| Science Fiction | MPAA:PG |
Is there something I'm missing? Why is it, if an actress is young, and has Mary in her name, she uses all three of her names as her stage name i.e. Mary Louise Parker, Mary Stuart Masterson, Mary Elizabeth Mastrontonio, Mary Page Keller (not a big movie star, but she was in several TV shows I used to watch), and one of the stars of this film, Catherine Mary Stewart? Is it a Catholic thing again?
Anyway (nice segue huh?), in Night Of The Comet, Cathy plays the older of two sisters (the other being Kelli Moroney, the goodie two shoes cheerleader in Fast Times at Ridgemont High) who don't get along with their new step-mom (Sharon Ferrell). As for the rest of the world, they're all waiting for the arrival of a long lost comet, one that hasn't been around since the days of the dinosaurs. And wouldn't you know it, on the night of the biggest celestial event to ever happen, neither one of them can see it. Kelli caused problems for mom, and got banished to her room, and Cathy had to work (she works at a movie theater). Kelli, in an attempt to be rebellious, sneaks out of her room and spends the night in the yard shed, and Cathy is bopping the projectionist in the projector booth, and neither of them see the comet. This turns out to be a good thing though, because anyone who saw the comet is now a small pile of dust (and you thought the bug in The Stand was deadly). Even worse, people who didn't see the comet, but weren't in metal rooms, are turning into dust very slowly, going quite mad, and killing anyone normal they come in contact with. Cathy (normal because the projector booth was lined with metal as a fire precaution) and Kelli (normal because the yard shed was one of those prefab metal jobs) don't know this yet, they're still trying to figure out what happened, and where everyone is. They turn on the radio, and hear a station still on the air, and head for it. Turns out the station was a robot radio setup, so the girls take it over. One of their listeners turns out to be Robert Beltran. Bob was cast because he looked like a young Eric Estrada at the time (and probably was cheaper than the real Eric), and though he's currently 75,000 light years away from Earth on the show Star Trek Voyager: Lost in Space, he was alive then because he had spent the night in the sleeper of his semi (and no, he didn't have little lines drawn on his forehead back then). He goes to see if his family survived, while the girls go to the mall to play. While there, they meet the stock-boys, who didn't get to see the comet, but didn't spend the night in metal either. They hunt the girls down and capture them. While thinking of gross and disgusting ways to kill the girls, a group of apocalyptic scientists come on the scene, rescue the girls, and kill the bad guys. See, they were listening to radio station KELLi also, and had a pretty good idea where the girls were. The scientists are not so great as they seem though. They knew the comet was bad news, and had built a secret lab deep underground. Unfortunately they goofed, and were exposed to the comet anyway. So their leaders, Geoffrey Lewis and Mary Woronov (I guess she doesn't have a middle name) are looking for healthy people in an attempt to make a cure for the comet before they die. Problem is, the cure isn't helping the sick people, and it's killing the healthy ones they bring down. Mary feels guilty about this and secretly arranges to let Kelli go, but Cathy gets hauled out to the desert to be a guinea pig. Mary tells Bob what's going on, just before she does herself in, and Bob and Kelli go out to the desert to rescue Cathy, who has found two kids, and has made most of an escape already. They blow up the lab and the lunatics, and head back to the city, where they all eventually end up Happy ever after .. at least until the power runs down, someone gets sick, the food starts spoiling........
This movie is similar to Stephen King's The Stand, only a lot shorter, and without the morality tale mixed in. When I first saw this (at an actual theater I might add), the only player I knew was Cathy, who had left The Days Of Our Lives (where (I think) she played a nurse, and therefore much older than the parts she played in her early film roles), to start a wildly successful film career (she was also in The Last Starfighter, but I don't know of anything else). The film is fun (and if you look real close you can see a poster for Mary Woronov's other movie at the theater), and worth giving a shot, unless post apocalyptic films aren't your cup of tea.