THE FOG is an Avco Embassy Pictures presentation and is rated R for horror, violence and language. The running time is 90 minutes, and it premiered theatrically October 8, 1980.

INTRODUCTION
Some were disappointed with the outcome of John Carpenter’s 1980 release THE FOG, claiming it to be a disappointing follow-up to HALLOWEEN. Yeah, and I was expecting him to squeeze out another teenage slasher film in the days of FRIDAY THE 13th and HE KNOWS YOU’RE ALONE. Carpenter and producer/co-writer Debra Hill decided to go back to the old ghost stories of yore and offer a nice little suspense story of restless spirits on a vengeful trail in the nighttime trail of a fog bank. Hence, THE FOG. Now, let’s get onto the review and let the fog bank rise over the…

STORY
100 years ago, in the boring little fishing village of Antonio Bay, near the Californian coast, a group of colonial mariners on board the Elizabeth Dane had a lot of gold, and they were stinking rich! Stop the bus…The townspeople got jealous and greedy and pulled that sneaky lighthouse “bad beacon” trick that caused the ship to crash and kill those lepers along the coastline of Antonio Bay. That was also the day Antonio Bay was officially a town, and now the time has shifted a century to 1980, and the town is ready to celebrate the town’s anniversary in a Centenary Celebration being overseen by Kathy Williams (Janet Leigh) and her assistant, Sandy Fadel (Nancy Kyles, credited again as “Nancy Loomis”). This doesn’t please the local man of God, Father Malone (Hal Holbrook), who is aware of the town’s sinister past. It seems he found his grandfather’s diary and read about his involvement in the founding of Antonio Bay and frontal involvement in the ship crash. Some of the gold from the ship has been molded into a cross and kept stashed away.

Now it’s April 21, and 100 years of silence brings some strange events. Car alarms and phones go haywire, and a fog bank is rolling along the midnight sky. But there are the zombies to deal with now: under the cover of the fog, they seek vengeance on the ancestors of their killers and bring fear to the townsfolk.

Who has got what it takes to stop the fog? Could it be Father Malone, or Williams and Sandy? Could it be the local KAB radio DJ Stevie Wayne (Adrienne Barbeau), whose own son Andy (Ty Mitchell) is in the threatening grip of the fog monsters? Could it be local fisherman and somewhat nice guy Nick Castle (Tom Atkins), who has picked up beautiful hitchhiker Elizabeth (Jamie Lee Curtis)? Who can put a stop to this unspeakable evil?

OVERVIEW
The film opens with a scary story being told to a bunch of kids by a campfire, and already we’re in the land of the old “tell me a scary story” atmosphere. John Carpenter is a handy follower of this trick, and the way this film is set up assures it that it’s got a handy hand to play with. This film relies on atmosphere and a more intelligent story that gives its characters warmth and a none-too-vulnerable determination, particularly in the Stevie Wayne and Nick Castle characters. It’s like a 90-minute campfire story all in itself.

Carpenter employs a pounding musical score and tensional build-up to get the movie rolling. I loved the scenes where the boy is stuck inside his room, with the fog outside his door. Or when Stevie is trapped on the lighthouse roof trying to avoid the cutlery of a ghostly sailor. The exposition serves to help the scares as well, and I was interested in the whole legend of Antonio Bay, and enjoyed the character of Father Malone, played magnificently by Hal Holbrook of MAGNUM FORCE and CREEPSHOW, which also featured the lovely Barbeau. I enjoyed her character just the same, as she goes from being on the air saying sweet nothings while handily reminding us of the time and date to screaming for everyone to RUN FOR THEIR LIVES FROM THE FOG!

This movie also follows the old belief that less is more. There is some slashing handiwork in the way the zombies use hooks and spikes to slice up their victims, but there is not a lot of gore. The most disturbing shot of the film is when we see the slimy face of one of the zombies. Other than that, there is not a lot of blood and guts to get your fill on. It employs the old HALLOWEEN trick to its advantage. Another sweet touch is the in-jokes in the characters names. Nick Castle, Tommy Wallace and Dan O’Bannon are all character names in this movie, and horror movie fans will pick up these identities off the bat.

As good as the actors are in playing the usual small town strays who are trying to avoid the deadly weather, that fog bank is essentially the main character of this piece. It’s got one hell of a presence, has a back story to help give it development, and can move around like the slasher from many horror films. There is an obvious disturbance in watching a fog bank that looks like it’s got something inside of it heading your way, and Carpenter and crew know it. It’s also blessed with one of the great cinematographers of our time, Dean Cundey, whose camera technique and lighting is not to be underestimated.

The problems with the movie include the fact that the ghosts go around killing everyone in their path and not seeking straight vengeance on the six ancestors. THEY’RE TRYING TO KILL A LITTLE KID FOR PETE’S SAKE! I hardly knew who any of the ancestors were with the exception of Father Malone, and the zombies hardly crash the Centenary Celebration. They’re celebrating their murder, and they deserve to die more than any little boy or young couple in love do. A 90 minute film also crams in the three subplots with hardly any breathing room. It’s also strangely predictable, as if we didn’t know the outcome would be in the church with the stranded survivors fighting the fog.

But overall, there’s a lot of tension, mood, excellent cinematography and “boo” scares to take us on a little roller coaster ride of fright and fun. I’ll never look at fog the same way ever again.

