The Bottom Line: While not John Carpenter's best work, I think the Fog gets a lot of stick unfairly. It's a pretty solid, if not outstanding story on a pretty good DVD.
Thirteen days to Halloween, Halloween, Halloween.
Thirteen days to Halloween - Silver Shamrocks!
Welcome Boys and Ghouls to Month of the Living Dead, my thirteen day (and then some) tribute to that most wonderful of holidays ever - Halloween! Join me, wont you, as I watch the sinister and the silly, the morbid and the macabre, the violent and gruesome in a two week bloodletting that comes to a boil on the eve of all saints.
*cue thunder and lightning effect*
So sit back, turn the lights down low and get ready for today's presentation of. . . .
THE FOG! Bwah-hah-hah-hah-hah!
*cue commercial break*
Welcome to the eve of the Antonio Bay centennial celebration. In a very short while, we'll have a candle light procession down Main Street, a statue unveiling and a potluck. The weather should be mostly clear - well, aside from that large fog bank rolling in off the sea. But pay that no mind; everything will be just fine. . . .
We should all have John Carpenter's problem: how the hell do you follow up a monster hit like Halloween, the biggest independent film in the history of movies (up until it was displaced by the Blair Witch Project - oh the humiliation!)? Having jump-started the whole slasher movie genre, Carpenter was The Flavor of the Month as far as the studios were concerned - but the problem was proving that he wasn’t just a one-hit wonder.
Easy - give 'em something different! Give 'em a ghost story. BRILLIANT!
We open, appropriately enough, with Old Man Machen (the utterly perfect John Houseman in his only scene for the movie) and a group of kids sitting around a camp fire on a beach, telling the most chilling of ghost stories about a ship called The Elizabeth Dane. The ship was lost in a unearthly fog, and ran aground following a beacon fire, resulting in all hands lost - one hundred years ago to the very day.
The old salt finishes his tale precisely at the stroke of midnight - and suddenly strange things start happening all around town - car alarms turn on, objects move by themselves, windows shatter, lights flicker on and off. This can't end well.
Meanwhile, further inland at the church on Beacon Hill, Father Malone is nearly struck by a falling chunk of masonry. Behind the missing stone in the wall, he finds an ancient leather journal written by Malone's grandfather. It seems that the founding fathers of Antonio Bay were up to some dirty shenanigans, and the crew of the Elizabeth Dane paid the ultimate price.
In the meantime, we meet the rest of the Antonio Bay's more prominent citizens (at least those with speaking parts). First up is Stevie Wayne, the owner and operator of San Antonio's only radio station: KAB, home of some of the most generic elevator music I've ever heard. She, of course is a single mother to Andy who is at home being watched by Mrs Kobritz. Then there's Nick Castle, driving home late at night, who picks up Elizabeth (Jamie Lee Curtis in her second John Carpenter film), a pretty young thang hitchhiking up the California coast to Vancouver. And then finally, we meet Kathy Williams (Jamie's mom and Psycho alum Janet Leigh), the event coordinator of the town's centennial celebration (oh, and wife of one of the soon to be doomed men on the fishing trawler Seagrass) and her assistant Sandy.
With the setup complete and all the players in place, the movie proceeds to wander through their lives a bit at a time. The final result is not so much a plot, but a whole bunch of weird, spooky stuff happening and various revelations along the way. It's more of a series of scenes where the characters react to the supernatural events suddenly occurring in their lives.
And I think that's where the movie loses viewers - nothing actively advances the plot, but we get a whole bunch of stuff that doesn't make any sense, but is really atmospheric and disturbing, if you're not paying attention to the storyline. Thing is - it's suppose to be a ghost story, a nightmare. These seemingly random events only serve to enhance the growing feeling of unease that the characters are experiencing. While these vignettes may not move the plot along, they do succeed in keeping the audience on their toes.
Also, refreshingly, the horror comes more from what you don't see and what is out there lurking just inside the fog, instead of the amount of blood and guts you can spray around. It does steal a page from the Hitchcock playbook in that the imagination will come up with far worse horrors than what can be depicted on the screen. To that end, Carpenter wisely keeps the ghostly lepers as silhouettes in the mist, black shapes against the glowing white of the fog. We never get a good look at the monsters, and when the film relies on typical close up murders, the movie is weaker for it. Now, being a veteran of many slasher flicks, I love the gore as much as the next guy, but I think I'd have pulled scenes like the maggot ridden face. Still, having to compete with contemporaries like the ultra-violent Scanners, Carpenter felt he had to dial up the nasty - and it's his film, so there you go.
The Fog isn't a perfect movie, but it maintains an old-fashioned ghost story charm from the steady hand of master of horror John Carpenter. While the film is towards the bottom of my favorite Carpenter films - but only by the virtue that in a list something eventually has to come last. The film has its merits, loads of atmosphere and a great eerie feeling - but it is certainly outshined by the majority of Carpenter's other films.
TOTAL BODY COUNT: 6
MOST MEMORABLE KILL: The guy in the pilothouse getting stabbed in the face
GALLONS OF BLOOD USED: 0
SPRING LOADED CATS: 0
THE MORON OF THE MOVIE AWARD GOES TO: BREASTS ON DISPLAY: 0 (Although Adrienne Barbeau does have a nice set. Unfortunately we wont get to see them until 1982's Swamp Thing)
BEST LINE: "Sandy, you're the only person I know who can make 'Yes, Ma'am' sound like 'screw you'."
THE DVD-
The MGM Special Edition is a pretty solid if not outstanding purchase - at least it was while it was in print. The disc itself is double-sided with a full-screen transfer on one side and a nice 2.35:1 widescreen transfer on the other. Both sides also include the original English Mono track, and a digitally enhanced Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track.
I must note that the disc I used for reviewing purposes is the older version and is out of print. The only differences for the new edition, as I understand it, is some new cover art and some film trailers that have nothing to do with The Fog.
THE EXTRAS -
The DVD sports a pretty good assortment of extras: An audio commentary with John Carpenter and producer/co-writer Debra Hill, two documentaries (one vintage, one shot a couple of years ago), a handful of outtakes, a storyboard to film comparison, an advertising gallery, some liner notes by John Carpenter - oh, and an Easter Egg. The commentary is pretty good, the documentaries are really well done - a very nice package for a budget DVD.
THE BOTTOM LINE -
While not John's best horror work, it's a nice tight ghost story full of mood and atmosphere. Since you can find the disc for a song, your walking away with a deal on this one.
Join me next time for another journey into the macabre. Until then. . . pleasant SCREAMS! Bwah-hah-hah-hah-hah!
When the fog rolls in the terror begins! This moody and crisply chilling (Newsweek) horror classic from master of terror John Carpenter (The Thing) an...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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