The Iron Giant

“So we have to deal with our technological sophistication versus our spiritual sophistication — and technology always seems to be ahead of where we are spiritually. The machine in the movie ends up representing our own inventive side of ourselves and begs the question: Is it a good thing or is it a dangerous thing?” – Brad Bird

When The Iron Giant was released in 1999, it flew in the face of the current trend popularized by Disney animated musicals. Based on the 1968 children’s book, The Giant: A Story in Five Nights, by late British poet, Ted Hughes, The Iron Giant refuses to rely on musical numbers and simplify its message to appeal to kids. It is one of those rare animated films that both adults and kids can appreciate. It is also a nostalgic ode to the 1950s that is thought-provoking and entertaining.

Set in the small town of Rockwell, Maine in 1957, a nine-year old boy named Hogarth (the voice of Eli Marienthal) befriends a mysterious 50-foot robot (the voice of Vin Diesel) that has crash-landed near the town from outer space. Raised on steady diet of alien invasion B-movies, Hogarth tries his best to hide the presence of his large, metallic friend from his mother (voiced by Jennifer Aniston). He also keeps his new friend a secret from a snooping government agent (voiced by Christopher McDonald), but ends up sharing his secret with Dean, a jazz-loving beatnik sculptor (the voice of Harry Connick, Jr.), who runs the local scrapyard.

The film originated with Pete Townshend (guitarist for the legendary rock band, The Who) who had produced a musical version of Hughes’ book in 1993, called The Iron Man. He brought the project to Warner Brothers with Des McAnuff, director of Tommy (1975), with the idea of transforming it into an animated musical. Animator Brad Bird heard of the project and met with Townsend and the film’s screenwriter, Tim McCanlies. Bird remembers, “I read the book and I liked the book, but I had a whole lot of ideas of my own about what this film could be about. Once it sort of went that direction, I didn’t envision it as a musical.” Bird pitched his take on the material to the studio as follows: “What if a gun had a soul?” Warner Brothers liked the idea and gave the project the go-ahead.

Bird drew his inspirations for the look and feel of the film from two unlikely sources. He was inspired by the cliched and dated educational films depicted in the documentary, The Atomic Café (1982) about the Cold War and the threat of nuclear war in the ‘50s. He also liked the radio broadcast about Sputnik that opens Robert Redford’s film, Quiz Show (1994). Bird said in an interview that “the bomb had changed our perspective and the future was no longer this perfect thing. Every upside had a dark underbelly.”

In many respects, The Iron Giant has a lot in common with another excellent film that came out around the same time, October Sky (1999). Both films are set in the same year (1957) with the beginnings of the space race and the dawn of the atomic age as their respective backdrops to the main action. The young protagonists of each film are dreamers and outsiders of their societies and present refreshingly peaceful resolutions to their respective conflicts.

To further reinforce the ‘50s vibe, Bird shot the film in Cinemascope, a widescreen form of cinema that was created to compete with the rising popularity of television. Bird said in an interview that, “There’s something immersive about the experience. Also, a lot of movies in the late ‘50s were shot in ‘Scope, so I thought it was appropriate for a movie set in 1957.”

The Iron Giant has a wonderfully nostalgic, small-town atmosphere that is brought to life by stunning animation that is on par with anything that Disney has produced in recent years. The attention to period detail, from the cheesy educational videos that Hogarth's class is forced to watch, to the way the townspeople talk, is faithfully recreated and goes a long way to drawing the viewer into this engaging world.

The animation style of this film recalls the early, groundbreaking Fleischer brothers” Superman cartoons of the 1940s with its depth of field, but without the German Expressionist influence. Bird and his team mixed computer animation (the robot) with traditional hand-drawn animation (the rest of the characters) in an exaggerated, cartoonish fashion that went against the current trend of realistically rendered characters (see Pixar). For Bird, “the reason to do animation is caricature. It’s the same reason that photography didn’t render portraiture obsolete. It’s because you can draw things in a way that is not trying to reproduce reality, but more the essence of reality.”

The real strength of The Iron Giant is the relationships between the characters — something that is often overlooked in animated films in favor of flashy visuals and epic musical numbers. This film has the feel of a very intimate, character-driven story with the relationship between Hogarth and his robot friend as the emotional center but with several other relationships (like the ones between Hogarth and his mother and between him and Dean) featured prominently as well. This is no simple Saturday morning cartoon but a strong feature film that actually has something to say.

