THE FOG (1980)

 

(Director/co-screenwriter: John Carpenter. Co-screenwriter: Debra Hill.)

Storyline

As the coastal town of Antonio Bay prepares for its centennial, late-April celebration, a supernatural, thick fog creeps into it between the hours of midnight and one a.m., bringing with it death.

Review

Spivey Point, California, mid-April 1880, between the hours of midnight and one a.m. The leprous mariners of the clipper ship Elizabeth Dane see lights along the shore and sail toward them, unaware of the ocean-covered, dangerous rocks that lie along the shore. The Elizabeth Dane strikes the rocks and its crew, with all their treasures, sink beneath the waves. Its treasure is soon recovered by those who live in Spivey Point, and the town of Antonio Bay is established immediately thereafter.

A hundred years later, the denizens of the sleepy town are set to celebrate its centennial anniversary, a big nighttime party in Shelby Square, in the center of town. Prior to that, between midnight and one a.m., April 12^th, a mild earthquake rocks Antonio Bay, electrical power surges through the town (causing lights to come on), car horns honk, phones start ringing, gas pumps to start pumping gas, and a white, glowing fog covers the town. Not only that, but in the church, a book─”Diary of Father Patrick Malone”─falls out of a new crack in a wall. Father Malone (played by Hal Holbrook), grandson of the diary’s author, finds it and begins to read it, horror dawning on his face. That same night, the crew of a local trawler (Sea Grass), also enveloped in the sudden fogbank fifteen miles out, is boarded by ghostly, undead men wielding sabers and hooks from the nineteenth century. The Sea Grass crew does not survive the visit. Not long after that, a boy discovers a piece of driftwood on the beach, bearing part of the Elizabeth Dane’s name.

Further strangeness, fog, ghostly visits, and death follow, culminating in a night of full-blown terror, when the spectral sailors of the Elizabeth Dane attack the townspeople during the centennial celebration in Shelby Square.

This steady-build film is an old-fashioned ghost story, from its opening shots where Mr. Machen (named for the influential supernatural author Arthur Machen?) tells several children about the Elizabeth Dane around a beach campfire. Played by with playful gravitas by the great John Houseman (GHOST STORY, 1981), Machen’s tale ably sets the tone for the rest of this mood-effective-well-paced and classic (in a good way) film.

FOG’s stellar cast adds to its immersibility. Adrienne Barbeau, Carpenter’s then-wife, played Stevie Wayne. Wayne’s nighttime jazz radio show (broadcast from a lighthouse), in addition to Machen’s beachside tale, is the glue that helps structure and connect the players and the film’s action. Jamie Lee Curtis (HALLOWEEN, 1978) played Elizabeth Solley. Tom Atkins (HALLOWEEN III:SEASON OF THE WITCH, 1982) played Nick Castle (real-life name source Nick Castle played Michael Myers/The Shape in HALLOWEEN, 1978). Janet Leigh, Curtis’s real-life mother, played Kathy Williams. Nancy Kyes (HALLOWEEN, 1978) played Nancy Loomis.

Charles Cypher (HALLOWEEN, 1978) played Dan O’Bannon (the character’s name is a shout-out to director Carpenter’s real-life friend, who co-wrote DARK STAR, 1974, with him). George “Buck” Flower played Tommy Wallace (the character’s name is a shout-out to Carpenter’s real-life friend Tommy Lee Wallace, who not only played a “Ghost” in FOG but later directed HALLOWEEN III). Rob Bottin, who also created special makeup and creepy FX for FOG and many other films, played Blake, the leader of the leprous “Ghosts.” And director/co-screenwriter Carpenter made a brief cameo as Bennett, Father Malone’s church assistant who, early in the film, asks Malone for his pay.

Partially filmed in Bodega Bay, also a site for Alfred Hitchcock’s THE BIRDS (1963), FOG was shot in anamorphic widescreen Panavision, lending its relatively low budget (under a million dollars) a bigger budget feel.

FOG sports influences and partial quotes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge (“like an albatross around the neck”), H.P. Lovecraft (“a sweep south of Waitely Point and Arkham Reef”), Vincent Price’s DR. PHIBES films (FOG’s coroner is named after Phibes), Edgar Allan Poe (“Dream Within a Dream” prologue quote), making it not only an entertaining, solid-build ghost-story work, but a genre-reverent and relatively goreless one, with lots of personal references for the director and his cast. Furthermore, Carpenter, in a DVD commentary for THE FOG, said the fate of the Elizabeth Dane (minus its ghostly, deadly visitations) was inspired by a real-life event, the intentional, nineteenth century sinking and plundering of a clipper ship off the coast of Goleta, California.

Worth owning, this. A remake, co-produced by Carpenter, Debra Hill and quite a few others, came out in 2005.