The Fog «««½
R, 89m. 1980
Cast & Credits: Adrienne Barbeau (Stevie Wayne), Jamie Lee Curtis (Elizabeth Solley), Tom Atkins (Nick Castle), Hal Holbrook (Father Malone), Janet Leigh (Kathy Williams), Nancy Loomis (Sandy Fadel), Charles Cyphers (Dan O’Bannon), Ty Mitchell (Andy), John Houseman (Mr. Machen). Screenplay by Debra Hill and John Carpenter. Directed by John Carpenter.
Last month as I left work at 3 a.m., I noticed blotches of white clouds moving in the area of the building’s parking lot. I thought maybe the complex had a couple of smokestacks in the back that I hadn’t noticed until now. As I pulled out of the lot in my Pontiac Grand Am and jumped on the interstate I was soon engulfed by a dense fog, which seemed to come out of nowhere.
I have always found fogs to have a mysterious, sometimes deadly allure to them. They are not nearly as fascinating to watch as tornadoes since all fogs do depending on the weather is envelop suburbs to the point where you can barely see the street and traffic lights. You never know what lies ahead of you.
In The Fog, director John Carpenter incorporates the idea that what you can’t see won’t just hurt you, it will kill you, into an intriguing, supernatural ghost story. This is the kind of ghost story that’s best heard around midnight, at a campfire near the beach, much like the one in the film’s opening sequence as a grouchy old sailor (John Houseman) tells a creepy tale to the sleepy little town’s children of Antonio Bay, California.
The film is the kind of horror story that would be told in such half hour science fiction/horror documentaries like Sightings (1992-1997) where witnesses to supernatural encounters talk about their experiences in often unbelievable detail. That is all provided the incident is true.
The Fog begins with the smallest of unexplainable occurrences like the brick wall suddenly breaking apart for no apparent reason revealing a diary written by the great grandfather of an alcoholic priest (Hal Holbrook) revealing the town’s past sins. A woman’s dog barks at the ocean for six hours when no one is in sight and while car alarms and horns go off by themselves, a lounge chair moves by itself and sits in front of a television set.
“This town sits around for a hundred years and then one night, the whole place falls apart,” one character says. The unexplained events occur on the night the town was founded in April, 100 years ago, when a small group of sailors attempted to start a leper colony along the outskirts. As they headed to land following a lone fiery light in the darkness, “a fog rolled in” as Houseman’s character explains, causing their ship to crash along the rocks and sink killing all aboard.
I have to admit it was that “glowing” fog which kept me in suspense every time the mist crept into town bringing with it the same ghostly settlers covered in gnats, seaweed, brandishing scythes and exhibiting glowing evil red eyes. The fact the fog glowed and moved against the winds made it seem even more ominous and I could never tell when someone was going to be the next victim. A rotting arm would either come out of nowhere grabbing the town’s only weatherman or a sword would go through a fisherman’s chest without realizing someone was standing behind them.
The film has all the clever makings of a great ghost story like the piece of wooden wreckage that scrawls by itself in salt water the letters, “Must die,” and the gold coin that washed away as suddenly as it appeared on the shores to the character who realizes how cold the room just got for no reason other than maybe something unseen is in the place with them.
The picture marked the first time mother and daughter stars, Janet Leigh and Jamie Lee Curtis, teamed together in a movie but the two didn’t really interact much until the climax and their characters didn’t know each other. They acted together again barely twenty years later in Halloween H20 (1998) celebrating the 20th anniversary of Carpenter’s 1978 low budget but first unexpected box office hit.
The Fog was Carpenter’s second follow-up to Halloween and no doubt a fair number of critics, back then when it was released in 1980, expected him to not just keep audiences on edge the way he did with his first film, they were also hoping it would make some sense.
Halloween, however, was a movie about a child murderer who comes back to his hometown to relive the same crimes twenty years later. By comparison, The Fog is about ghosts who come back to wreak vengeance on a town whose original inhabitants murdered them 100 years ago. The film exhibits the same haunting, musical soundtrack as the director’s earlier work but with a different tone this making it more frighteningly effective.
Almost twenty years later, I am still haunted by the movie. Last week I saw Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 movie, The Shining, at the USA Film Festival. I was amazed at how timeless the film still is today. The same goes for The Fog. The only thing that has changed is the cast has gotten older.
The difference between Carpenter’s two movies is he went more for a supernatural idea instead of being about a lone psychotic. I remember reading reviews of The Fog where some critics like Roger Ebert had trouble trying to figure the phenomenon out. None of the people it killed had much to do with the 100 year old curse in his opinion. The thought, however, never crossed my mind while watching the movie.