The Iron Giant enjoyed positive reviews from most critics. Roger Ebert gave it three-and-a-half out of four stars and felt that it wasn’t merely “a cute romp but an involving story that has something to say.” In his review for The New York Times, Lawrence van Gelder wrote, “Many adults, including parents eager to have their children absorb lessons about the perils of guns and the merits of peace and tolerance, will doubtless approve of the film's messages while they ponder how the passing years have smoothed the jagged edges of history.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film an “A-“ rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “At times, The Iron Giant is more serene than it needs to be, but it's a lovely and touching daydream.” The Village Voice’s J. Hoberman wrote, “The music doesn't flood the script with sentiment or canned nostalgia, and the movie is even restrained in its toilet jokes. Remarkably unassuming, genuinely playful, and superbly executed, The Iron Giant towers over the cartoon landscape.” In his review for the Chicago Reader, Jonathan Rosenbaum praised the film’s “flavorsome period ambience and its lively and satiric characters.”

The Iron Giant did not do as well at the box office as Bird had hoped. Traditionally, animated films set promotional deals a year in advance so that the appropriate amount of hype and advanced word can be created. Warner Brothers delayed giving the film a release date and so every time Bird courted a potential sponsor, they would lose interest because no concrete date was set. Very few advanced posters and trailers were created and this hurt the film when it was finally released. It only grossed $23 million but has since found a new life on video and DVD.

The Iron Giant is one of those rare animated films that not only appeals to both children and adults; it does not contain one annoying musical number. It is also refuses to serve as one long, obvious advertisement for a toy. In fact, this film is an entertaining, even touching story about tolerance and compassion. It deals with real issues like death and bigotry — pretty heavy topics for a children's animated film — in an honest and heartfelt way. From all indications, The Iron Giant was clearly a labor of love for those involved and this translates into an enjoyable film for everyone to enjoy.

Raising Arizona

"Every time I put on a lens, Joel and Ethan would ask, 'Does it look wacky enough?'"

– Barry Sonnenfeld, cinematographer, Raising Arizona

The Coen brothers have an incredible knack for creating rich, detailed films with snappy dialogue and little nuances that make them a real joy to watch. Raising Arizona (1987) is no exception. Fresh from their independent success with Blood Simple (1984), the Coens shifted gears rather dramatically, going from a straight-faced thriller to this gonzo screwball comedy about southern white trash and child rearing. Inspired by the writings of William Wordsworth and the films of Preston Sturges, Raising Arizona was made with four times the budget of Blood Simple and released by a major studio, but under the protective eye of Ben Barenholtz, an unsung hero of American independent cinema (responsible for getting David Lynch’s Eraserhead distributed), which allowed the Coens control over their film.

Considered by the Coen brothers to be the second part of their “hayseed trilogy," Raising Arizona follows the misadventures of H.I. ("Call me, 'Hi.'") McDunnough (Nicolas Cage), an inept, but well meaning hillbilly fugitive with a habit of robbing convenience stores and getting caught, each time being sent back to the same prison. He is booked again and again by a female police officer named Ed ("Short for Edwina."), whom he eventually falls in love with, and marries once he is finished his last prison term. H.I. gets a boring 9 to 5 job at Hudsucker Industries, which is a clever little nod to their future film, The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), written by the Coens with long time friend Sam Raimi. This was the first time that the Coens alluded to a future project. They would do this again in Miller's Crossing (1990), by calling the building that the main character, Tom Reagan lived in the Barton Arms, a reference to their next film, Barton Fink (1991).

H.I. wisely observes that his job isn't much different from prison, except for the paycheck at the end of every week, and tries to settle down to calm, suburban life, "the salad days," as he calls them. Ed (Holly Hunter) wants to have a baby, but as the couple find out, "her insides were a rocky place where my seeds could find no purchase," and so they decide to steal one of the famous Arizona quintuplets: five babies belonging to local unpainted furniture king, Nathan Arizona (Trey Wilson). And so begins a grand adventure that has the babysnatchers cross paths with two dimwitted escaped convicts ("We felt the institution no longer had anything to offer us.") who are just too stupid to ever pull off a really successful heist, and a vicious mercenary, Leonard Smalls ("Friends call me, 'Lenny,' but I got no friends.") who looks like a reject out of The Road Warrior (1981), a biker from hell interested in retrieving the baby at all costs.

