Here’s your Judgment Day viewing list of lesser-known apocalypse movies

Everyone seems to know by now that the world as we know it could be ending on Saturday. That’s what some guy in Oakland, Calif., is predicting anyway. We’re not sure if you’ve made your pre-apocalyptic plans, but if you have any appetite for entertainment left amid your severe skepticism or hopeless despair, here’s a few movies that might get you through the interim. Sure, everyone knows about 2012, The Day After Tomorrow, The Road and countless others, but there are plenty of worthwhile end-of-the-world movies you might have missed. Some approach the subject matter with a fair amount of comedy, while others are deathly serious. Take your pick:

Last Night (1998)

Don McKellar is an actor who has worked frequently with oddball directors Atom Egoyan (Exotica) and David Cronenberg (The Fly), and their influence is felt heavily in this, McKellar’s own directorial debut. It’s about a diverse cast of characters deciding how to spend their final night on earth before the expected apocalypse occurs. Some prefer to follow Prince’s advice and party like it’s 1999, while others contemplate whether they even want to bother playing out the string. At turns darkly funny and just plain dark, Last Night attempts to explore what it would be like to not just know you were going to die tomorrow, but that everyone else will, too. What becomes more important — having new experiences or savoring the things you cherish most?

Night of the Comet (1984)

I have this irrational habit of making sure that, if I decide to read a trashy novel (or something really embarrassing like a Star Wars book) that I also have another, more literary book started. After all, I’d hate to have some tragedy befall me, only for someone to find out the last thing I was reading was a James Patterson book. Call it the did-he-have-on-clean-underwear approach. In the same vein, can we all agree that we’re thrilled the world didn’t come to an end in the 1980s? Imagine if, say, some comet passed by Earth and wiped out most of the human population and the only people left were a couple of Valley Girls and whatever dregs they came across. That’s the premise of this underappreciated dark comedy, where a pair of high-school sisters (Catherine Mary Stewart and Kelli Maroney) wake up one day to find they’re just about the only people left alive on Earth. Sure, they can now shop at any store they want and have free run of the place, but they do have that rabid-zombie problem to deal with. Along with having some laughs at the poofy fashion statements of the day, enjoy some genuinely clever satire.

The Quiet Earth (1985)

Made just a year after Night of the Comet, this curious New Zealand entry takes a much more ponderous approach to the end of the world. Much of the film is ambiguous, likening a man’s experience to waking up and finding he is alone in the world to being a metaphor for death. No zombies, cannibals or Mad Max-ian feral children are here to break the meditative nature of the movie, though there are some decent explosions at the end. This is one you have to gear yourself up for a little bit, but it’s worth a look.

The Rapture (1991)

Director Michael Tolkin’s moody spiritual drama is one of the few serious examinations of fundamentalist End Times theology. It takes the biblical stories about the Four Horseman and the River Styx literally. While it doesn’t spend much time on the Rapture specifically — although that event does serve as the film’s haunting climax — the story tracks the lengths people will go to when driven by extreme beliefs. The title is mainly relevant to the literal meaning of the word “rapture,” of experiencing ecstatic joy or delight. Mimi Rogers plays Sharon, whose apathetic, free-love lifestyle is shattered when she is moved by a dreamlike epiphany to convert to Christianity. She marries, has a child, becomes a pillar in the community, and then heads to the desert to wait for Jesus to return. We’re all making a lot of jokes about Rapture predictions these days, but it’s important to consider what the events many people believe will happen one day (if not this Saturday) would literally look like.

A Boy and His Dog (1975)

A decade before he was donning white suits and no socks in South Beach, Don Johnson was treading a decidedly less glamorous path in this cult sci-fi adaptation of a Harlan Ellison story. As Vic, Johnson traverses a post-apocalyptic world accompanied by his telepathic dog. They use their special communication to outwit the barbarians around them and to reap whatever carnal benefits are still to be had. Outrageous, hilarious and downright weird, this is one of those films you’re just happy someone (in this case director L.Q. Jones) was crazy enough to actually make.

Photos: (The Rapture) Credit: © 1991 New Line Cinema; (Night of the Comet) Credit: Atlantic Releasing Company