After reading Ebert’s negative opinion about The Fog, I formed my own idea. My guess was those ghostly sailors killed anyone gullible enough to answer the door at midnight or those drunk enough to think they were related to one of the six original conspirators.
©5/3/99
R, 89m. 1980
Cast & Credits: Adrienne Barbeau (Stevie Wayne), Jamie Lee Curtis (Elizabeth Solley), Tom Atkins (Nick Castle), Hal Holbrook (Father Malone), Janet Leigh (Kathy Williams), Nancy Loomis (Sandy Fadel), Charles Cyphers (Dan O’Bannon), Ty Mitchell (Andy), John Houseman (Mr. Machen). Screenplay by Debra Hill and John Carpenter. Directed by John Carpenter.
I have always found fogs to have a mysterious, sometimes deadly allure to them. They are not nearly as fascinating to watch as tornadoes since all fogs do depending on the weather is envelop suburbs to the point where you can barely see the street and traffic lights. You never know what lies ahead of you.
In The Fog, director John Carpenter incorporates the idea that what you can’t see won’t just hurt you, it will kill you, into an intriguing, supernatural ghost story. This is the kind of ghost story that’s best heard around midnight, at a campfire near the beach, much like the one in the film’s opening sequence as a grouchy old sailor (John Houseman) tells a creepy tale to the sleepy little town’s children of Antonio Bay, California.
The film is the kind of horror story that would be told in such half hour science fiction/horror documentaries like Sightings (1992-1997) where witnesses to supernatural encounters talk about their experiences in often unbelievable detail. That is all provided the incident is true.
The Fog begins with the smallest of unexplainable occurrences like the brick wall suddenly breaking apart for no apparent reason revealing a diary written by the great grandfather of an alcoholic priest (Hal Holbrook) revealing the town’s past sins. A woman’s dog barks at the ocean for six hours when no one is in sight and while car alarms and horns go off by themselves, a lounge chair moves by itself and sits in front of a television set.
“This town sits around for a hundred years and then one night, the whole place falls apart,” one character says. The unexplained events occur on the night the town was founded in April, 100 years ago, when a small group of sailors attempted to start a leper colony along the outskirts. As they headed to land following a lone fiery light in the darkness, “a fog rolled in” as Houseman’s character explains, causing their ship to crash along the rocks and sink killing all aboard.
I have to admit it was that “glowing” fog which kept me in suspense every time the mist crept into town bringing with it the same ghostly settlers covered in gnats, seaweed, brandishing scythes and exhibiting glowing evil red eyes. The fact the fog glowed and moved against the winds made it seem even more ominous and I could never tell when someone was going to be the next victim. A rotting arm would either come out of nowhere grabbing the town’s only weatherman or a sword would go through a fisherman’s chest without realizing someone was standing behind them.
The film has all the clever makings of a great ghost story like the piece of wooden wreckage that scrawls by itself in salt water the letters, “Must die,” and the gold coin that washed away as suddenly as it appeared on the shores to the character who realizes how cold the room just got for no reason other than maybe something unseen is in the place with them.
The picture marked the first time mother and daughter stars, Janet Leigh and Jamie Lee Curtis, teamed together in a movie but the two didn’t really interact much until the climax and their characters didn’t know each other. They acted together again barely twenty years later in Halloween H20 (1998) celebrating the 20th anniversary of Carpenter’s 1978 low budget but first unexpected box office hit.
The Fog was Carpenter’s second follow-up to Halloween and no doubt a fair number of critics, back then when it was released in 1980, expected him to not just keep audiences on edge the way he did with his first film, they were also hoping it would make some sense.
Halloween, however, was a movie about a child murderer who comes back to his hometown to relive the same crimes twenty years later. By comparison, The Fog is about ghosts who come back to wreak vengeance on a town whose original inhabitants murdered them 100 years ago. The film exhibits the same haunting, musical soundtrack as the director’s earlier work but with a different tone this making it more frighteningly effective.
Almost twenty years later, I am still haunted by the movie. Last week I saw Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 movie, The Shining, at the USA Film Festival. I was amazed at how timeless the film still is today. The same goes for The Fog. The only thing that has changed is the cast has gotten older.
The difference between Carpenter’s two movies is he went more for a supernatural idea instead of being about a lone psychotic. I remember reading reviews of The Fog where some critics like Roger Ebert had trouble trying to figure the phenomenon out. None of the people it killed had much to do with the 100 year old curse in his opinion. The thought, however, never crossed my mind while watching the movie.
After reading Ebert’s negative opinion about The Fog, I formed my own idea. My guess was those ghostly sailors killed anyone gullible enough to answer the door at midnight or those drunk enough to think they were related to one of the six original conspirators.
©5/3/99
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