The Coens keep things brisk and fast paced, with the occasional calm interlude. In most respects the film is akin to a Road Runner cartoon on fast forward with its wild, how-did-they-do-that camera angles and cheery, hillbilly banjo music (courtesy of long-time collaborator Carter Burwell) forever playing in the background. Perhaps the best example of this technique is the exhilarating pursuit for a package of Huggies. What could have been a simple, mundane task of picking up some diapers is raised to a mock epic level as H.I. frantically tries to elude the initial clerk he robbed, the cops who are now in gun-blazing pursuit, the neighborhood dogs he disturbed, and a burly manager of the supermarket he entered in attempt to lose this large group. The Coens use quick cuts and several clever point-of-view shots to set a frenetic pace that never relents until the chase is over. They also mix in some quirky dialogue and the catchy music, complete with yodeling for good effect. In addition, there are little touches here and there that add to chase. For example, when H.I. enters the supermarket the chase music switches to a muzak version of the same banjo music to fit in with, and poke fun at the stereotype of grocery stores. It is these nuances and attention to detail, plus the innovative camera angles, that elevate this film above your average comedy.

Stylistically, Raising Arizona can be seen as an homage, of sorts, to the films of their long-time friend, Sam Raimi. For example, the Coen brothers applied his most famous technique – the “Shakycam,” a camera nailed to a plank, which is then carried by two people who run as fast as they can with it. This produces a jarring effect where you feel like you a part of the action and it was put to good use throughout the film, This worried the studio who debated selling public shares in the film after seeing dailies. Where Raimi’s films are often criticized for merely being exercises in breathtaking camera techniques and flashy style, the Coens also include insanely quotable dialogue (the kind of which cult films are made of), a strong plot, and colorful, memorable characters. Raising Arizona showed that the Coens had clearly surpassed their mentor.

The crowning touch of Raising Arizona is its excellent cast. With his out of control, Woody Woodpecker hairdo, huge side burns, and cheesy mustache, Nicolas Cage is the epitome of southern white trash. He makes H.I. a comic, yet tragic figure wrestling with his own inner demons. He wants to lead a good life, but the lure of robbing convenience stores seems too strong to resist. Holly Hunter plays Ed with a ton of spunky charm, complete with the thickest southern accent of any of the characters as the finishing touch. The way she delivers some of her lines, you almost need subtitles as her accent is so thick. The Coens are clearly poking fun at the stereotype of such accents. John Goodman and William Forsythe, as the two escaped convicts Gale and Evelle, almost steal the film from Cage and Hunter. Goodman and Forsythe seem to enjoy playing their roles to the hilt, reveling in their dumb crook characters destined to spend the rest of their lives behind bars. Forsythe, who went on to play mostly villains and tough guys in various films and television, shows what an untapped comic resource he is, playing so well off of Goodman, as evident in the scene where they rob a bank. I would love to see these guys team up again for another comedy.

An informal company of cast and crew that would become regular additions to many Coen brothers films, begins to emerge with Raising Arizona. Character actor, M. Emmet Walsh, who was so effective as the trashy private detective in Blood Simple makes a cameo as H.I.'s obnoxious co-worker (complete with Hudsucker logo on his outfit), while actress Frances McDormand, who also starred in the Coens’ debut film, makes an appearance in Raising Arizona as an abrasive white trash housewife (“l just love biblical names. If I had another little boy, I'd name him Jason, Caleb or Tab.”). This film was the first of several memorable collaborations with John Goodman who has become a favorite of the Coens. Behind the camera saw the return of cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld and composer Carter Burwell, both of whom would continue to work with the Coens on subsequent projects.

Like many of the Coen brothers’ films, Raising Arizona is steeped in classic literature. For example, critic, Rodney Hill found references to John Steinbeck's novel, Of Mice and Men. The biker from hell is named Leonard Smalls and the big, mentally slow man in Steinbeck's novel is also named Lennie Small. In addition, William Faulkner wrote a series of stories about the Snopes family and the brothers who break out of prison in the film are Gale and Evelle Snopes. The works of Flannery O'Connor have also been cited as an influence on Raising Arizona. Joel said in an interview that the term, “warthog from hell,” comes from a short story of O’Connor’s, entitled, “Revelation.”

