. It's got

(03:19):
scientific conspiracies. We'll explore all of that later. But because
everyone in this movie has disappeared, that's sort of the
main premise. Many of the locations in the movie are
empty spaces, empty city streets and sidewalks throughout Los Angeles.
No cars, no people, empty houses, empty radio stations, empty

(03:43):
movie theaters, empty malls and shopping centers. And I don't
know exactly why, but this is something I personally always
find fascinating to look at in movies. It's one of
my favorite kind of things. Empty spaces that are usual,
that are the kinds of spaces that are usually full
of human activity, like city streets or places of business.

(04:07):
A lot of the most memorable sets and locations I
can think of in the movies are of this kind.
So movies that come to mind are like The Omega
Man or Escape from New York or Twenty eight Days Later.
You know, these all have very recognizable urban locations that

(04:27):
should be jammed with people, but instead they're totally desolate,
totally empty, and even on a less dramatically post apocalyptically
emptied note, I think throughout his catalog, John Carpenter has
a real eye for shots of empty places, empty locations
that create a simultaneously creepy and alluring feeling, at least

(04:50):
for me.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
Oh absolutely yeah. I'd put in the Mouth of Madness
up there as well. As another great example from his
filmography that makes use of depopulated areas and outside of
Carpenter's filmography, and pointing to contemporary television, I'll point once
more to the excellent Pluribus television series.

Speaker 3 (05:10):
But yeah, Night of the Comet has this quality as well.
But it has these like, you know, empty spaces, but
with the I believe exquisite twist that a lot of
these empty barren spaces, both indoors and outdoors across LA
are decorated for Christmas. And I think this accentuates both

(05:33):
the creepiness and the coziness of the setting. And it's
that nice contradictory duality that makes the setting so interesting
and unusual and fun. What do you think about that, Rob, Yeah?

Speaker 2 (05:47):
Yeah, I mean much can be said about the Christmas
layer being added to any film. You know, there are
numerous examples of this with you know, I guess like
Diehard is one of the big ones, right where not
a Christmas movie, but Christmas things going on in the background,
a little bit of Christmas dressing, and you know, by
doing that, you can't help but create some new ideas

(06:10):
out of you know, at least sort of vague back
of your mind, ideas about what the import of various
scenes and plot elements are.

Speaker 3 (06:17):
Yeah. Yeah, So I think that the Christmas setting really
helps in that regard. I think the Christmas setting also
contributes to the fact that so many people regard Knight
of the Comment as a comfort film, which is a
weird thing about it. If you go reading, you know,
like user reviews of this, you'll find all over people

(06:39):
saying like, this is my comfort movie. I watch this
every year, or I put it on too fall asleep.
You know, people find it comforting despite the fact that
it is a story about the sudden annihilation of nearly
all of humankind, plus gross zombies, lots of murder and
you know, evil conspiracies and needles and all kinds.

Speaker 2 (06:58):
Of actual threats, Like, yeah, there's actual peril in this film,
so terrible stuff.

Speaker 3 (07:03):
Yeah, but I.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
Agree, it does have a comfy vibe to it. I've
always seen it, you know, the one time. But I
can see why people keep coming back to this one.
I can see why people like it at Christmas as well.
Like i'd kind of you'd mentioned that it was a
Christmas movie. I'd kind of forgotten about it. About this
the detail. I've gone into video drome here in Atlanta
to rent it and I couldn't find it. I kept

(07:25):
finding all the other Night of the Blank movies and
I was like, where do y'all have a Night of
the comment? They're like, oh Christmas section. So yeah, it's
a Christmas movie. Nice, but you know there is going
to be nice thematic use of Christmas prophecy and apocalypse,
at least in the opening of the film. And I
think if we dig deeper, we have to realize that

(07:46):
winter seasonal rituals and celebrations are often about an apocalypse,
like they are about the apocalypse of winter and the
hope that we will re emerge from this apocalypse. On
the other side.

Speaker 3 (07:58):
Yeah, though very different to have it set at Christmas
in La in that regard, because it doesn't look it
doesn't look cold, you know, the weather seems to be nice.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The La Christmas background for a film
is like almost like a subcategory onto itself, isn't it.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
It's like Lethal Weapon or something in that set around Christmas.
I feel like it is.

Speaker 2 (08:18):
I believe you when you say it. I don't think
I've ever actually watched Lethal Weapon.

Speaker 3 (08:22):
But I want to talk about another major reason that
I think people regard this as a comfort movie despite
all the horrific subject matter, and that is the fact
that on a character level, you could say neither of
the comet is really very tenderhearted. At its core, there
is a realistically sometimes fraud and petty, but also funny

(08:47):
and genuinely loving relationship between the main two characters. Again,
these are the sisters, Regina played by Catherine Mary Stewart
and Samantha played by Kelly Moroney. So, yes, you know
we're we're in a story dealing with like space dust,
zombies and people in helicopters with questionable injections. But really
the movie is about these two sisters being real teenagers

(09:11):
with their own kinds of selfishness and attitude, but also
looking out for each other and really rising to the
occasion to protect the bonds of family.

Speaker 2 (09:23):
Yeah, this is a great sibling duo. Sometimes we watch
movies where we have to ask ourselves, are these two siblings?
Is this a brother and sister? We don't know. It's
not really that well developed. It is the core of
this movie, these two sisters, these two performances, the relationship
that they have on screen. It's holding everything up. It's

(09:43):
the reason that people keep coming back to this film,
I guarantee.

Speaker 3 (09:47):
Though I also don't want to oversell it in that
direction because the way I just said it, I agree
with what I just said, but that could be taken
in a way that makes it sound too sentimental and serious.
It's not, like, mainly this movie is funny and it
does not feel sentimental. It has a weird, somewhat dark

(10:08):
sense of humor, and that irony is not just in
like specific dialogue exchanges, like the sisters do have funny
dialogue exchanges with each other, so that there is humor
in the dialogue, but it's not just there. The irony
runs through the whole story, from like the baseline baseline
concept to the texture of individual scenes.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
Yeah. Yeah, And I also want to stress that, like,
there will be plenty of moments that reminds you that, yes,
I am watching a genre film. I am watching a
lower budget production here, but in all the admirable ways.
You know, it's gonna be a little crunchy in places,
but in the best way possible. Yeah, you feel like
they're human hands have made the thing that you're watching.

(10:50):
But yeah, I agree, it does have some very emotional moments,
So we'll come back to some of these later on.
But there's something about the balance of sentiment. This seems
to feel for a film that sets out on some
level to tell an apocalypse story focused on a particular
teenage worldview, which which I'm to understand, is something that
the filmmakers looked into, like asking teenagers their thoughts about

(11:14):
the idea of apocalypse and the end of the world
and really trying to sort of get in their headspace,
because as we've covered on stuff to blow your mind before,
and you know, maybe we should cover again, Like, there's
a lot of studies out there about how the teenage
brain works, you know, how teenagers are wired to sort
of make sense of the world around them and what
sort of values they put on different things, and I

(11:35):
feel like that texture is seemingly well represented in this film,
again for the type of film that it is not
a deep psychological study of what it is to be
a teenager, but a more lighthearted affair, a more humble affair.

Speaker 3 (11:52):
Yeah, I agree. I think Regina and Samantha here are
also very interesting characters in the ways that they subvert
simultaneously a couple of different relevant stereotypes that you would
see in culture and in especially in movies of this
type from this time period. So the first one I

(12:15):
want to mention is like a broader cultural stereotype, and
that's the valley girl. You know. The valley girl stereotype
from what I've been reading, emerged in like the late
seventies early eighties. In fact, just the year before Night
of the Comet there had been a romantic comedy film
called Valley Girls came out in eighty three, starring Nicholas

(12:35):
Cage and Deborah Foreman. I noticed that this movie has
a lot of like cast and crew overlap with Night
of the Comet. I'm not sure why, but valley girl
caricatures were all over the movies of like the mid
eighties through the mid nineties.

Speaker 2 (12:51):
It makes sense to take whatever was popular the year
before and add zombies andro apocalypse to it and produce
something new. Except in this case, they did a really
nice job of help.

Speaker 3 (13:02):
Yeah, inverting some of the features of the stereotype in
interesting ways. Like most people probably already know what a
valley girl is, but just in case you don't, you know,
the stereotypical valley girl is an upper middle class girl
or young woman from southern California, generally from the San
Fernando Valley of LA who has certain characteristic speech patterns,

(13:25):
using like as an interjection and speaking in uptalk, and
so valley girls talk like this, and they're almost always
characterized with overwhelmingly negative personality traits. They're characterized as dumb,
ditsy or vapid, as unseerious, superficial and materialistic, as incompetent

(13:51):
at any real world skills, as obsessed with physical appearance, money, fashion,
and cute boys, and as selfish and thoughtless.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
Yeah, they are often objectified physically. They generally in films,
sometimes especially in the horror films, they are victimized and
made the victims of some sort of a killer right,
and in general not given a lot of depth.

