John Carpenter's The Fog

This town sits around for 100 years and nothing happens...and then one night, the whole place falls apart. 

Midnight 'Til 1 Belongs to the Dead

 

I don't know what happened to Antonio Bay tonight. Something came out of the fog...and tried to destroy us. In one moment, it vanished. But if this has been anything but a nightmare and if we don't wake up to find ourselves safe in our beds...it could come again. To the ships at sea who can hear my voice look across the water into the darkness. Look for the fog.

When I was a teenager, my aunt was driving us home from a movie, and we were talking cinema. She told me about a little horror movie she went and seen as a teenager herself, about a spooky fog and how ghouls within it were seeking revenge--the reason being their murders at the hands of a group of conspirators wanting their gold 100 years ago--has come to a sleepy coastal town named Antonio Bay on the verge of celebrating the very founding of its township (...deriving from the bloodshed spilled by 6 men, wary of having a clipper ship of lepers wanting to set up a colony and greedy for the gold they carry). To say that I was captivated by her description and positive reaction of The Fog, I wanted to see it...badly.

Our celebration tonight is a travesty. We're honoring murderers.

But he was on the boat. He was below decks!-Nick
No. Dick Baxter died in the ocean.-Dr. Phibes

Not sure exactly when it was when I watched it for the first time, but I'm sure it was a VHS recording or on cable. It has aired everywhere, from AMC Fear Friday and TNT Monstervision, to TCM Underground and IFC Grindhouse. I remember coming home during late nights after work when I was 18, TNT showing The Fog (the movie was showed on rotation a lot back in those days and worked as a kind of background noise as I would do my homework), and I have a strong, fond attachment to this movie, and will for the rest of my life. When John Carpenter eventually passes away, as producer Debra Hill (may she rest in peace) already has, his legacy (as was hers...) with me anyway is intact.

The smooth sound..something like an albatross around the neck. No. More like a millstone. A plumbing stone, by God. Damn them all! 

6 Will Die

The Fog may have story logic inconsistencies (if the fog ghouls only have power from Midnight to One, how can such supernatural circumstances arise such as the piece of driftwood melting into the tapes and forewarning to Barbeau their intentions or the body of a eyeball-less victim found in the bowels of a fishing boat getting up from a slab, falling in a heap before Jamie Lee Curtis, and writing "3" on the floor? How can fog knock out generators and power lines right when Barbeau is about to talk to the sheriff? It is all for developing the malevolence and moving the plot forward...), but I have always felt this is about mood, style, suspense, and spooks, less about the story making absolute sense (I never really understood what happened to the bodies of the victims or where they were taken, or why the character of Dick Baxter and the fishing ship appeared as if they were underwater and yet not...). It is about that fog, carrying the spirits of the dead (seaweed, worms, rotted flesh, and damp clothes costuming these ghouls), invading a stunning locale, the beach, the coast, the water, the lighthouse, the cliffs, Antonio Bay, this little town that benefits from such beauty, with such a treasured idyllic backdrop that seems so unique for a ghost story, this contemporary
California area that has a morbid history.

While the location is one of the major reasons this film has endured with me, obviously the cast and their fun characters are another reason. I have always felt this was Tom Atkins film within a game ensemble. His Nick Castle has a marvelous scene in the operations deck of his ship (where a member of his fishing crew is soon discovered with eyes gouged out) telling hitchhiker Jamie Lee Curtis (who has an adult role and seems sexually free considering she gives Atkins some lovin' the very first night they meet) about a ship his fisherman father found on the water absent a crew as if they just vanished, securing a dabloon that disappeared when he went to show it to his family. He is the wise, easy-going, but sure-footed and sturdy man-of-the-world who knows that something's amiss when his boys fail to return from a night on the ocean (which included George Buck Flower who gets the hook and has a cool, eerie death scene, his face frozen, eyes open but missing life). He has a gut instinct and is a solid judge of human behavior. Jamie Lee Curtis has an engaging personality that has followed into most of her characters during her career; I particularly liked how her Elizabeth (fleeing a life of affluence, out on her own, hitching to Vancouver to carve out her own life) bonds with Nick as they face a terrifying sequence of events.

