FILM: 'NIGHT OF COMET,' ADVENTURE IN CALIFORNIA

By VINCENT CANBY
Published: November 16, 1984

''Night of the Comet'' is a good-natured, end-of- the-world B-movie, written and directed by Thom Eberhardt, a new film maker whose sense of humor augments rather than upstages the mechanics of the melodrama.

The film's premise: All of the world's scientists have mysteriously died 12 months before the movie begins. At least that's the only way to explain why no one has predicted that the comet, hurtling toward earth during a jolly Christmas season, is going to come a lot closer than all of the comet-party revelers around the country suspect.

On the night of the visitation, people gather in Times Square as if for New Year's Eve. Vendors busily sell funny hats with Martian-like feelers on them. In southern California, there are comet barbecues and comet beer parties around every swimming pool. Only the film's portentous narrator knows what's about to happen. The last time this comet came near earth, he recalls dolefully, all the dinosaurs disappeared.

Like any good, self-respecting B-movie, ''Night of the Comet,'' which opens today at Loews State and other theaters, couldn't care less about dinosaurs or humanity at large. The film is, instead, about the adventures of two saucy California teen- agers, Regina and Samantha, who are sisters and who possess remarkable pluck as well as syntax. ''Why are you so weirded out?'' one sister is likely to say to the other after something unspeakable has occurred.

Reggie and Sam, as they affectionately call each other, are among the handful of southern Californians to survive the comet's visit, each, for reasons I need not go into, having been safely protected by steel walls. Those who suffered the comet's full impact have been reduced to neat little piles of red dust, leaving behind only the clothes they had on. Those partially exposed have become meat- eating zombies. The comet is benign in the manner of the neutron bomb, destroying people but not property.

For a little while, anyway, Reggie and Sam have quite a lark tooling around a seemingly empty Los Angeles, going on fancy, nonspending sprees in chic boutiques. They even meet a handsome young man who shows a distinct interest in Reggie to Sam's disappointment. Then, however, the zombies attack, and after the zombies, there arrive on the scene the members of some secret Government mission who know that their only hope of survival is to steal the young women's blood.

The film's initial special effects aren't great, but some of the dialogue is funny and Mr. Eberhardt has an effectively comic touch. All of the performers are good, especially Catherine Mary Stewart and Kelli Maroney, who play Reggie and Sam; Robert Beltran, as the young man who fancies Reggie, and Mary Woronov - the classically beautiful comedienne who co-starred with Mr. Beltran in Paul Bartel's ''Eating Raoul'' - as one of the Government people who, heroically, refuse to steal someone else's blood just to stay alive a little longer.