Speaker 3 (14:19):
The way that the main two sisters in this movie
interact with the stereotype is very interesting because in a
lot of ways, at the surface level, Regina and Samantha
do match the type. They are clearly rendered as valley girls.
They are flippant in a way that can come off
as unseerious. They are very interested in fashion and clothes

(14:41):
and in dating Samantha especially. They can be selfish at times,
but then again, everybody can be selfish at times, and
so the interesting thing is that while at that level
of focus they are valley girls. We come to see
that they just don't match a lot of these negative
characterizations in more or important ways. Reggie and Sam are

(15:02):
not dumb or ditsy at all. They're actually pretty clever
and witty. They're not incompetent. They're actually quite resourceful and
in fact well trained in the use of submachine guns.
And though they are flippant about things, this is something
you see with valley girls in the movies all the time,
the whatever quality, you know, whatever, I don't care about that,

(15:24):
you know, it's usually portrayed as a kind of unseeriousness
about life. I don't think Reggie and Sam are unseerious.
I think their flippancy comes off more as a kind
of weary wisdom and a strategy for coping with the
difficulties of life. Like they have faced some hardship, not
so much material hardship in their lives, because they come

(15:47):
from a rather materially comfortable situation, but you know, they
face a hard family life, and so they have a
kind of I don't know, a distance and a wisdom
about them, and that in the end feels more like
what feeds their flippancy than just like a lack of
ability to appreciate what matters in life, because at the

(16:07):
end of the story they do appreciate what matters. So anyway,
I think very interesting variation on this character type. They
are clearly valley girls, but they're tough, smart valley girls
who can in a small way, save the world. There's
another stereotype they defy, which is less broadly cultural and

(16:28):
more specific to genre films. They really defy the trend
of how young women are portrayed in horror movies of
the eighties, and in this sense that the violation of
the trend is clearer. You know, in horror movies of
the eighties you can observe this pretty dominant pattern. Young
women who survive the dangers of the movie and who

(16:51):
are supposed to be likable are usually somewhat reserved passive
rule followers, the classic final girl from much film criticism.
In these movies, young women who are assertive, brash, active,
and rebellious are more often supposed to be unlikable and
are punished with death. It's the classic sexist moral double

(17:13):
standard of slasher films. Night of the comment, I think
is one of the exceptions to this trend. Reggie and
Sam are both assertive. They've got real mean kind of attitude.
They are rule breakers who raise hell, and they are
clearly supposed to be quite likable, and they survive the
horrors in the end.

Speaker 2 (17:34):
Yeah. I really like this about the film, and this
is something that in watching it you kind of just
sort of gradually pick up on. But I thought it
was a rather sex positive film, which I think is
worth stating for again, a movie with zombies in it
from the nineteen eighties that features two valley girl characters.
Like we learned through various little tidbits and scenes that

(17:56):
like Reggie has a sex life and has a sexual history,
and it is treated just very casually. It is not
like the major focus of the picture it is. There's
not like judgment brought down upon her because of it.
It is just part of the texture of her character,
which again is not something you see in the stereotypical

(18:18):
valley girl or even you know, sexually active female character
in so many horror or horror related pictures of this
time period.

Speaker 3 (18:27):
Yeah, the movie is centered around a great couple of
main characters who are just very different than what I'm
used to seeing from movies of this time and place.
They might be more familiar to you know, younger audiences
who might have grown up with more recent films that
have more characters like this but there, but they feel
great in this early eighties context.

Speaker 2 (18:46):
Yeah, yeah, I would absolutely agree. Yeah, I'm glad that
you picked this movie gave me a chance to finally
watch it. It's a film that I've heard about for years,
and I knew that it was very well regarded. My
wife had seen it and has mentioned before, Oh, that's
a fun film. That's a fun film. And I think
there are two main reasons I had never sought it
out before and never actually sat down and watched it.

(19:08):
I think one is that it is a Night of
the blank movie, and there are so many of them,
you know, Night of the Hunter, Night of the Creeps,
And I think in particular, I would kind of confuse
it with Night of the Creeps, and I would be like, oh,
Night of the Comet, I saw that, but I would
be thinking about Night of the Creeps, so you can
kind of lose track of which night of the film

(19:28):
you have seen.

Speaker 3 (19:29):
Night of the Creeps also scrappy and fun.

Speaker 2 (19:31):
Yeah, Yeah, that's a good one, Like I was thinking,
if we were to say in twenty twenty six, we
will only watch movies that are Night of the Blank,
we would eat pretty well at least for a while. Yeah,
But I think the other big reason why I had
never seen it is, you know, this is a well
made film that has a lot of fun with genre
staples and pop culture quirkiness. It's stylish, it's funny, but

(19:54):
its main strength is those two characters, Reggie and Samantha,
and they're the system highlight, but not always in ways
that can easily be summarized with say a gift or
even a clip.

Speaker 3 (20:09):
It's I don't know.

Speaker 2 (20:09):
It's a film that stands on its complete cinematic experience
and lives in people's hearts almost more as a feeling.
I think, you know, yeah, I guess part of it
comes down to the way the film is promoted. Like
you look at its original trailer, it's original poster, and
I love its original poster. I love some of the
more recent posters people have done on some of the
re releases and so forth, but even the really good

(20:33):
ones don't necessarily capture what the film is, and it's
maybe just a little harder to lass, so what works
about it and then sell it to someone. So even
the people over the years who had told me like, hey,
it's a really good film, you should check it out,
I don't know, one struggles to make a really impassioned
argument for it. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (20:51):
Yeah, I mean, I guess the surprise of the film
in some ways can't be embodied in an image, because
part of what the movie is is, let's I would
show you a picture of a couple of characters within
a setting, and then the surprise of the movie is
you would watch it and discover these characters aren't quite
what you assumed they would be.

Speaker 2 (21:10):
Right, right, Yeah, coming back to the subversion that we
were talking about earlier. Yeah, Now, I think you're about
to get into another aspect about it, and that is
that we're talking about a film that is a cult favorite.
And we've talked about cults in the ancient sense on
the show before, and cults involve a certain amount of initiation.

Speaker 3 (21:28):
Right ah, yeah, Yeah, the secret rights and you know what, Yeah,
there are a few secrets at least involved in the
making of this film. Secrets in the sense of like
tricks to pull it off with what limited resources they have.
So this movie, yeah, as you were just alluding to,
it's sort of the very definition of a cult classic.
It is a scrappy, low budget production made for only

(21:51):
about seven hundred thousand dollars. It grows millions, you know,
So it did wildly better than its budget, and it
in up punching way above its weight on the basis
of great fundamentals like just a strong script, great performances
from the main cast, and a lot of clever filmmaking

(22:12):
tricks to get shots and locations and certain scenes on
the cheap. In fact, I was reading about some of
these tricks in a twenty twenty four article for Nerdice
by Audrey Fox called the Fascinating history and horror legacy
of Night of the Comet. One example is, I don't
think I would have thought of this, But how do

(22:33):
they get all these shots of empty La streets? You
know that's going to be expensive to do well. The
production absolutely did not have budget to shut down the
streets of La for filming. That does cost a lot.
So instead they did it you know what people sometimes
call more guerrilla style filmmaking. They just shot at when
and how they could, and they got a lot of

(22:54):
these empty exterior shots of la first thing on Christmas
morning when the streets were just empty organically, and so
they got some stuff that way other stuff. They're just
very opportunistically looking for chances to get good shots, like
there was apparently one sunset shot featured in the movie

(23:15):
that they the director, or I think maybe the director
of photography just like got out of his hotel window
one morning. Another thing that I thought was fun was
reading about how the creators wanted to have pop music
on the soundtrack because that would match the Valley Girl theme.
But of course they couldn't afford to license all of

(23:36):
these actual huge pop hits, you know, they can't get
Banana Rama and Minute Work and the Culture Club. So
music supervisor Don Perry coordinated the production of original tracks
for the movie, which sound like they would be pop
hits of the early eighties, but I guess most of
them were original songs. There's also one very important use

(23:58):
of Cyndi Lauper's Girl Just Want to Have Fun, But
apparently to save money, they used a cover, not the
original recording, but it sounds close enough that I didn't
realize it was a cover while watching the movie. I
thought it was the real thing.

Speaker 2 (24:10):
Yeah, yeah, same. I had to pick up on that later.
But but yeah, this is a great point. You know,
it reminds me that this is you can see the
fingerprints of this film where I don't know, you can
see the genetic legacy of this film and things like
Stranger Things.

Speaker 3 (24:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:26):
Stranger Things, though, is a project with the budget to
actually license every song, seemingly every song they could possibly want.

Speaker 3 (24:34):
Let's just throw a Master of Puppets in there.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
Yeah, yeah, it's no big deal that any eighties song
you could possibly want. I don't know, maybe there's something
they couldn't and maybe there was something they couldn't afford,
but it seems like they had limitless possibilities at their disposal.
But yeah, here they had to be a little a
little little more savvy, but they totally pulled it off.
They were still able to via the music of the film,

(24:57):
both its score and it's sort of needle drop soundtrack,
they were able to really capture like the cultural reality
of the world they're trying to portray.

Speaker 3 (25:08):
Yeah, all right.

Speaker 2 (25:10):
You know, we generally talk about elevator pitches here and
then we do the trailer. I had to pick up
on the fact that the narration in the trailer for
this film is provided by the voice of God Don
la Fontaine, and at one point he says the night
the teenagers ruled the world, which is not a great
pitch for the movie that we get and kind of

(25:31):
ties into what I was saying earlier about, like, how
do you sell people on night of the comet? You
can say the night that the teenagers ruled the world.
It sounds impressive, It sounds like that might get butts
in seats, But that really has nothing to do with
the movie.

