The Fog (1980)
Directed by John Carpenter
Strange things begin to occur as a tiny California coastal town prepares to commemorate its centenary. Inanimate objects spring eerily to life; Rev. Malone stumbles upon a dark secret about the town's founding; radio announcer Stevie witnesses a mystical fire; and hitchhiker Elizabeth discovers the mutilated corpse of a fisherman. Then a mysterious iridescent fog descends upon the village, and more people start to die.
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Carpenter’s film stays truer to its source material, John W. Campbell, Jr.’s 1938 novella Who Goes There?, than the 1951 Howard Hawks-Christian Nyby feature The Thing from Another World.
It promises that the fog will roll in during these celebrations and much like the beach attack in Jaws would result in apocalyptic mayhem.
For Dante, The Howling, a great deal like Piranha before it, begins as a Jaws rip-off--something at least equally attributable to screenwriter-for-hire John Sayles, who, while piecing together the script for this film, was also pounding out the script for Lewis Teague's own tongue-in-cheek Jaws ripper Alligator--in structure, featuring a seriocomic morgue sequence, the gradual reveal of the mechanical monster, and the provincialism of small-town politicos, all with the distinct whiff of seventies paranoia that found targets in traditional authority figures and institutions.
Despite its flaws, the movie is worth watching for many reasons, including its impressive lo-fi fog effects (created with miniatures, process shots and fog machines); Dean Cundey's cinematography; some truly wonderful Northern California locations (including Point Reyes, where the lighthouse is located, and Bodega Bay, the site of Hitchcock's "The Birds"); Carpenter's very fine music score; and a cast that includes Tom Atkins, Hal Holbrook, Jamie Lee Curtis and Jamie Lee's mother, Janet Leigh.
To give Carpenter another opportunity to re-stage the siege from "Rio Bravo," that's why.)
When the director remade Howard Hawks's classic western Rio Bravo as Precinct 13, he showcased a style every bit as genre defying as that of his idol's.
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On different ends of that same contemporary spectrum, then, are Carpenter and Dante, both breaking through with a film in 1978 (Halloween and Piranha, respectively), with Carpenter treating the genre with a deadly, almost mordant reverence and Dante approaching the material under the heavy influence of Warner Brothers and Tex Avery cartoons that consistently finds its way into his work.
Film buffs will appreciate the sight of Curtis and her mother Janet Leigh sharing screen time together, as well as the number of in-jokes (The Abominable Dr. Phibes and The Birds are but two of the titles that receive subtle shout-outs).
Jamie Lee's real-life mother, Janet Leigh (of "Psycho" fame), is also in the cast as the chairwoman of the town's centennial celebration.
The standouts of the supporting cast are Janet Leigh (1960's " Psycho ") and Nancy Loomis (another " Halloween " alumnus), who share an electric chemistry as bickering councilwoman Kathy and assistant Sandy.
Janet Leigh's presence clearly references Carpenter's love for Hitchcock, but she manages a couple of very good scenes, proving that she's more than the sum of Psycho .
It must have seemed like an inspired idea to make a horror movie in which clouds of fog would be the menace, but the idea just doesn't work out in "The Fog," John Carpenter's first thriller since " Halloween ."
If Carpenter's previous film, the surprises smash "Halloween" (1978), was sold as "The Night He Came Home!," "The Fog" is the night they came come -- they being the ghostly, vengeful crewmen lost on the rocks of Antono Bay.
Writer-director John Carpenter had just come off one of the biggest independent film successes in history, "Halloween" (1978), and studios were anxious for this new, young Hitchcock to duplicate his success.
Definitely one of my favorite films from John Carpenter is The Fog (top five for sure) and why it's remained one of my favorite movies to revisit every single Halloween season is how perfectly Carpenter utilized tension and mood throughout the film, achieving some near perfect moments of cinematic spookiness.
With 1978's " Halloween " a runaway success, there was a mighty bit of pressure for writer-director John Carpenter and co-writer Debra Hill to come up with a zinger follow-up.
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It's easy to see, though, why this project must have been appealing to Carpenter, a talented 31-year-old film maker who built a cult audience with the low-budget genre films "Dark Star" and " Assault on Precinct 13 " before breaking through to enormous ratings with the made-for-TV "Elvis."
Starting with Assault on Precinct 13, Carpenter had been perfecting what I would term a "NIGHT OF THE DAY BEFORE THE NIGHT" structure which worked like gangbusters for tension building stories.
Of the first bunch of Carpenter films to be updatedincluding Assault On Precinct 13, Halloween, Escape From New York, and The Thing (itself a remake)the 1980 film The Fog has the most room for improvement.
And as with his thematically rich Assault on Precinct 13, there’s more than just deadly pirate hooks lurking beneath The Fog’s pulpy surface; from his story’s overriding preoccupation with history’s inescapable influence on the present, to the subtle critique of the way in which the church sustains itself through decidedly un-Christian dastardliness, Carpenter’s slow but satisfyingly sinister spookfest reveals a surprising depth.
While perhaps not as refined as The Thing, as cartoonishly entertaining as Escape From New York or as harrowing as The Fog, Carpenter's second feature is nevertheless a triumph of low-budget filmmaking.