Being Film #23 for Hooptober 2024
No one made horror like John Carpenter. It wasn’t just the man himself (though lord knows he plays a HUGE part); it’s the tight-knit group of collaborators. I can’t imagine watching something like The Fog without the singular cinematography of Dean Cundey, or the editing of Tommy Lee Wallace, or his game cast regular or soon to be regulars like Jamie Lee Curtis and Adrienne Barbeau. You put all that together with the man’s signature keyboard score and yeah – he can make something as innocuous as fog seem terrifying.
Of course it helps to also have ghost pirates with leprosy…you know, to add to the fog’s terror.
THE QUICK SUMMARY: It’s the 100th anniversary of the founding of Antonio Bay, and the whole town is gearing up for it. Too bad the town was founded on the stolen gold of an innocent ship run aground by the leaders of the town who feared the start of a leper colony too near their home. Sounds familiar? Kinda like a lot of real estate works I imagine! Anyway, between the hours of midnight and 1AM to the whole town will feel the wrath as the fog rolls in, and those killed on the rocky banks of Spivy Point take their revenge. Luckily we have Jamie Lee Curtis and Adrienne Barbeau and TOM FREAKIN’ ATKINS to run around and basically do nothing in what is a kickass horror story where the heroes really don’t do anything other than run away. But when it looks this good how much more do you need? Did I mention Adrienne Barbeau is in this? AND Jamie Lee Curtis? It’s like all my crushes came home to roost in one movie!
With the opening sequence Carpenter immediately sets the tone for The Fog, and it’s surprisingly how closely it follows his work on Halloween even though this is very much an old fashioned ghost story. We still have lumbering, mysterious figures who appear unstoppable. There’s a surprising lack of actual blood and gore, and of course we still have Cundey’s wide anamorphic cinematography and Carpenter’s killer soundtrack work. Despite the rise of slashers and gore-drenched imitations of his signature film, Carpenter remains committed to tone and color more than anything else in his films, and in that regard The Fog does not disappoint.
That’s not to say it’s a perfect film, despite how much I enjoy its many charms (it’s kind of the perfect autumn lazy coffee day film, which is exactly how I viewed it this go-round). Despite a game cast there isn’t much for them to do except discover dead bodies, scream, and run around. Jamie Lee Curtis is kind of wasted as the young hitchhiker who gets picked up by Tom Atkins and sticks around for the shenanigans. Barbeau fares a little better as the ostensible lead but she’s trapped in her lighthouse radio station the entire film and so doesn’t contribute as much as she could have. The only one with any real agency is Hal Holbrook as Father Malone, a descendant of the original town priest who was complicit in the wreck of the ship that kicks off the supernatural horror. He’s fantastic, as is John Houseman as Mr. Machin (the film has a lot of little easter eggs in the names) who tells the legend to a bunch of kids in the film’s prologue – he’s only there for the one scene, but its him as much as anything that sets the tone for what’s to come.
At a brisk 90 minutes it still feels like we’re waiting around a little too much for stuff to happen, but the key sequences Carpenter sets up: the entire bravura opening when the weirdness starts to creep across the town, the mysterious fire in the radio station, and the appearance of the ghouls at the church are all fantastic and tense and dripping with that visual flair. I know a lot of folks feel like The Fog drags just a little too much to be considered top-tier Carpenter, but I love it all the same.
It’s the perfect cozy ghost story.
Cinema Dual 
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