Speaker 3 (25:45):
Well, yeah, first of all, because it's not just a night, right,
the teenagers are ruling the whole world from now on.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
It seems to like, yeah, it seems to be. However
many there are left. Yeah, But anyway, and that note,
let's go ahead and listen to a little bit of
this trailer. This one's a really good one.

Speaker 3 (26:11):
Did you ever wonder what it would be like to
be one of the last people on earth? Would you
see there's nobody, I mean, there's nobody. What would you do? Hey,
I'm sorry, at the end of the world makes me
a little nervous. Where would you go?

Speaker 4 (26:30):
The story?

Speaker 2 (26:32):
We'll get ready to find out because the comedy is
coming into your orbit.

Speaker 3 (26:37):
The legal drinking age is now ten.

Speaker 1 (26:41):
Lead I d let's be real, it's the Night of
the Comet.

Speaker 4 (26:46):
Get me if I come back.

Speaker 3 (26:50):
Night of the Comet.

Speaker 4 (26:52):
I'm taking request from all you teenage comic zombies.

Speaker 3 (26:55):
The night the teenagers ruled the world. Yeah, Night of
the Comics.

Speaker 4 (27:02):
Regarding civilization is honest fiction, isn't it? All?

Speaker 2 (27:19):
Right? Well, we forgot to mention where you can watch this.
It's pretty readibly readily available, at least when it comes
to physical media. There have been multiple really great releases
of this. When I looked around for any kind of
like faster digital method, I was coming up empty personally,
but those things change months to months. But there have

(27:40):
been a number of great releases. And again I rented
this on Blu Ray from Video Drum here in Atlanta.

Speaker 3 (27:45):
You can stream it if you've got MGM plus I
think right now.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
Okay, yeah, there's it's amaze.

Speaker 3 (27:52):
Too many services now, yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:54):
Yeah. Generally, oftentimes I can go on letterbox and I
can use that little feature to see like where can
I watch this, and half the time that will actually
help me out more than half the time. But sometimes
there's some option that I don't have clicked, I guess,
and I just can't find it.

Speaker 3 (28:08):
Yeah. Of course this may no longer be the case
by the time you hear this episode.

Speaker 2 (28:12):
Right, or it could be everywhere. Who knows. All right,
let's go ahead and get into the people behind this film.
We mentioned Tom Eberheart Earlier born nineteen forty seven, the
director and the writer here, American filmmaker whose first credited
work is a nineteen seventy eight educational stranger danger short

(28:36):
titled better Safe Than Sorry. I don't think I've seen.

Speaker 3 (28:40):
That one, but I probably not his best work.

Speaker 2 (28:43):
Probably not. I mean, you know, it's just how he
was getting started. But his first full length film followed.
It was nineteen eighty four Sole Survivor, about a woman
who cheats death and then death sends zombies after her.
I saw some people seem to not like it. Some
people it's pretty good, So I don't know. You can
see connections between that and this, And to a certain extent.

Speaker 3 (29:05):
It sounds like a more personified danger form of final
destination instead of just like bad luck coming. Yeah, yeah,
to get you. It's like literal zombies. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:16):
Yeah, that's my understanding, but I have not seen it.
I think it deaths in zombies after so Night of
the Comment was his follow up to that film, and
the success of Night of the Comet led to a
string of generally comedy films that he's doing. I mean,
I guess they maybe bleed over in other subgenres as well.
But you have nineteen eighty eights The Night Before that

(29:39):
has Keanu Reeves in it, nineteen eighty eight's Without a
Clue that is a Sherlock Holmes movie in which Watson
is the real detective behind a drunken Sherlock Holmes, with
Michael Kaine's playing Homes and Ben Kingsley playing Watson, which
is interesting because I think I may have seen this
ages ago and just have like zero memories of it.
But the casting there, you could imagine it being flipped

(30:02):
either way, Like Michael Caine and Ben Kingsley are eat
each more than capable of playing either the straight man
or the goofy character in this duo.

Speaker 3 (30:14):
So I like it.

Speaker 2 (30:15):
Oh, and then Paul Freeman is in that as Moriarty,
so it's a really good looking cast. Let's see. Other
pictures include eighty nine's Gross Anatomy with Matthew Modine, ninety
two's Captain Ron with Kurt Russell and Martin Short, and
some TV work followed as well. He also wrote the
nineteen ninety one movie All I Want for Christmas, and
he was one of the screenwriters on Honey, I Blew
Up the Kids in ninety two.

Speaker 3 (30:36):
I think he just blew up one kid?

Speaker 2 (30:38):
Was it just one kid?

Speaker 3 (30:39):
Just one kid?

Speaker 2 (30:40):
Honey I blew Up the Kid? And then if they
were to do an Alien style sequel, it would be Honey,
I Blew Up the Kids, and then that would have
been followed by Honey, I Blew Up even more Children.
I don't think the franchise went that far. All right,
let's let's talk about the actors here. We're gonna take
things in a different order than their build because because
as we've been saying, it's really the story of Reggie

(31:03):
and Samantha and Reggie. Regina Belmont is played by Catherine
Mary Stewart, Canadian actress who we've discussed on the show
before because her first big break was nineteen eighties The Apple,
in which she played Beebe. Do you remember Bebee?

Speaker 3 (31:19):
I think she's like the main girl and she there's
like the boy and the girl and they become stars,
and she.

Speaker 2 (31:24):
Is the Eve character in this there's a retelling of
the Garden of Eden, and she has a big me
Want Drugs song that she sings, well it's lip sync,
but the song is called Speed and she's singing about speed.

Speaker 3 (31:41):
The whole time. Drugs. Yeah, because hey, hey, hey, Bim's
on the way. I was just thinking about that the
other day.

Speaker 2 (31:48):
So yeah. The Apple and kind of a notorious mass
of a film, but also super goofy and fun. I
legitimately love it.

Speaker 3 (31:57):
And everyone should see The Apple.

Speaker 2 (31:58):
Everyone should see The Apple.

Speaker 3 (32:00):
You know.

Speaker 2 (32:01):
It has biblical power to it. But she was fun
in it, you know. She also did a nineteen eighty
movie called Powderheads. This is a Canadian ski comedy, and
she also had a tiny role as a salesgirl in
nineteen eighty one's Nighthawks, and then from eighty two to
eighty three, so just about a year, she did one
hundred and fifty episodes of Days of Our Lives, followed

(32:25):
by both this film, Night of the Comet and another
nineteen eighty four movie that we've also discussed on Weird
House Cinema. For the last Starfighter.

Speaker 3 (32:34):
That's a weird coincidence because in this movie, the character
of Reggie is obsessed with playing an arcade cabinet shoot
him up game called Tempest, And in the Last Starfighter,
the premise is not her character, but I think her
boyfriend's character is the main guy in that and the
premise of the movie is that he is accidentally trained

(32:56):
in interstellar space combat. Yeah, by playing an arcade game
that was put on Earth by an alien.

Speaker 2 (33:03):
Right, let's see. Subsequent films included the nineteen eighty six
Killer of Fembot TV movie Annihilator, the nineteen eighty seven
adaptation of George R. R. Martin's Night Flyers, eighty nine's Weekend
at Bernie's, nineteen ninety one's The Psychic, not to be
confused with the Ful She's seventy seven movie released under
the same name, and then many others as well. She

(33:25):
also pops up in two episodes of the nineteen nineties
Outer Limits series.

Speaker 3 (33:30):
You know, I've liked Catherine Mary Stewart in all the
films of hers we've covered, but this is I think,
hands down the best of the movies we've covered her in.
And she's also the best in it exactly. Yeah, yeah,
she's great in this. Her character is great.

Speaker 2 (33:45):
Like you know, in a bad movie, a talented performer,
they can still they can still shine through it. But
a movie like this, where everything else is like meeting
their abilities, it just amplifies how good they are. And so, yeah,
she's great here. No musical numbers, No, why isn't this
a Broadway musical?

Speaker 3 (34:05):
Though?

Speaker 2 (34:05):
This would be Oh, it's perfect. You can imagine exactly
where all the songs would go.

Speaker 3 (34:10):
I'm running through it in my head right now. It's amazing.
Oh can you imagine the song by the Raiders in
the Hall that would the villain song there? Yeah, absolutely,
it would be called I'm Not Crazy.

Speaker 2 (34:22):
Yeah, you have one about you know where they're looking
up to see the comment. That's a musical number.

Speaker 3 (34:27):
So totally.

Speaker 2 (34:28):
Yeah, surely somebody's working on this. But if they're not screenwriters, playwrights,
musical geniuses, get.

Speaker 3 (34:36):
On, hey, hey, hey, comments on the way exactly. Yeah,
but oh hey, but that's just one of the two
main sisters. The other one is Samantha played by Kelly Morony.

Speaker 2 (34:46):
That's right, Kelly Maroney, American actress who did three hundred
and nineteen episodes of the soap opera Ryan's Hope from
seventy nine through eighty two. Again, I'm just always impressed
by how many episodes of these soap operas they were
able to put out and brief amounts of time. And
she followed up with a supporting role in nineteen eighty
two's Fast Times at Ridgemont High and after Night of

(35:07):
the Comment, she returned to the Horror of the American
Shopping Mall for Weird House Cinema favorite Chopping Mall in
nineteen eighty six, in which she is the star.