In terms of casting, they wrote the role of Ed with Holly Hunter in mind but only as they worked on it and not during the initial stages. According to Ethan, the character of Ed "wasn't a reflection of who Holly is so much as a part it'd be fun to see her play.” For the ne’er-do-well brothers, William Forsythe came in first and read for the part of Gale but thought he was better suited for the Evelle part. When John Goodman came in to read next, the Coens asked Forsythe to stay so that he could read with Goodman and they tested well together.

The Coen brothers spent ten weeks rehearsing with the actors and running through scenes on various locations. They had a $6 million budget to work with – three million came from Circle Films and three million from 20th Century Fox. The film was shot over ten weeks in Phoenix, Arizona.

Raising Arizona received mixed review from critics. Time magazine’s Richard Corliss wrote, “To their old fascination with Sunbelt pathology, to their side-winding Steadicam and pristine command of screen space, the Coens have added a robust humor, a plot that keeps outwitting expectations and a ... dollop of sympathy for their forlorn kidnapers.” In her review for the Washington Post, Rita Kempley wrote, “The Coens are coming from the New Left-Field with this zany answer to the alarmist milk-carton-kids campaign, a send-up of endearing dolts, desperation and disposable diapers. They got by with murder in Blood Simple and now they get by with baby rustling in the best kidnapping comedy since last summer's Ruthless People.” The Chicago Reader’s Pat Graham wrote, “The snickering humor that percolated through the Coens' debut, Blood Simple, is the whole show here, and it's damn near hysterical.”

However, in his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby praised the screenplay but found fault with the direction, which he felt was “without decisive style. “Raising Arizona has the manner of a Jonathan Demme film – say Handle With Care or Melvin and Howard – directed by someone else. Its automobile chases are appropriately frantic, but they've been shot and edited with the kind of clumsiness that television producers try to cover up with laugh tracks.” Amazingly, Roger Ebert gave the film one-and-a-half stars and wrote, “It cannot decide if it is about real people, or comic exaggerations. It moves so uneasily from one level of reality to another that finally we're just baffled. Comedy often depends on frustrating the audience's expectations. But how can it work when we don't have a clue about what to expect.”

The Coen brothers aren't afraid to go after any facet of the south, poking fun at everything from H.I.'s boss and his family, who give new meaning to the term inbreeding, to prison life, and southern hospitality. At times, you can never quite tell if they're making fun of this culture or trying to say something serious, instead they leave it up to the audience to decide. Through the use of an outrageous, satirical style, the Coens are really commenting on parenthood, suggesting that raising a child is no easy task. They do this by taking normal problems and situations and exaggerating them to an unbelievable level of caricature. The Coens also developed their own stylistic camera techniques, incredible attention to details, and clever dialogue that would appear in an even more improved state in their later films. The film made a tidy sum, grossing $22 million. The financial success of the Raising Arizona prompted Warner Brothers to offer them Batman (1989) but they wisely turned the studio down and made Miller’s Crossing instead.

Night of the Comet

Released in 1984, Thom Eberhardt’s film Night of the Comet took advantage of the valley girl phenomenon that tapped into the cultural zeitgeist in the early 1980s by making the two protagonists of his horror/science fiction hybrid materialistic mallrats. The film was part of a mini-trend during the decade that fused the teen film with science fiction as evident with the likes of My Science Project (1985) and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989). Night of the Comet was a smart, funny and even, at times, scary ride that proved to be a modest box office hit. It has since gone on to develop a small but loyal cult following, anchored by the performances of the film’s two lead actresses, Catherine Mary Stewart and Kelli Maroney, who play the aforementioned valley girls.


The Earth passes through the tail of a rogue comet, one that may have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs millions of years ago. Most people see this event as worthy of celebration and large crowds congregate all over the world to celebrate this rare event. We meet Regina “Reggie” Belmont (Catherine Mary Stewart), a movie theater usher more interested in getting the high score on the Tempest video game than doing her job (“They throw things at me…”). She’s particularly irked that someone with the initials “DMK” got sixth place on a high score list that is otherwise dominated by her.

