The Fog (1980)

Tagline: What you can’t see won’t hurt you… it’ll kill you!

Curiosity: It’s the black sheep in between filmmaker John Carpenter’s more critically and commercially successful films Halloween and Escape From New York.

Plot: The residents of Antonio Bay, Calif. are preparing for their town’s centennial. However, Father Malone (Hal Holbrook) soon discovers that the town was built… ON MURDER. Turns out settlers robbed and murdered a leper colony a hundred years ago, and now the victims’ ghosts are back for revenge. They come dressed all in black and shrouded in fog. It’s up to Malone, along with help from other survivors, to figure out how to appease these angry spirits.

Thoughts: Per Carpenter’s own words, The Fog is a “minor horror classic.” It came out just as gory slasher films rose to prominence, so the scares feel somewhat quaint compared to films of the time like Friday the 13th, let alone torture porn films being made today. While Carpenter was still a few years away from revolutionizing the horror/sci-fi genre with The Thing, though, The Fog still holds up as one of his stronger films, a welcome opening installment for his excellent ’80s filmography.

Part of what hooks me into the film is the craft over the jolts. The Fog was conceived as a throwback ghost story, which it is, but I view it as a strong example of how filmmaking used to work. While the plot is slight, the overall presentation is solid. The fog itself is a character in the film, a harbinger of death, and it moves fluidly. Pre-CGI, Carpenter and his crew had to rely on a vast array of tricks to achieve the fog’s movements. Some scenes were played backwards or at varying speeds. Different consistencies of fog were utilized. And, uh, fans. Lots and lots of fans. So while the story is average, the presentation, for me at least, compensates.

I feel as if we’ve hit a crossroads in special effects, as ’80s movies continue to look better and better to me, while newer techniques used in the ’90s and ’00s age at a rapid rate. The Fog will always look realistic, because they used real fog. The same cannot be said for the 2005 remake, a critically reviled turd that made some bank opening weekend and then disappeared.

Reflection: Oh hey, and Halloween star Jamie Lee Curtis returned! And she brought her mom! And there’s Night of the Creeps star Tom Atkins!