Speaker 3 (35:17):
Oh okay, I knew she was in it, but I
forgot she was like the main game.

Speaker 2 (35:20):
She's caught build.

Speaker 3 (35:21):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (35:23):
Subsequent films include eighty six's The Zero Boys, eighty seven's
Big Bad Mama two, the nineteen eighty eight remake of
Not of This Earth that's the one that starred Tracy
Lord's And she's seemingly eased into the role of being
like a repeat genre film player and you know, so
cementing her legacy in genre films and like horror and

(35:44):
Horror Jason Cinema.

Speaker 3 (35:45):
I read what I thought was a really great interview
with Kelly Moroni from twenty twenty one on the horror
magazine website Bloody Disgusting by their writer Jason Jenkins. And
I thought it was great because she talks with real
fondness about making Night of the Comet. Though I think

(36:06):
a lot of the warm feelings she has about it
benefit especially from hindsight, because she says at the time
in the eighties, horror movies were considered like a star
power destroyer. The thinking was if you do horror films,
you will never have a successful mainstream career after that.

(36:26):
So she says she had agents begging her not to
take these roles in movies like Night of the Comet
and Chopping Mall, but her perspective was, basically, you know,
I'm not rich. I can't afford to just wait for
the perfect role in a drama or romantic comedy to
come by. I gotta pay rent this month, so hell, yes,
I'm doing Night of the Comet and Chopping Mall. And

(36:48):
so it started off like that. But these roles in
weird horror movies, she sort of says, would go on
to create such an enduring fan base, and they would
end up meaning so much more to people than she
ever expected. Especially Night of the Comet. She talks about
fans contacting her to tell her that, you know, like

(37:08):
thinking about her character in this movie helped them get
through bullying in high school or something. They'd think, how
would Sam deal with this? She wouldn't let it get
to her weirdly emotionally affecting. And I think this is
a common experience you read about from actors who worked
on some of these older cult genre films, weird genre
movies that at the time people were making them, they

(37:32):
might have enjoyed making, but they didn't expect these movies
to have any particular staying power. I think they thought,
you know, this is just a paycheck. I'm just cashing
a check and making some disposable, you know, weird horror movie.
And now these are the things with the most enduring
legacy in their whole filmography. It's the things like people
contact them to talk about.

Speaker 2 (37:52):
Yeah, I remember reading a similar thing about Tony Tony
lo Bianco, and God told me to like, he's the
lead in that. You know, it was a scrappy production
as well, with some definite guerrilla filming, and like he
was like, you know, he was just like laser focused
on continuing his career, doing the next project, the next project,

(38:13):
to the point where like there are scenes in that
where they just you know, it's like a stand in,
like he's not even in some of his characters scenes.
But you know, you know, looking back on it, you know,
he and others realized, like this is one of the
defining films of his career. You know, maybe not the
defining film, but for many especially you know, tied into
horror and weird cinema like this, this is what people

(38:33):
remember him most fondly for. Sometimes you only see that
in retrospect and you realize that that was my legacy
and I'm okay with it.

Speaker 3 (38:40):
But yeah, she seems very happy with it now. Yeah,
And it's just interesting how stuff that you don't realize, Yeah,
stuff you don't realize is going to be your legacy
becomes so important to people.

Speaker 2 (38:51):
Yeah, all right, So those are that's our are our
two stars, that's really our our our central protagonist and
her or you could look at it like they're both
our protagonists.

Speaker 3 (39:02):
I mean, you might say it's a three way protagonist
here sort of, because Hector is also a very important character.

Speaker 2 (39:08):
Hector is important. He's at least he's at least the
most important supporting character. Hector Gomez, played by Robert Beltran
top billing, but we did move him down a little
bit here since I feel like the girls are more important.
He's our hero, he's our love interest. He first hit

(39:28):
the big screen in nineteen eighty one zoot Suit. Not
a film I'm super familiar with, but all the posters
and images show Edward James almost like in a really
stylish zoot suit, So I'm already intrigued. Someone made a
film about zoot suits, or at least they use a
lot of zootsuits in them, I'm interested. But of course
he followed that up with the title role in Paul

(39:51):
Bartel's nineteen eighty two film Eating Raoul.

Speaker 3 (39:53):
He is Raoul in that picture.

Speaker 2 (39:55):
Yeah, He's done a lot of TV and film work
over the years, but Trek fan know him best as
Commander Chocote on Star Trek Voyager. As I mentioned before,
I'm more of a like next generation Deep Space nine,
and you know some of the films Trek fans, so
I never actually watched Voyager, so I'm not super familiar
with this character and only vaguely familiar with some of

(40:18):
the discussions around it, but I think everyone has at
least seen an image of him playing this character. He
has like a facial tattoo when he is in character
is Commander Chocote.

Speaker 3 (40:31):
M Yeah and yeah I like him in this movie.
He plays like a guy who you're not so sure
about it first, but he becomes very solidly likable and
does some great heroics in the end.

Speaker 2 (40:43):
Yeah, you think he might be a villain at first,
but then yeah, yeah, you go to Loven.

Speaker 3 (40:46):
Yeah, and there is a scene where there's like great
just ambiguity and moral peril in the movie. We're like, oh, no,
is he gonna have to like kill a zombie child?
But he manages not to. He just like escapes. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:03):
This film for the most part, doesn't go too hard
on anything. Let's see who else do we have? All Right,
we mentioned the girls. Their stepmother is Doris Doris Belmont,
and she's played by Sharon Ferrell, who with nineteen forty
through twenty twenty three. Her TV film credits and film
credits go back to the nineteen fifties, and her other

(41:24):
credits include nineteen seventy four's It's Alive, nineteen eighties out
of the Blue and the stunt Man same year eighty
seven's Can't Buy Me Love, Oh, in nineteen ninety three's Arcade.

Speaker 3 (41:36):
That's a movie we've talked about doing on the show
before a little. I'm a little conflicted on it. It's
like part of the part of the way it's really
funny and just a I don't know, zany cyber you know, mess.
But on the other hand, it's got some stuff in it.
This is just so distasteful. I don't know. I can't

(41:57):
but I don't know. Maybe one day I'll sort it
out and see if it's worth doing on the show.

Speaker 2 (42:01):
All right, Another fun little role in this as we
have Mary Warrenoff in this picture as well. Fun supporting
role for Weird House Cinema favorite here, who we previously
discussed because she's in both Chopping Mall and nineteen eighty
six is Terror Vision, and of course she was in
Eating Rival as well, which we have not watched for
Weird House Cinema. But I always enjoy Mary warrenof when

(42:24):
she shows up in something. She started out as a
Warhol superstar in the eighties. She acted in a ton
of B movies, especially Corman and Corman related pictures. She
also did a lot of TV and stage work, and
in this she played She has a real cool cucumber
in this, a member of the shadowy government think tank
that survives the apocalypse, but she has a memorable character

(42:45):
arc heure as well.

Speaker 3 (42:46):
Yeah, she's pretty spooky in this.

Speaker 2 (42:48):
I like her now. The head of the shadowy government
think tank and our primary antagonist is doctor Carter and
he's played by Jeffrey Lewis, who of nineteen thirty five
through twenty fifteen prolific American character actor with a great
face for playing heavies and also just kind of like
haunted figures. And I don't know about you, Joe, but

(43:09):
it's hard for me to think of another actor who
is as much of a that guy actor as this guy.
And that I see this guy's face, I realize I've
definitely seen him in multiple things. I note all of
the films and TV shows in his filmography that I
have definitely seen, and yet I still struggle to say
what his most defining roles are. I mean, no shade

(43:30):
on him, but I think it just comes down to
him being a familiar supporting face and a lot of
the films I grew up watching. So what are some
of those films? Well, his credits include seventy three's High Planes, Drifter,
seventy four'st Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, seventy eight's Every Which Way
But Lose a Grade eight Movie, seventy nine, Salem's Lot,

(43:50):
ninety two's of the lawnmower Man, and two thousand and
five's The Devil's Rejects. I'll also note that he has
a supporting role in Luccio Fulci's seventy eight Western Silver Saddle.
He plays a character named two Strike Snake.

Speaker 3 (44:04):
That's a good name.

Speaker 2 (44:05):
Yeah, And he appears in the nineteen seventy two Louisiana
were wolf movie I think a TV movie Moon of
the Wolf, which I'm very intrigued by. But I asked
Eden at New Orleans Future Shock Video what she thought
about this picture, because she has all these New Orleans
and Louisiana films in the shop. She warned that it
was a bit of a snoozer. But I don't know.

(44:27):
Look at that poster, Joe, it looks pretty good. I
trust her judgment. But the poster is selling me on
an exciting movie about an almost clown face to wear
a wolfman breaking through doors.

Speaker 3 (44:38):
Here's wolfy. I mean, yeah, it does recreate that shot
from the shining Otherwise, I don't know. This is one
where I might have to disagree Rob. I don't know
if this poster is selling me. The wolf looks too
clown shaped. Why does he have a clown nose?

