John Carpenter's The Fog

Hey folks. I wanted to do a passage on the Funhouse for the passing of Tobe Hooper but I think I will have an audio review for that. So instead let's have a terrifying legend.  A ghost story of a town's past and how it effects the present. This is The Fog.

Our master of horror, John Carpenter (Halloween, The Thing, They Live, Prince of Darkness, Village of the Damned and Vampires) gathers us around a fire to tell tale of sailors that gone on the high seas. I mean we open with an eerie piano score and a quote from Edgar Allen Poe.

Well that could be anyone in all that fog. Cub Scouts probably.

Set in North Cali, in a little fishing village called Antonio Bay the town preps to celebrate in centennial as the mayor's aide and official busybody about town, Kathy Williams (Janet Leigh of Touch of Evil, Psycho, The Manchurian Candidate, Starman, Murder, She Wrote, The Twilight Zone and Halloween: H20) has managed to get the whole town in the swing of the upcoming festivities.

The local parish is looking to find records from that time in 1880 on the founding of Antonio Bay. Father Malone (Hal Holbrook of Wild in the Streets, The Brotherhood, The People Next Door, The Great White Hope, Magnum Force, All the President's Men, Lincoln, Midway and Creepshow) is digging into the archives. Meanwhile at night, a strange glowing fog seems to almost engulf the town. With fishermen out to sea and no one has heard from them since they had a near collision with another vessel. 

A pickled preacher and some vino. What could go wrong?

 During all this, the new DJ Stevie Wayne (Adrianne Barbeau of Maude, Creepshow,Swamp Thing, Escape from New York, Diagnosis Murder, The New Batman Adventures and Mad Max) is giving it her all to make your mornings bearable as the piece of driftwood her boy gave her seeps water and speaks through her 8-track and tape deck announcing" Six Must Die," in a ethereal voice.

With more crazy in the night, horns honking, Tvs turning off and on, windows shattering. Da works. Only one thing to do with this level of strange, make like Nick Castle (Tom Atkins of Halloween, Escape from New York, Maniac Cop, Halloween III: Season of the Witch, Night of the Creeps, Lethal Weapon, A Stranger Waits and Drive Angry) and pick up a hot hitchhiker like Liz Solley (Jamie Lee Curtis of Halloween, The Fog, Terror Train, Prom Night, Halloween II, Trading Places, Perfect, True Lies and NCIS) whose only crime is wanting to get to Vancouver. Sad really.

 The twosome got a little froggy in the night and then got bombarded by more bizarre phenomena. All this nuttiness started after the stroke of midnight, but our heroes don't need to know that.

Hey!  I never get a hitchhiker that hot. I cry foul.

Nick and Liz charter a boat to hit the Sea Grass and see if they can't find out where the hell all this fog originated. No sooner are they at the vessel it just looked trashed. Like it fell under a tidal wave and all the plankton, moss and water logging could happen, did happen. They also find the crew in mass levels of decomposition that occurs in weeks not hours.

With familiar faces and voices like Charles Cyphers (Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween and Escape from New York)and Darwin Joston (Assault on Precinct 13, Eraserhead, The Fog, Wild at Heart, Hill Street Blues, Coast to Coast and Gunmen's Blues) so I was safe. Best part is both these men could provide exposition and plot point drops and not feel like it got shoe horned in.

A dark ghoulish story of a town wanting nothing to do with a leper colony leading that ship to the jagged rocks leaving them to drown and die.

Sounds pretty damn festive to me. Our collective townsfolk must try to break this horrible curse before all 6 descendants die. Who knows if this even frees their souls? Maybe it will allow them to torment the town for decades to come.

With director/writer John Carpenter tipped his hat to references to Waitely Point and Arkham Reef both used by H.P. Lovecraft in a fair number of his tales. Primarily it was the influence of the The Creeping Eye that helped him pen this dark tale. Still love that the town doctor is named Phibes. Any Vincent Price fan I am aware of has seen The Abominable Dr. Phibes and Dr. Phibes Rises Again. While the main leads Curtis and Barbeau never share screen time with each other, it is rare a male writer knows what the hell to do with an actress aside from making her the femme fatale or clinging love interest. John has shown time and time again, that it isn't that difficult.

My God! She has a cigarette!! Horror movie confirmed!!!