What a great part for Adrienne Barbeau, perhaps her most prominent role for how it builds her as the ultimate heroine and the voice across the radio heeding others to stay far from the fog, as Lighthouse Radio DJ/Owner, Stevie Wayne, a single parent working rotten hours and trying to operate it on her own. She has a strength, a courage, a resolve, and fights those fog zombies with all her might.

Are you going to give the benediction tonight, Father?-Mrs Williams
Antonio Bay has a curse on it.-Father Malone
Do we take that as a "no"?-Sandy

Then, of course, you have Hal Holbrook (who seems to be in the film longer than he actually is, speaking volumes on how captivating his creepy character/performance is...) as Father Malone, haunted by what his grandfather did, his ancestor's (and fellow conspirators') part in the theft and murder of a ship of people and how the "chairwoman of the city counsel", Miss Williams (Janet Leigh) and her assistant, Sandy (Nancy Loomis) react to his morose, dour state. Williams is demanding in her town affairs, a mind always busy, a diligently active member of her community while Sandy rolls her eyes and carries a tone of annoyance, with a humor that is sarcastic (I think you can tell that Williams' constantly exertively "what's next on the agenda" personality and work ethic chafes at Sandy's tolerance for such a personality). These two have always been a fun dynamic to me. Put them in a darkened room with troubled Holbrook and only good things happen.

The music score by John Carpenter is a dandy because it is one of those that builds suspense from a calm to a blunt force, a banging and beat that follows the motley group of principles introduced to us, their individual stories presented to us over the running time, and how they will converge onto the church where the fog ghouls seek their desired prize, the gold taken from them has been fashioned into a cross by Holbrook's grandfather long ago. Meanwhile, Stevie Wayne fends off two ghouls who have chased her up to the roof of the lighthouse, trapped with nowhere else to run. The score, use of the fog, how the ghouls are tentatively, carefully lensed, the greenish-colored arms breaking through glass, knocking down doors, faint figures trying to gain six souls representative of the conspirators who took their lives, our principles in dire straits as they futilely hold their monsters at bay (and losing), quite a climax that will probably recall Night of the Living Dead, this time the characters besieged inside a gloomy Catholic church undergoing renovations.

But without that opening, I'm not sure The Fog would continue to remain such a treasure for many of us who adore it, because the grim-voiced John Houseman, a consummate storyteller, sits around a campfire and relates a tale that will eclipse Antonio Bay not long after he tells it. The way it is shot and spoken, just perfectly lit and performed. It sets the mood nicely. That first night, and all the wild activities that perpetrate the town (the gas station's gas pump acting on its own, Sandy's chair moving forward, the bottles shaking and glass breaking in the closed grocery store as the young man sweeps...), and how all the windows break in Atkins truck (and his clock), further emphasize what the fog entails, what the town is up against.

The Fog just remains special to me for a variety of reasons already explained. It is always a pleasure to return to this movie and will be in the future. I never tire of it.

11:55, almost midnight. Enough time for one more story. One more story before 12:00, just to keep us warm. In five minutes, it will be the 21st of April. One hundred years ago on the 21st of April, out in the waters around Spivey Point, a small clipper ship drew toward land. Suddenly, out of the night, the fog rolled in. For a moment, they could see nothing, not a foot in front of them. Then, they saw a light. By God, it was a fire burning on the shore, strong enough to penetrate the swirling mist. They steered a course toward the light. But it was a campfire, like this one. The ship crashed against the rocks, the hull sheared in two, mars snapped like a twig. The wreckage sank, with all the men aboard. At the bottom of the sea, lay the Elizabeth Dane, with her crew, their lungs filled with salt water, their eyes open, staring to the darkness. And above, as suddenly as it come, the fog lifted, receded back across the ocean and never came again. But it is told by the fishermen, and their fathers and grandfathers, that when the fog returns to Antonio Bay, the men at the bottom of the sea, out in the water by Spivey Point will rise up and search for the campfire that led them to their dark, icy death.
12:00, the 21st of April.