Speaker 2 (44:52):
I don't know. But it's a weird poster. It draws
me in. But again, it's not supposed to actually be
that good. But none of this is on Jeffrey Lewis.
I think he's great here, playing ultimately a kind of
klos Kinsky looking villain, but without presumably anything even approaching
the disruption, chaos and misery of actually casting Kloskinsky in

(45:13):
your film.

Speaker 3 (45:13):
A kind of tense, touchy gray scientist in a jumpsuit
who's just sitting at the other end of the room
wearing sunglasses and pointedly asking you survey questions about medical history.

Speaker 2 (45:25):
Yeah yeah, Oh, and then we mentioned the Mall Pirates.
The leader of the Mall Pirates is a character named Willy.
We know his name is Willy because it says it
on his outfit and people call him Willy. But he's
played by Ivany Roth born nineteen fifty seven secondary human
antagonist to the Mall Gaunt, actor who wore a lot

(45:47):
of monster in zombie suits during his career apparently, but
also played gang members like this. His other films include
eighty six is three point fifteen, The Moment of Truth,
playing a character named Freak. He's a Knight of the
Creeps playing Psycho Zombie. He's an eighty seven's Blue Monkey,
credited as the creature. He's in eighty eight Dead Heat
credited as in Zombie, and he played the Mummy in

(46:09):
the nineteen ninety three Tales from the Crypt episode Creep Course,
which starred Jeffrey Jones and Anthony Michael Hall.

Speaker 3 (46:16):
He's got a very memorable line in this movie, which
unfortunately can't quote on the podcast here, but if you
look it up, it's one that people like, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
And then finally, the composer for this picture is David
Campbell born nineteen forty eight, Canadian American composer and conductor.
His scores include eighty three's All the Right Moves and
the nineteen seventy eight TV movie Puff the Magic Dragon.
This is not aligned with Disney. I think this is
some other project, but the project was nominated for an
Emmy at the time, but Campbell's perhaps far better known

(46:49):
as a conductor and arranger and an arranger and a musician.
He conducted or arranged on such big films as ninety
eight's Armageddon, two thousand and twos, Men in Black two,
two thousand and five, Broke Back Mountain, and many others.
He also guest conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the
Hollywood Bowl Orchestra for various collaborations with the likes of

(47:10):
Back and other big name artists, and he has various
string credits on a number of major albums, playing things
like the viola on everything from Jackson Brown self titled
nineteen seventy two album to Metallica's Death Magnetic album, two
recent works from Lady Gaga and many others. So he's
worked with a wide variety of artists, pretty impressive stuff.

(47:34):
As for his score here Electronic Score, I thought it
was terrific. Creates great atmosphere, whether that atmosphere is going
to be fun and sort of care free, or of
it's going to be a lot more tense and genre oriented.
And all of this is accompanied by some pretty great
nineteen eighties tracks. That help again place it firmly in
its time and cultural moment.

Speaker 3 (47:55):
The opening music style, like the music that's playing with
the credits really to me reminded me of John Carpenter,
not saying they're trying to ape his style or anything,
but there's some definite overlap, Like the ominous synth music
feels like a Carpenter score, especially once the characters in
the opening keep they're like focusing on the sky and

(48:17):
the impending comment because it reminded me of the vaguely
doom layden astronomical phenomena at the beginning of Prince of Darkness.

Speaker 2 (48:25):
Oh yeah, yeah, good connection.

Speaker 3 (48:36):
So do you want to talk about the plot now?

Speaker 2 (48:38):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (48:39):
Okay, Now, so on this movie, we're definitely not going
to do like a whole scene by scene recap like
we do with some films. Instead, I think we're going
to describe the opening and do a kind of very
sketchy summary of the rest and talk about some specifics
as they strike us. So we first pull up on
outer Space for the opening narration. The narrator says, since

(49:00):
before recorded time, it had swung through the universe in
an elliptical orbit so large that its very existence remained
a secret of time and space. But now, in the
last few years of the twentieth century, the visitor was returning.
And here's our reference to Christmas. Narrator says the citizens
of Earth would get an extra Christmas present this year

(49:23):
as their planet orbited through the tail of the comet.
Scientists predicted a light show of stellar proportions, something not
seen on Earth for sixty five million years, indeed not
since the time that the dinosaurs disappeared virtually overnight. And
while the narration plays, we see visions of Earth from space,

(49:44):
with a rusty red object flying close to the Earth.
And then we see something curious, a group of shadowy
human figures in gray jumpsuits gathering in the darkness of
a misty room. One of them presses a button to
close and seal a couple of heavy pneumatic doors. And
then the narrator says, there were a few who saw
this as more than just a coincidence, but most didn't.

Speaker 2 (50:08):
Who is this narrator? So many things? Is it?

Speaker 3 (50:11):
Don la fontaine?

Speaker 2 (50:13):
I don't fix that.

Speaker 3 (50:14):
And then we kept a party time like a happy
pop rock song comes on is called the song is
called the Whole World is celebrating that plays, and we
see these crowds gathered in the streets all over LA.
I wasn't able to determine how they filmed these shots.
I suspect they were I don't know, but I would
suspect they were using like footage of a natural gathering.

(50:35):
Maybe New Year's or something. I don't know, that's just
my guess. But yeah, people gathering in La, presumably all
over the world for these exuberant comet watching parties. People
are holding up iHeart Comet posters. They think the comet's
going to see that. You never know. Yeah, so, you know,
big masses of people. They're outside in the streets, young

(50:56):
couples kissing and dancing. Old people have got their binocular
and telescopes, and a lot of people are dressed up
in comment related gear. And then we see at the
marquee of a movie theater called the l Ray there
is an advertisement for midnight Comet show.

Speaker 2 (51:12):
That's right, Yeah, we have the actual exteriors of the
l Ray Theater and historic theater in the area.

Speaker 3 (51:18):
Next we go inside the movie theater where we're going
to meet one of our main characters. This is Regina
or Reggie played by Catherine Mary Stewart. Reggie works at
the theater, but when we first meet her, she is
ignoring her boss's pleas to get back on the job,
and she's concentrating fiercely on her high score at this
arcade cabinet in the lobby again. The game is called

(51:39):
Tempest I mentioned earlier. You know it's strange because she
was also in the Last Starfighter. Her manager Mel is
busy behind the counter hawking comet related merchandise. He's like
selling these headbands that have little alien, springy alien antenna
on him, and he's like, up.

Speaker 2 (51:56):
Sell teenagers on different models. You get this, but take
a look at this this way.

Speaker 3 (52:01):
I remember he's trying to sell one that has like
tinsel hair. He's like, look, blow on it, blowing the hair.
But after Regina earns a new high score at the game,
she enters her initials RG, or not her initials, but
I guess part of her name only too fine. To
her horror that one of her high score slots on

(52:22):
the machine is no longer occupied by her name. Somewhere
down the list, at sixth place, there is a d
MK instead of an RG, and this is hugely annoying
to her. She's supposed to own the entire machine.

Speaker 2 (52:35):
And this will actually be a I don't know if
it'll be important later on, but they will come back
to this.

Speaker 3 (52:40):
Yeah, So we learned that Reggie has been sort of
dating the projectionist at the movie theater, who's a boy
named Larry. Larry, we learned makes money by illegally lending
out film reels to geeks who want to make pirated copies.
So when we first meet him, he's on the phone
with a guy who wants to make a copy of
the theater's reel of it came from outer space in

(53:01):
three D, and they're negotiating a price, and Reggie wants
to spend the night with Larry instead of going home,
so she calls home to the house with an excuse
for her stepmom about like an astronomy field trip. It's
obviously made up, and her stepmom isn't buying it. I
guess we should explain the general situation. At the beginning

(53:22):
of the movie, Reggie, who is eighteen and a senior
in high school, and her sister Samantha, who is sixteen
and a junior, both live in a house in the
valley with their dad, who is never seen in the movie.
We're told he is a military officer who is busy
running secret wars in Central America, so he is not
home very much. And their stepmother, Doris, is presented as

(53:45):
a vain, mean spirited woman who is abusive to the
girls and unfaithful to their father.

Speaker 2 (53:51):
Yeah, so it's not a pleasant home life.

Speaker 3 (53:54):
Yeah. In the first scene we meet her, Samantha, she's
got an attitude. She's making smart ass comments to everybody.
She makes smart ass comments to Doris, and Doris reacts
by punching her in the face before going out to
the neighborhood comet party to watch the skies and canoodle
with a honky neighbor. So Reggie and sam are portrayed

(54:16):
as they're coming from a relatively affluent family, I think
at least upper middle class with material comforts, but also
enduring some harshness. There's clearly a deficit of love from
their parents, or at least their father's love seems to
come mainly in the form of weapons training and gifts
of firearms. There's a great scene later after everything goes

(54:40):
down where the girls are practicing shooting with I think
some mac tens that they found, and Sam is unimpressed
with the handling of the guns, and she's like, Daddy
would have gotten us Oozy's, which it's great. I think
I ever read that she improvised that line. Yeah, but anyway,
the night of the Comets Passage, Reggie spends the night

(55:01):
with Larry in the movie theater's projection booth, which their
careful dimension happens to be encased in steel. I think
they say that has to do with fire code. And
then the next morning, Larry goes out to follow up
on his film pirrating deal, but when he opens the
door to go outside, he is suddenly attacked and killed

(55:21):
by a zombie in a surprising and brutal scene. There's
just like a guy out there with a wrench who
just like whacks Larry and drags his body off.