DIRECTION
John Carpenter keeps thinks going at a brisk clip, building all the mood and tension he can out of the eerie fog bank that rolls over the city streets. He also doesn’t rely on the gore just like HALLOWEEN didn’t emphasize splatter, and less is more. If he hadn’t shot these added scare sequences, this movie would have been droll. He doesn’t go overboard, but keeps the boat on steady waters.

ACTING
Adrienne Barbeau is a pretty good heroine and has a nice voice to boot. She is a very surprising key player and handles the role very well. Jamie Lee Curtis is always pleasant to see also, and is somewhat effective without playing catatonic like her previous Carpenter film role. Tom Atkins is a great character actor, and is yet again fitting his given character like a glove. He also beds Curtis and they both get away with it. SCREW THE RULES! Janet Leigh is also well-prepared and properly classy in her role as the town government representative, but I felt she and her sidekick Sandy, played by previous Carpenter actress Nancy Kyes, were just simply implicated in the events that be, but then again, so are the other characters. The great Hal Holbrook has his moments as the tortured priest and I thought he did a really good job. Also in the cast is John Houseman as a storytelling fisherman and fellow Carpenter regular Charles Cyphers as O’Bannon.

MUSIC
John Carpenter did the musical score for this one and it is another simple, tension-filled electronic cavalcade of sounds that complements the film in all ways.

VIOLENCE/GORE
There are knife and hook attacks in the movie, but they are dry as desert sands. Sorry.

SEX/NUDITY
Nothing. This was before SWAMP THING or TRADING PLACES, so there was a waiting period after this movie.

CONCLUSION
An old-time feel runs through this movie, and Carpenter plays it safe in this one, although his skills as a master of suspense and comprehension of the elements of surprise are always welcome in a movie like this. I got to give Carpenter credit, because no matter what reviews this received, it was a film he HAD to make.

DVD DETAILS
MGM DVD present us with a new special edition of John Carpenter’s underrated classic, bombarding us with special features and a surprising transfer. One side of the disc contains the an anamorphic widescreen version of the film in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio, and the other the traditional standard format. Grainy picture at times, some compression artifacts, but overall the colors look vivid and the sharpness is superb and there is nothing better you can get for your foggy dollar than this DVD version. The English soundtrack consists of mono dialogue and a Dolby Digital 5.1 enhanced musical score. The dialogue was audible as well as the music, and dynamic range is not that bad at all. I could sit through it with a smile on my face anyway. The French language track is entirely in mono, and there are optional subtitles in English, French and Spanish.

There is a wealth of extras to this disc, much unlike some DVD releases but thankfully this was released with superb DVD versions of LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT and RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD. Like those films, we are blessed with audio commentary, this one featuring John Carpenter and Debra Hill and taken from the original laserdisc version (ahem…what about THE HOWLING!). While it obviously lacks the “good group times” of other Carpenter commentaries, he gets together with Hill and they provide us with a running commentary chock full of technical and production-related nuggets, cracking a joke at times (Carpenter has a cameo as the church janitor, and he beats himself up for it). Here’s what kind of information to expect: cast talk, special effects banter, inspiration & accomplishments, talk about the lighting, scene descriptions and anecdotes, and general knowledge about the film in particular. Both Carpenter and Hill are on the ball, and together they provide a nice little 89 minutes of talk.

Produced especially for this new DVD version is a new 28-minute documentary called “Tales From The Mist: Inside THE FOG”. Ready for spanking new interviews with Carpenter, Hill, Cundey, Barbeau, Leigh, and film editor/production designer Tommy Lee Wallace? You bet I am. They touch on the film’s conception, which came as a result of the runaway success of HALLOWEEN that surprised Carpenter himself. Aspects touched include the conception of the film (Hill and Carpenter were at Stonehenge and saw a bizarre fog bank themselves), the casting, post-production, the editing room verdict and reshoots for more carnage, and how their inspirations play a part (the Poe quote, talk about Lovecraft and EC comics). Sadly, the comments from Jamie Lee Curtis are via a 1980 documentary piece’s excerpts, and we also see some of Carpenter in the same interview show. But overall, it’s a well-done technical piece that devotes itself to the mystery of THE FOG.

By the way, that 1980 documentary is shown in its full 8 minute form on the DVD as “Fear On Film: Inside THE FOG”. It contains said vintage interviews with Carpenter and Curtis, as well as Hill, Leigh and Barbeau. Hill and Carpenter get into their inspirations and aspirations, Barbeau tells us about her character and involvement with then-beau J.C., and Curtis & Leigh come on to give their thoughts. Whereas Leigh insists that PSYCHO still makes her scared of showers, Curtis admits she doesn’t like horror films all that much (yeah, and she ended up in four of them from 1978-1981) and also describes her relationship with Leigh on set, insisting they not be in the same scene unless in a really good script. Overall dated and too promotional a piece (probably played on those TV monitors in the theater lobbies), but any connoisseur will dig it.

We are treated to about four minutes of uncensored outtakes, where actors flub their lines and end up swearing at their mistakes. Some giggles, odd facial expressions and what not, but still a fan’s dream come true, as all the main stars end up in the reel. There’s a storyboard-to-film extra that consists of the very first murder in the film being compared to shots of the original drawings. A photo gallery section contains 48 behind-the-scenes pictures as well as 18 publicity scene stills.

And finally there’s the menu christened “advertising material”: you get three half-a-minute-long TV ads, the theatrical trailer, and two teaser trailers. Also is a couple of galleries, including 5 slides of posters and 3 of authentic film memorabilia.


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older