Meanwhile, her younger sister Samantha (Kelli Maroney) is stuck at home dealing with her step-mother’s comet party. “Mom” (Sharon Farrell) is a real nasty piece of work, cheating on Sam’s dad and punching the young girl in the face after the teen slaps her during a heated argument. The next day, an eerie red haze blankets the sky and the city of Los Angeles is mysteriously devoid of life with only articles of discarded clothing sprinkled with little piles of red dust remaining.

Reggie wakes up in the projection booth having spent the night with Larry the projectionist (Michael Bowen). However, he’s quickly dispatched by a zombie when trying to leave the theater. She discovers the undead guy after getting locked out and narrowly escapes on a nearby motorcycle. This sequence is notable for demonstrating early on that Reggie is capable of taking care of herself as she fends off the zombie. She’s no damsel in distress and Catherine Mary Stewart doesn’t portray her as a bubble-headed teen either, but rather a resourceful young woman.

Reggie’s journey through the city is a slightly unsettling one as she drives by abandoned cars and clothes strewn all over the place with the red hazy sky omnipresent in every shot. Eberhardt inserts several eerily beautiful establishing shots of the deserted city bathed in a reddish hue. It’s disconcerting to see a bustling metropolis like L.A. so devoid of life. It’s as if someone dropped a reel of The Quiet Earth (1985) in the middle of Valley Girl (1983).

She returns home to find Sam who had spent the night hiding out in the backyard shed and is oblivious to what’s happened. They check out a local radio station that is still operating and meet Hector Gomez (Robert Beltran), a truck driver who survived a zombie attack. Our heroes eventually cross paths with members of a top secret government research facility located under the ground out in the desert. One of them (Mary Woronov) believes that they should stay isolated while another (Geoffrey Lewis) believes they should actively locate survivors.

Reggie gets instant cool points for not only being a skilled video game addict but also well-versed Superman lore as evident in the scene when Larry gets a reference wrong and she’s quick to correct him. This makes her a bonafide geek goddess to be worshipped. Reggie may have a tough exterior but Catherine Mary Stewart isn’t afraid to show her character’s vulnerable side in moments like the one where Reggie asks Hector not to go to San Diego but stay with her and Sam.

As the film progresses, Reggie and Sam are developed past their initial valley girl stereotypes. The two actresses have good chemistry together and are believable as sisters in the way they interact with each other, getting on the other’s nerves but always there for each other. They have a nice scene together where the siblings talk about Reggie’s romantic interest in Hector and Sam talks about a boy at school that she liked. It dawns on her that he and all her friends are probably dead. Sensing how upset her sister is, Reggie takes her mind off it with a spontaneous shopping spree delightfully scored to “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” by Cyndi Lauper that echoes a similar scene in George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978) – materialistic joy after the end of the world.

Reggie and Sam are army brats, which is a nice way of explaining their fighting skills and familiarity with firearms, something that proves very helpful later on in a pretty tense action sequence that sees them attacked by a group of New Wave looters (including Repo Man’s Dick Rude and Platoon’s Chris Pedersen) in a department store. It’s a fun sequence that shows the deadlier side of consumerism as the ex-stock boys-turned-looters are miffed that Reggie and Sam are shoplifting, while their leader speaks in television slogan clichés.

Robert Beltran is quite good as Stewart’s potential love interest. However, Hector’s character disappears midway through the film only to show up in the final reel just in time for the exciting climax, which feels a tad contrived. It’s nice to see Beltran reunited with his Eating Raoul (1982) co-star Mary Woronov. They continue their fantastic on-screen chemistry in a memorable scene together. Geoffrey Lewis brings his trademark gravitas to a supporting role as a scientist with his heart in the right place but this soon changes when his character undergoes a frightening transformation.