Speaker 2 (55:29):
Yeah, yeah, he's gone. You're not sure if this character
is going to really stick around. But he does not
stick around. He is killed by a zombie with a wrench.

Speaker 3 (55:38):
After Reggie gets up, she takes a chance to replace
the DMK score on the arcade game with her rag,
and then she goes outside where she finds a very
strange scene. So these are some of my favorite parts
of the movie the parts where we get to see
these empty locations with these piles of clothes on the

(56:00):
street that are filled with red, rusty granular material or dust.
It's very rapture like scenario. You know, I actually don't
know if this was already a convention of depicting the
Christian rapture idea with like empty piles of clothes around,
this would show up in Christian movies later clothes.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
Yeah, oh so wait, you're telling me that that, like
fundamentalist Christian cinema is portraying people being called naked up
to heaven. Yeah. Yeah, I would have thought you would
wear your full clothes.

Speaker 3 (56:35):
Like some of these movies that they like, the rapture happens,
and then they're just empty clothes there. It's like, why
did my wife get raptured and I didn't?

Speaker 2 (56:46):
What are they? Are they raptured into new clothes? Are
they raptured into a smock or are they just showing
up in heaven naked?

Speaker 3 (56:53):
They probably get robes, i'd imagine, Yeah, they get supplied
with heavenly robes.

Speaker 2 (56:57):
Okay, that's just a guess, you know, with the sinful clothing, Well,
it takes some of the pressure off. You don't have
to worry about what you're wearing for when you get raptured,
because the clothing is going to stay here anyway.

Speaker 3 (57:08):
Yeah, yeah, but anyway, I don't know when that depictions started.
Maybe they got it from a night of the Commet.
Who knows. So Reggie here accidentally locks herself out of
the movie theater and the streets are totally deserted. She
doesn't know what's going on, and while she's looking around
in the alley beside the movie theater, she gets attacked

(57:29):
by the same zombie that killed Larry. But Reggie is
not helpless. Reggie is tough and she fights the zombie
off and escapes on a motorcycle.

Speaker 2 (57:41):
Yeah, it's really satisfying to see her whip some butt
here against the zombie. And you can definitely see, even
in this early scene like shades of like Buffy the
Vampire to come. Like I'm to understand Buffy the Vampire
was to some extent inspired by the characters we see
in this picture.

Speaker 3 (57:59):
I've read that too. Yeah, people say that that character
came in part from this. Do we want to do
a quick note on what the zombies in this movie
are like because they're different than your Romero's style zombies,
just you know, shambling, nonverbal brain eaters. The zombies in
Night of the Comet retain some intelligence. They sometimes retain

(58:22):
the ability to speak clearly, the ability to use tools.
They're smarter and more human than most of your movie zombies,
though it does seem their condition is progressive, so maybe
these abilities and human qualities disappear gradually over time. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:39):
Yeah, And it's very different from what we tend to
see in popular zombie media today, where you know, it's
like you're fighting through it and then there's a point
where you just cross over and now you're zombie. In
this film, there's kind of a phase in between where
you're not full zombie yet, but you're on your way
to full zombie. And yeah, I don't know if we

(59:00):
want to get into the actual explanation, I guess we
might as well.

Speaker 3 (59:04):
Let's do it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (59:05):
Yeah, we learn that what has happened is that somehow,
via science or magic, the trail of the comet that
Earth has passed through has kind of like infected or
influenced people's bodies, and if you were out there standing
under it, looking up well, you're just dust. Like seeing
the common in its full glory or absorbing its energy

(59:26):
just reduces you to this little pile of dust and
your assembled clothes on the ground. But if you had
varying degrees of protection in place, it's going to take longer.
Maybe you're going to start feeling dry skinned over the
next twenty four or forty eight hours, and eventually you're
going to begin to become this kind of zombie that

(59:49):
we've been discussing before, eventually turning into dust as well.
Are those the broad strokes of it forgetting a key
phase in it all?

Speaker 3 (59:57):
No, I think that's right. So, yeah, the zombieness comes
on gradually. And at some point people do they turn aggressive.
That seems to be a key characteristic of becoming a zombie.
You just sort of attack whoever's around you. But yeah,
you don't necessarily lose the ability to speak or to
operate tools or anything like that. Maybe you do eventually,

(01:00:20):
But the idea is eventually you will just die. You
will turn to dust. It will dehydrate your body, and
all that will be left is like the bone, you know,
the minerals from your bones, and they'll crumble into dusty
red dust.

Speaker 2 (01:00:32):
And it's one of the reasons too that so much
of the film in the daylight portions is shot with this.
I believe it is a graduated filter, so we have
like it's redder at the top, and then it fades
down becomes less red when you get closer to the
bottom of the screen. And so I don't know how

(01:00:54):
much of this is supposed to be like the influence
of the comets still in the atmosphere, or like literally
dust from human civilization that is reddening up the sky.

Speaker 3 (01:01:06):
No, I mean, I, oh, well, that's a good question. Yeah,
is that the comets tailor is a like dissolved people
now just like being blown in the wind. I don't
know which one of those it is that we do
see it. I think that the science of exactly what
is going to happen to people and how inevitable it
is that is called into question in the movie because

(01:01:28):
some of the scientists arrive at the conclusion that basically,
like we're all doomed, like there's no fixing it unless
we come up with a serum. How would they do that?
You know, that's something that's in the third act, But
their initial idea at least proposed by the scientists is
that there's no way to escape death unless we find
a cure for this. The ending of the movie to me,

(01:01:50):
seems to suggest the opposite, actually that once like the
rains come and wash away all the dust, that actually
being outside is okay, and like our main characters going
to be.

Speaker 2 (01:02:00):
All right, Yeah, we're not left with any hint that
our main character, I don't know. It's interesting to think
about because not to jump I guess we've already jumped
ahead here, but to jump ahead a considerable amount. We're
eventually going to arrive in a familiar place in a
film like this where a new nuclear family is assembled
out of survivors, but it feels very cheerful and happy

(01:02:23):
and content. Yes, in a way that may not be realistic,
but but yeah, there's no indication that all of these
people have like forty eight hours left to live. But
on the other side, like I don't know, maybe they do,
and maybe that's part of the message of the film.
It's like, maybe they don't have long to survive. There
is an expiration date on everything, but that's that's how

(01:02:45):
it is in real life too. There is an expiration
date on everything.

Speaker 3 (01:02:49):
You got to live, Yeah, you.

Speaker 2 (01:02:50):
Got to live. You know, death may be coming tomorrow,
the day after, twenty years from now, but you've got
to live in the time being. You're on the waiting list,
you've got to live in the time being.

Speaker 3 (01:03:00):
Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, at the part we left off
on in the plot, Reggie goes back home on this motorcycle.
Along the way, she's like noticing that everywhere around her
it's just devoid of people. Outside her house, the street

(01:03:23):
is still set up for the comet party that the
stepmom was going to, clothes and red dust piled up
in the streets everywhere. And then when Reggie goes inside,
at first you fear that Samantha is dead because everybody
else is dead. But Reggie actually finds her alive and well.
She explains that after her stepmom punched her, she fled
the house and spent the night in the garden shed,

(01:03:45):
which happens to be encased in steel. I was like,
I don't know about that, but okay, we'll roll with it.

Speaker 4 (01:03:52):
Love.

Speaker 2 (01:03:52):
This is such a great inversion because our two main
characters here, they were saved from supernatural death by sleeping
with the projectionist. Yeah, and the other by running away
from home. Yes, two things that in a you know,
in a different film, like a slasher film, those would
be like, oh, you're gonna die in the first.

Speaker 3 (01:04:10):
Act right now you have misbehaved and now you'll be punished.
But no, like we've said, our rule breakers here are
our heroes and their their craftiness is rewarded. So it
takes a little convincing. But but Reggie does make Sam
realize that their stepmom is dead and in fact everyone
is dead there. I mean it's a little morbid. As

(01:04:31):
I said earlier, like there's a dark sense of humor
in this movie that is not always sweet. Like they're
outside and they're like, it's Saturday morning, where are all
the kids? And so the idea is somehow the comet
has turned everyone into dust and they are the only
ones left until they until the radio is playing and

(01:04:54):
they realize it sounds like there's somebody at the radio
station talking into the micro And this part was a
little weird for me. I was like, oh boy, what
would this be, Like, you know, the end of the world,
and yet you're still getting new podcast episodes. Does that
make you think that somebody out there is recording them
they're still alive.

Speaker 2 (01:05:12):
No, it's just the AI generated podcast, that's all. And
that's basically what it's the nineteen eighties version of that answer.
They go to themo stylish eighties radio radio station you've
ever seen?

Speaker 3 (01:05:26):
I would love to work in this place?

Speaker 2 (01:05:27):
Yeah, yeah, it looks I mean, we work for a
radio company. I've seen radio studios before, you know, before
I worked for this company, and since working with this company,
they never look like this. This looks amazing. This is
like Neon everywhere and big black couches, and you know,
it looks like, yeah, it's it's decadent in eighties to

(01:05:48):
the extreme.

Speaker 3 (01:05:49):
It looks like a location you would go to in
grand theft auto vices.

