July 2007 - Horrorphile

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Horrorphile - July 2007

John Carpenter's The Fog

July 31st 2007 01:07

In the small Californian coastal town of Antonio Bay the townsfolk are preparing for their centenary. But a dark secret has been harboured, and on the anniversary of the town’s founding revenge will unfold during the witching hour.

One hundred years earlier, on April 21st, a wealthy leper Blake bought a vessel, Elizabeth Dane, and sailed toward Antonio Bay to build a colony. But while crossing a fog in Spivey Point they were misguided by a campfire onshore, the ship crashed on the rocks drowning all six onboard and Blake’s gold was stolen by the township’s conspirators.

Adrienne Barbeau as DJ Stevie Wayne

Father Robert Malone (Hal Holbrook) finds the hidden journal of his grandfather in the wall of his church, and discloses that not only was Antonio Bay built with Blake's gold, but furthermore, one of the conspirators was his grandfather. It seems the planned festivities will be a travesty.

The glowing fog rolls on in ...

It is midnight and a fog bank is rolling into Antonio Bay. Disc jockey Stevie Wayne (Adrienne Barbeau), alone in her lighthouse radio studio, has got the fear. And so has Nick Castle (Tom Atkins) and Elizabeth Solley (Jamie Lee Curtis) who have become involved after checking out an abandoned fishing trawler. Kathy Williams (Janet Leigh, Jamie's real-life mother), the town mayor, and her assistant Sandy (Nancy Loomis) fill out the ensemble cast.

The Fog Nancy Loomis, Janet Leigh and Hal Bolbrook

Nancy Loomis as Sandy, Janet Leigh as mayor Williams and Hal Holbrook as Father Malone

Co-writer and director John Carpenter, along with co-writer and producer Debra Hill were riding high on the unprecedented success of Halloween (1978). They were given a million bucks to make The Fog (1980), and the result is one of the more curious horror movies of its time.

Tom Atkins as Nick and Jamie Lee Curtis as Elizabeth

Carpenter and Hill set out to make an old fashioned ghost story, harking back to the movies of the 40s and 50s, an inspired by such magazines as the trashy Tales from the Crypt series, which often featured the undead rising from some putrid existence to seek vengeance on the unsuspecting.

The problem was horror audiences at the time were being bombarded by splatter movies. Stalk’n’slash flicks were becoming a dime a dozen (ironically, they’d been spearheaded by Halloween). The Fog, however, wasn’t all that violent, and certainly wasn’t gory. It relied more on a persistent atmosphere of dread and foreboding and the creeping unknown. In fact Carpenter was forced to re-shoot many scenes and add in more shock effects to up the ante prior to its release, simply because it just wasn’t that scary.

Blake's seven ... er ... six

And unfortunately The Fog isn’t that scary. Certainly not if you compare it to the movies Carpenter made either side of it (Halloween and The Thing). But The Fog works it's own salty charm in other ways. As a subtle ghost ride, playing on those more child-like fears of shadows and silhouettes, a sense of isolation and, or course, the superbly effective tendrils of the fog itself, literally a “character” in its own right.

Blake (Rob Bottin) wants his gold cross back!

Watching the movie again for the first time in over twenty years I expected it to be as tame and underwhelming as a television Sunday Playhouse. I was pleasantly surprised. The Fog has aged rather well, if you take on board that it was never intended to be the uber-dark adult scare-fest which many had anticipated after being so brutally assaulted with fear and menace by Halloween. The Fog is more character-driven and its key element is the supernatural. To set this theme in stone Carpenter quotes Edgar Allen Poe at film’s start, probably one of my favourite quotations of all time (and one I use on my homepage); “Is all that we seem or seem but a dream within a dream?”

Father Malone prepares to give it back

The DVD sports a beautiful transfer, and the glowing fog effects look sensational. There are two excellent featurettes definitely worth checking out; one made in 1980 with Carpenter, Hill, Jamie Lee Curtis and Janet Leigh, and the other made in 2002 with Carpenter, Hill, Leigh, cinematographer Dean Cundey (terrific work from him), and production designer and editor Tommy Wallace. The comparative comments are fascinating.

A very young Rob Bottin (pre-The Howling and The Thing) plays lead pirate ghost Blake, and young Carpenter himself has a brief cameo in the movie’s opening scene with Father Malone.

The Fog quietly reverberates. It doesn’t grab you by the throat and throttle the living daylights out of you, but many of its vivid images linger in the mind, like the dense fog creeping up into the mainland, bringing its vengeful cargo closer and closer. The whole movie reminded me of the kinds of moody, supernatural undead tales of the late great Italian shlockmeister Lucio Fulci, especially with Carpenter’s excellent electronic score, which was definitely a highlight.

Here is the original theatrical trailer:

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