Writer/director Thom Eberhardt had grown up watching late 1950s and early 1960s science fiction and horror films, fascinated by the good as well as the bad ones. In particular, he was intrigued by “the empty-city movies where everybody in the city has just disappeared. As a kid I was fascinated by that notion that everybody in the world can be gone and you’re left there in the shell of the city.” He went on to write and direct documentaries for public television and “After School” specials. It was on one of the latter that he got the idea for Night of the Comet. While on the set of one of these specials, Eberhardt had a conversation with two teenage-girl actresses about the end of the world and they described to him how they envisioned it. This gave him the idea to make an end of the world film from the perspective of teenagers. “If you buy into that, then the film makes sense in a screwy sort of way,” he remarked in an interview

He wrote the screenplay for Night of the Comet at the same time as Sole Survivor, but the latter became his feature film debut in 1983 when he couldn’t get anyone interested in the former. The Comet script was an unconventional hybrid of several genres and interested parties either wanted to make a straight-out horror film or a comedy without any of the scary stuff. He finally sold it to Atlantic Releasing Corporation and they assigned producers Wayne Crawford and Andrew Lane, who had success previously with Valley Girl (1983), to the project.

After making The Last Starfighter (1984), Catherine Mary Stewart acquired a reputation for being something of a bankable actress and auditioned for Night of the Comet. While filming Fast Times and Ridgemont High (1982), Kelli Maroney auditioned for Comet. She later learned that A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Heather Langenkamp was a contender for the role of Samantha but the producers felt that she didn’t look good with an Uzi! Despite auditioning separately, Stewart and Maroney found that they had great chemistry together and hung out on and off the set.

Night of the Comet was shot entirely on location in Los Angeles for approximately $700,000. As a result, the production worked on a tight schedule of six weeks with four nights spent in an actual department store in the Sherman Oaks Galleria for the exciting gunfight between Reggie and Sam and the New Wave ex-stock boys. For the look of the film, in particular, the deserted city streets, Eberhardt and his director of photography Arthur Albert drew inspiration from the 1954 B-sci-fi film Target Earth. To get that look on a small budget, they shot the city from unusual angles and early Christmas morning. The film’s producers did not like Eberhardt’s working methods. They wanted him to make a serious horror film while he was more interested in a tongue-in-cheek tone. To appease them, Eberhardt shot two different versions of every scene – a serious take and a more humorous one. According to the director, the producers had a replacement lined up if the production company fired him: “Luckily, nobody had any money for reshoots, so they were stuck with what I gave them.”

Night of the Comet received positive reviews from both genre-friendly magazines and the few mainstream critics who saw it. In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby felt it was “a good-natured, end-of- the-world B-movie,” by a “film maker whose sense of humor augments rather than upstages the mechanics of the melodrama.” Cinefantastique magazine’s David J. Hogan felt that “Comet’s greatest virtue, inarguably, is its treatment of Samantha and Regina. The girls are human, which means they are not merely amusing and pretty, but resourceful, occasionally petty, and capable of growth.” Yet-to-be legendary writer Neil Gaiman called it, “one of the most amusing, witty, imaginative, and thought-provoking films I’ve seen that was made with no budget and is also cheap exploitation.” Finally, the New Music Express’ Alex Pollak wrote, “maybe this movie is lightweight, but it’s still quite good.”

Night of the Comet’s legacy lives on as references to it can be found in films like 28 Days Later (2002), Planet Terror (2007) and the popular television show Lost. The film continues to enjoy a decent cult following with its stars Stewart and Maroney regulars on the convention circuit. It has become a memorable snapshot of the times in which it was made, playfully capitalizing on the hype that surrounded Halley’s Comet in 1984 and into 1985 as people anticipated the phenomenon of it being visible only every 75-76 years. In addition to being heavily steeped in the sci-fi genre, Night of the Comet trades pretty heavily in horror genre conventions, like Sam’s freaky nightmares where she’s attacked by undead motorcycle cops. The film also has something on its mind as its characters sift through the remnants of a consumer culture after the world ends. Like Romero’s Day of the Dead (1985), Night of the Comet has a healthy mistrust of the government and scientists as the research group have less than noble goals and are far more dangerous than the random zombies our heroes encounter. Reggie and Sam don’t have any kind of political agenda or master plan, they just want to survive and there is something refreshing about that. Eberthardt crafted a clever horror/science fiction hybrid that deserves a place among other offbeat fare like The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (1984) and Big Trouble in Little China (1986) that flew in the face of the conservative conventionality that dominated much of American cinema in the ‘80s.

NOTE: The production information in this article was sourced from THE definitive Night of the Comet website, located here.

SOURCES

Counts, Kyle. “Night of the Comet.” Cinefantastique. January 1985.

Everitt, David. “Night of the Comet.” Fangoria. December 1984.