Speaker 2 (01:05:53):
Yes, yes, oh my god, I've had the same thought,
in part because of its stylishness and also just the
reality of it, like this is a space that was
assembled in a virtual world. Yeah, and that like the
distances between things doesn't feel exactly right. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:06:09):
But while they're at the radio station hunting down this
living person and again they find that it's just a
pre taped show playing it's simulating a person being there,
they meet someone actually there is another survivor there. They're
meeting at first is tense because it's the guy Hector,
and he pulls a gun on them because he's not

(01:06:31):
sure that they are not zombies. But once he's you know,
made himself comfortable that they are human, they're not zombies,
they settle down. They get to know each other. Their
relationship is tense at first, I think because it started
at gunpoint, but they eventually realized. Both the sisters realize
Hector is a good guy and they like him. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:06:51):
We cook realized he had the gun on them because
he wanted to make sure that they were not becoming zombies.

Speaker 3 (01:06:57):
He wanted to see their eyes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like,
come into the light so I can see your eyes.
So they start to get to know each other. We
have a lot of scenes in the middle of the
movie here where the characters are they're sort of just
talking and figuring out what's going on, getting to know
each other. While Hector and Reggie are talking, Sam realizes

(01:07:17):
that nothing's stopping her from being the DJ of the
radio station, so she starts playing with the radio. She's like,
I'm the DJ now and talks into the microphone. She
like cranks all of the knobs up to maximum. I
don't know exactly what that would do, if that's like
blasting out radios that are left on around the city.
But somebody hears her because the phone lines start lighting up,

(01:07:41):
and we learn later that Sam has gotten a call
from people who identified themselves as part of a think
tank based in the desert. This is going to be
the Comet Research Group, a group that they say that
they're based out in the desert. And what do they
say to her That they're going to try to make contact,
or that they tell them to hold in place and
they will see them soon.

Speaker 2 (01:08:02):
Yeah, they're going to send a team and yeah, like
they position themselves as an authority, like someone who can
actually bring some level of salvation to the scenario.

Speaker 3 (01:08:14):
But then we see scenes of the scientists at this
secret underground facility and I don't know what's the gist
of what's going on there. Does when we actually see
the scientists behind the scenes, that sense of authority feels
a little shakier, like maybe they don't know exactly what's
going on and they are not in agreement about what

(01:08:34):
they should do.

Speaker 2 (01:08:35):
Yeah, yeah, we progressively see this. So first of all,
they have like this. I love how they realized like
the physical environment of their like vast underground base.

Speaker 3 (01:08:46):
It's more scrappy filmmaking techniques to put this together. There's
like a guy in the foreground, a silhouette of a
guard overneath this thing that you see. It's like this
maze of offices.

Speaker 2 (01:08:59):
Yeah, yeah, get sense of like a vast cavern and
in some great hallways, some great like sci fi bunker
hallways and lab rooms. But yeah, there is a sense
that I don't know, they don't really know how to respond,
and maybe they have some sort of protocol they're following,
but it is rapidly falling apart because we learned that

(01:09:19):
there's varying degrees of infection already among these survivors. They
are not immune to what's happening, and so they're running
against the clock trying to cure themselves. And some of
them think there is hope and others are convinced that
there is no hope.

Speaker 3 (01:09:35):
Yeah. Did you notice this thing about their logo, rob
They have a logo. The Comment Research Group has like
a you know, a graphic that's on all of their
stuff that is, if you zoom in on it, it's
a maze, a circular maze that cannot be solved. If
you look at the openings to the maze, the entrances
only lead to dead ends.

Speaker 2 (01:09:55):
That is a wonderful insight. I didn't pick up on
that when I watched the film. I loved the logo,
but I didn't realize that it was amazed without a solution, which, yeah, yeah,
I see it here, and that that is perfect because
they have all the seeming sophistication and secrecy, and they
have technology at their disposal, but there is no path

(01:10:16):
forward for them, and they're all, I think, realizing that
to some degree or another.

Speaker 3 (01:10:22):
Becoming increasingly desperate, and a division is breaking out between
them because of it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:28):
Yeah, and Mary Warreno's character, you know, we initially meet her,
she seems to be just another underling, Like she's kind
of scary. She's gone out to meet them at the
radio station. Eventually she's going to pull out a syringe
containing uh, you know, some sort of presumed presumably a poison,
and it's going to use it on Samantha and we're like,

(01:10:49):
oh man, she's just a cold assassin here. We learn
eventually that like she actually injected her with just a
sedative that she spared her, and then she turns on
her fellow think tank member who is like, hey, we
got to go on and do more murders because that's
what we were asked to do. And you know, she
also has a tragic trajectory. She ends up injecting herself

(01:11:12):
with the poison because she knows that she is gonna
she's going to dust out here pretty soon. She's going
to turn into a zombie, and she wants to save
herself from that fate, right.

Speaker 3 (01:11:22):
But I think she doesn't feel right in the end
euthanizing Samantha like she was supposed to, so she lets
her live. And then Samantha actually turns out to be okay, yeah,
which is which is a But they think that she's
sick because she's like itching, you know, and she tries
to explain to them. She's like, oh no, I always
get like this when I'm nervous. I get you know,
I get contact dermatitis when I you know, I've got anxiety.

(01:11:46):
And they're like, oh no, she's turning into comet dust. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:11:50):
Now, eventually the think Tank group, the Commic Research Group,
they are going to make off with Reggie and we're
going to end up having to you know, she's going
to have to escape and or be rescued. But in
the meantime, we do get the we do get the
trip to the mall, we get montage with shopping. Girls
just want to have fun, and that's really that's that's
some of the most fun in the film. That's a

(01:12:11):
very memorable sequence.

Speaker 3 (01:12:12):
I agree, let's talk about that stuff in the middle.
So one of the things in the middle is that
Hector has to leave them, Like Reggie and Hector are
clearly starting to fall in love, or at least you're
getting the sense that they may think, well, we better
fall in love.

Speaker 2 (01:12:26):
He's literally, as far as they know, the last man
on earth.

Speaker 3 (01:12:29):
Yeah, and they kind of fight over him a little bit,
but Reggie, but also I think Sam kind of accepts,
like she's upset, but she's like, yeah, Reggie and him,
or you know, she's like, why can't I find a guy?
They're all dust now. But so saying oh, when we
find out by the way, there's an explanation for why

(01:12:49):
Hector is still alive. He spent the night in the
steel enclosure in the back of the truck that he
drives during when the comet passed. But so Hector has
to go home because he has to go home and
check on his mom. And this is another scene that
I think really benefits from the Christmas setting because he
goes back to his house and it's all decorated for Christmas.

(01:13:12):
There's the Christmas tree and he you know, he doesn't
find his mom in the house, but he does. When
he's in there, he gets attacked by a child zombie,
which is like, oh, what's gonna happen to have to
happen here?

Speaker 4 (01:13:24):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:13:24):
Man? Before the zombie came out, there was one like
just a beautiful, little subtle moment that I really loved.
There are Christmas lights in the house in the living room,
and there's a part there where Hector reaches up. His
back's turned to the camera and he just reaches up
and he like pushes this this link to Christmas lights,
like up above the nail that's holding it up, just

(01:13:45):
like adjusts it, you know, lovingly, tenderly. And I don't
know that one little moment.

Speaker 4 (01:13:50):
Was just that.

Speaker 2 (01:13:50):
I thought that was so beautiful. I love it when
a film can have those those little treasures in there.

Speaker 3 (01:13:55):
Absolutely agree, I mean, this is such a little moment,
but it shows the way Hector cares that he hears
for his mom and he cares for Yeah, that he's
just fixing this thing even though it's the end of
the world. So so yeah, but Hector escapes, he escapes
the situation, and then we assume that he's going to
be on the way back to LA to meet back
up with Reggie and Sam. But in the meantime, Reggie

(01:14:19):
and Sam are left alone in La. You know, they're
having some you know, some trouble. Sam is having some
trouble dealing with the situation, and they end up deciding
to go shopping. And they're like, we can do anything
we want. Why don't we you know, let's get out
the credit cards and go shopping.

Speaker 2 (01:14:35):
Yeah, all the lights are still on. The tower never
goes off in this apocalypse, so yeah, go shop.

Speaker 3 (01:14:40):
Amazing. So girls just want to have fun plays and
they like go to the department store and they're getting
whatever clothes and stuff they want. Unfortunately, at the department
store there are some creeps busy turning into zombies. There
were some boys who I think they worked in the
like the loading dock below or something, and they must
have spent the night encased in steel, so they didn't

(01:15:02):
turn to dust. But now they're they're they're getting zombiefied
pretty fast. So there are these creepy guys who are pale,
wearing sunglasses inside and these strange suits. One guy has
a suit with his name on it. Says Willie, I think.

Speaker 2 (01:15:17):
Yeah, they really feel like gooms from a Batman movie.

