(1984) With "eleven more shopping days to Christmas," while nearly everyone in LA parties outside at midnight for the anticipated comet display - "not since the time that the dinosaurs disappeared virtually overnight" - a few fortunate individuals remain indoors under the protective shelter of steel. Eighteen-year-old theater usher Regina Belmont (Catherine Mary Stewart) spends the night with Larry inside the projection room; her younger sister Samantha (Kelli Maroney) runs away from home after her stepmother Doris strikes her, sleeping inside a lawn-storage shed.

On Saturday morning they awake to find the city all but deserted, only clothing and calcium dust left of the inhabitants; a few zombies prowl in search of victims. "What is this," says Regina to a ghoulish creature who'd just killed Larry, demonstrating her martial-arts moves, "trick or treat?"

Director/writer Thom Eberhardt's tongue-in-cheek sci-fi thriller smirks through its mask of horror all the way to its campy conclusion. "Wait till Daddy hears about …," begins Samantha, wearing her pep-rally outfit, before she realizes what's happened to everyone else.

The two teenagers with their Farrah Fawcett hair and expert training from their father (last heard from fighting Sandinistas down in Honduras) in the use of assault weapons drive over to the radio station, only to find the operations completely automated; but another human being on the premises, a truck driver from San Diego, aims a pistol at them. "Do you get a lot of dates this way?" inquires Sam of Hector Gomez (Robert Beltran).

Pretending to be a DJ, Sam gets a phone call from someone in a research facility located in the desert with a warning to stay off the streets at night. When Hector departs to see what's become of his family to the south, promising Regina to return, Sam turns jealous of her sister's once again swiping the only available guy: "What if Hector's gay?" To Regina's reply that Hector didn't take advantage of her: "So that means that the last guy on Earth is either a gentleman or a fag. I mean, what are the odds, in LA?"

To the tune of "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," Regina declares: "The stores are open!" Inside the department store as they're trying on clothes and jewelry, a voice comes over the PA system: "Attention shoppers …" What were formerly stock boys have taken over and dislike intruders, showing their displeasure by shooting at the girls, who throw shoes and shoot back. Then the boys get very nasty.

Audrey (Mary Woronov), having expressed her disinclination toward any attempt at rescuing survivors, and another scientist from the research facility helicopter into the city in search of survivors, needing blood from individuals who haven't been exposed to the comet's radiation to develop a serum to counteract the "disintegration factor."

A pair of children brought from elsewhere take notice of Regina, with the boy saying, "Neat girl," and the girl replying: "If you like the type." A female technician remarks to her partner about Regina: "What I'd give to have hair like that."

Just in time, Santa Claus arrives for Regina, and while Sam - regarding her sister with Hector and the two kids, "They look like the Brady Bunch," and thinking, "Maybe I could be a nun or something" - disobeys the rule about crossing the street against the light, DMK makes his appearance.

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Copyright © 2010 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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