The weeks leading up to Christmas are a time for us to indulge in all of our occasion-appropriate pop culture favorites, whether it’s your annual family rewatch of It’s a Wonderful Life or the regular argument over whether Die Hard counts as a Christmas movie. There are also plenty of underseen holiday movies that will bring a sparkle to your time off in between turkey sandwiches, and one such film, which influenced the creation of one of sci-fi’s greatest heroines, is celebrating its 40th birthday today.
1984's Night of the Comet follows Regina "Reggie" Belmont, a bored teen working at a movie theater whose main concerns in life are hanging out with her projectionist boyfriend Larry and getting the high score on the local Tempest arcade cabinet. Her younger sister, Sam, has fallen out with her stepmother and spends the night sleeping in the steel shed in the backyard. Then things escalate a little further when Earth passes through the tail of a comet and almost everyone on the planet dies. The few survivors are Reggie, Sam, a man named Hector, and some murderous zombies. Yes, it’s a Christmas movie.
