This was not planned!
I had another idea I was planning on doing but I basically missed the entire first day to get started on it (aka Monday, went out for 3 hours to do errands and got exhausted) and with Tuesday, I know I don’t have enough time to research and go looking through so maybe next month for that particular topic.
In the meantime, I did manage to watch a couple of movies over the weekend that were on my watchlist for A WHILE.
A big shout out to In Search of Darkness documentary for bringing these two movies in my direction because I did enjoy these, one more than the other but spoilers beware? I’ll be discussing The Boogens (1981) and Night of the Comet (1984) in a double feature review! I have done something like this before and if you’re interested in that, you can click here.
Let’s start the reviews!
The Boogens (1981) I watched Thursday because I needed to do my hair and I just needed a movie on to watch. I had a bit of a hiccup scene/loading when it came to one of the main characters’ deaths so it was frozen but the audio kept going so all I heard was crashing and female screams and it was kind of terrifying on its own! 
The premise is quite simple: a mining town decides to reopen shaft mines, with the past history of past miners being trapped, lost and “mysteriously disappeared” AKA creatures are lurking in the mines and now that the shafts are uncovered, they are back!
What I liked were TIGER, this cute bichon frise dog throughout the movie, I WOULD DIE FOR TIGER. I also liked the isolation of the story, we’re dealing with snow, ice and a small mining town, very much My Bloody Valentine. I also liked most of the characters, even though some got annoying at times, they didn’t hinder the overall enjoyment of the movie for me. And I also liked a good amount of the gore and special effects. And speaking of the special effects, the boogens, they look turtle-like, I kept thinking of Yoshi from Super Mario but they were not cute but have these big glossy almost stuffed animal looking eyes.
What I didn’t like was there were some slow moments. It felt like the moment did a lot of cutting back and forth which threw me off a bit. It’s a pretty average creature feature horror movie, nothing too special but I haven’t seen anything like the actual boogens creature before, that was new.
I gave The Boogens as a 3 out of 5 on Letterboxd and it stars Rebecca Balding, Fred McCarren, Anne-Marie Martin, Jeff Harlan, John Crawford, Med Flory, Jon Lormer, Scott Wilkinson and directed by James L. Conway.
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Up next is 1984’s Night of the Comet!
I had so much fun with this with little information to go off of besides the premise. And the premise is that the entire world is waiting with a comet that is coming and everyone is waiting and watching. This reminds me of the eclipse that just happened a couple of weeks ago (I live in Indiana so we were in a highway spot to experience a blackout). The downside is that the comet wiped out anyone and everyone who was outside (of a protective ”steel” material) so we are following two survivors, sisters, Reggie and Sam as they navigate an empty but unsafe California.
Oh there are also zombie mutants around as well! 
Reggie is a bad-ass of a female character. She doesn’t take any crap, she stands up for herself and her sister and she asks a lot of questions that in particular situations, you’d hope someone would ask. And Sam, the youngest of the two, is bubbly, sassy, also strong in a manner of “you’re not going to talk to me or my sister in ANY kind of way”. And I love her cheerleading outfit, I’m obsessed with it!
Some highlights for me are the sisterly bond between Reggie and Sam. I think they represent a good healthy sibling bond of I will fight you when necessary, I will push your buttons but I love you and I have your back, haha. I also liked the weird reddish gradient that’s present throughout the whole movie which looks like permanent sunsetting. I also liked the other main character Hector and his dynamic with Reggie and Sam and you can definitely tell there’s a difference in chemistry! The biggest thing I appreciated was that it was quintessentially 80s. And it had the fun part of the 80s present while giving us some serious, ominous moments towards the middle to latter half of the film.
I gave Night of the Comet a 4 out of 5 and it’s currently on the Roku channel under retro horror. It stars Robert Beltran, Catherine Mary Stewart, Kelli Maroney, Sharon Farrell, Mary Woronov, Geoffrey Lewis and directed by Thom Eberhardt.
Both of these movies and more are on my Letterboxd so if you are using that app, follow me there! Feel free to follow here as well, we’d love to have you!
Have you seen The Boogens or Night of the Comet? Leave a comment below and let me know what you think!
Shots of Horror 
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