Speaker 3 (01:15:21):
Yeah, like from the first Tim Burton Batman movie. They
feel like they would work for the Joker exactly. And
so there's a confrontation in the department store where Reggie
and Sam get into like a gun battle with these
guys and they they out with them. At one point,
Reggie Reggie outwits them by getting behind one of their

(01:15:42):
number and taking him hostage, but unfortunately she did not
anticipate how messed up they are, so they just like
shoot the guy of theirs who she took hostage. So
it's like okay, So Reggie and Sam get captured by
these guys and then they go on to like it
looks looks like it's gonna be curtain for them. They're
playing the guys playing some weird Russian roulette kind of

(01:16:03):
game with them, but at the last minute, the Comment
Research Group shows up and they blast the pirates the
creeps here, and this leads into the scenario we were
talking about earlier, where the sisters are split up. Reggie
is taken away to the Commet Research Groups headquarters. They
keep Sam behind for a bit. I don't remember what

(01:16:25):
explanation they give. I think it's that they need to
run some medical tests on her first, and then they're
going to bring her back. Actually their plan is just
to euthanize her, but then Mary Warrenov's character ends up
subverting this. Yes, so we don't know initially what happens

(01:16:50):
to Sam. We just follow Reggie as she goes back
to the headquarters to this underground bunker, and there we
see some other stuff. We see that they have collect
some other survivors, including a couple of children, and this
really ups the stakes of the movie because now there's
like even younger kids on hand, and suddenly it feels

(01:17:11):
more real. It's like, oh no, what's going to happen
to those kids? And it becomes clear that the scientists
at the Comment Research Group are not you know, they
don't have good intentions for these kids. What they're going
to do is they're going to steal all the blood
they can from the healthy people they have collected and
brought back, and they're going to use that to make

(01:17:31):
some kind of serum that will allow them to stave
off their own comet related disease.

Speaker 2 (01:17:38):
Yeah. Yeah, So it's it's a pretty dire situation here.

Speaker 3 (01:17:43):
And so there are some great scenes at the headquarters here.
Reggie has some real attitude when being interviewed by Jeffrey Lewis,
the main guy in charge here. But eventually she busts
out of her confinement and she plots an escape. She
you know, arms herself, she busts the kids out, and
then simultaneously, right.

Speaker 2 (01:18:04):
Before they could be gassed, because they were going to
gas the kids, and they're like, well, uh, they're asking
questions and like just just breathing and breathe the gas
and then when you wake up, you'll be with Santa Claus.

Speaker 3 (01:18:16):
Yeah. Oh, And one of the kids is like Santa
isn't real and then they're like be quiet and oh God.
It's horrible. But Reggie saves them, and at the same
time Sam and Hector arrive back on the scene. They
track her to the location of the research groups underground layer.
They approach under false pretenses. Hector is acting like a

(01:18:39):
I don't know he did branch. Yeah, but they sneak
in and they plant a bunch of dynamite and all that,
and they bust Reggie and the kids out. So there's
a big chase in confrontation at the end here, but
all of our heroes make it out all right. So
it is a strangely happy ending for this Annihilation film. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:18:58):
Yeah, again, we end with like the reassembly of a
nuclear family here, and it seems like certainly a Reggie
and Hector and the two kids who we've just met
are now happy or content like reassembled as a family.
Oh and then the one exception, of course, is that
Samantha is still a little disappointed that she doesn't have somebody,

(01:19:20):
you know, she really you know she we had that
great tearful scene earlier where she was, you know, bemoaning
the loss of her high school world like this, you know,
this this boy at her school that she was interested
in and sort of her her aspirations about bat scenario,
and it was all taken away from her. But there
is a fortunately, there is someone out there for her,

(01:19:42):
and it brings us back to that score on the
video game.

Speaker 3 (01:19:45):
That's right. So a guy pulls up in a car
and they're like, who are you. He's like, well, I
survived this whole thing. And he's a cute boy. And
she and Samantha is clearly interested in him. And he
introduces himself. I don't remember what he says. His name is,
but Danny Mason Keener, Danny Mason Keener, d m K.
And it should ring a bell for Reggie. But Reggie

(01:20:08):
and Hector get to be happy. And the end, Sam
hops into this new guy's car. They're gonna ride off
and you know, I guess cruise around in Venice Beach
or something. I don't know, what do you what do
you do? Where do you cruise around anywhere you want?

Speaker 2 (01:20:20):
Really?

Speaker 3 (01:20:21):
I guess so, And uh, yeah, they're they're gonna they're
gonna go to the beach. They're gonna go to the mall.
I'm sure they'll go to the Sherman Oaks Galleria probably. Yeah,
they're they're gonna have a great time at the end
of the world.

Speaker 2 (01:20:35):
Yeah. The movie doesn't ask hard questions at at the end.
It is just more about the feeling that you know
a lot of terrible things have happened. Uh, but it's
gonna be all right because we have each other, and
you know, presented as it is in the movie, you
accept that it absolutely works. It doesn't feel like a
cop out, It doesn't feel too hammy. They I feel
like they really did strike the right note.

Speaker 3 (01:20:56):
Any other things you want to talk about?

Speaker 2 (01:20:57):
Oh, I do want to go back to one scene
and partic This occurs early earlier in the picture, but
after the apocalypse has hit, and it concerns this sequence
where Samantha takes off in a car and she's driving
and then two cops pull up behind her and they
pull her over, and then you know, she thinks she's

(01:21:19):
gonna maybe talk her way out of this. She's drinking
beer in this as well. She's drinking beer or drunk
while driving.

Speaker 3 (01:21:25):
But also, isn't everybody gone.

Speaker 2 (01:21:27):
Well, everybody's gone, like with these police officers that have
pulled her over, and then they look into the car
and we see that they are zombie police officers and
she wakes up screaming yeah. And then she goes to
a mirror and she like strips down to her underwear
and really one of the like the only scene that
in the picture that feels like maybe it's getting into

(01:21:48):
the mail gaze a bit more and is more in
keeping with some of the cinema of its time. But
then a zombie walks up behind her and then she
wakes up again. So this movie dares to give us
like the double dream fake.

Speaker 3 (01:22:02):
Out which double dream boo, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:22:05):
Which made me laugh, is a little It was a
little gimmicky, but it was fun gimmicky and those cops
were really scary.

Speaker 3 (01:22:11):
Yes they were. Yeah, hats off to that. The double
dream boo got me. I was like, surely the second
one is real.

Speaker 2 (01:22:19):
Yeah, yeah, but no, it was a dream as well.
I guess that maybe, you know, trying to understand what
this scene meant. I think the idea is that she
was coming to realize the true import of what had
happened and what was still happening in the world, and
it's like the reality and death and horror has kind
of like exposed her. And maybe that's why you know,
she has she's taken some of her clothing off. I

(01:22:41):
think maybe that's what the filmmakers are trying to get
across here.

Speaker 3 (01:22:44):
She well, I think it's after this scene that we
see her really starting to kind of struggle with the
situation because a lot, as we were talking about earlier,
a lot of their attitude throughout this is not taking
it too hard, like they deal with it fairly resiliently
of the time.

Speaker 2 (01:23:01):
Yeah, there's a scene just before this, I think, where
where Hector is talking to Reggie and it's like pointing out, like, hey,
your sister's doing really well. It's like she's taking it
much better than you are, and Reggie's like, well, that's
because she doesn't know what's going on, Like she hasn't
really come to terms with what's happened. Yeah, so I
think this scene is about like her actually beginning to
realize and waking up to what has occurred.

Speaker 3 (01:23:23):
Have you ever played the Tempest arcade game.

Speaker 2 (01:23:26):
I don't think I have. I looked at it like
a lot of games from this era. You know, I
totally understand that this was the cutting edge, and you know,
it's probably quite addictive, but yeah, it looks really hard.
It looks like I'm just setting myself up for failure
if I tried to play something like this.

Speaker 3 (01:23:42):
I think the wiki page on it called it a
tube shooter. I've never even heard that term before. I
don't know what that means.

Speaker 2 (01:23:48):
Hmm, yeah, I guess I can guess based on the
footage that they showed. I can see it. It's like
you're you're kind of in a tube. It's kind of
like Star Wars, right, You're in that trench, moving forward,
shooting at things. I guess like that. Anyone out there
who's more familiar with games, the games of this era,
maybe you've played them in the arcade originally, or you've
played some of the surviving machines, you know, right in,

(01:24:10):
let us know your thoughts on it. I guess there
are also a lot of clones and emulations out there
as well.

Speaker 3 (01:24:15):
Yeah. Wait, this just made me realize was there ever
a Night of the Comet officially licensed video game?

Speaker 2 (01:24:24):
Surely not right now?

Speaker 3 (01:24:26):
Looks like no.

Speaker 2 (01:24:29):
Would have made for a good pinball machine, I think.

Speaker 3 (01:24:33):
Yeah, absolutely, Okay, does that do it for a Night
of the Comet? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:24:37):
I believe that does it. We're going to go ahead
and shut the book here on Night of the Comet.
But yeah, this was a really fun one. Glad I
finally got around to watching it. I'm gonna have to
add it to the Christmas tradition now just a reminder
for everyone out there that's Stuff to Blow Your Mind
is primarily a science and culture podcast with corpses on
Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside most

(01:24:58):
serious concerns and just talk about a weird film on
Weird House Cinema and if you would like to, let's see.
If you're on letterbox dot com, you can look us up.
We're Weird House on that platform and we have a
nice list of all the films we've covered over the years,
and sometimes a peek ahead at what comes up next.

Speaker 3 (01:25:12):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with a feedback on this episode or any other, to
suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:25:33):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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