For those hording toilet paper

Yeah, I guess I just couldn't wait for the 21st of April to check out John Carpenter's The Fog (1980) in Blu. It's a film I covered back in the blog's best year, 2012, in October. I know it doesn't hold up to close scrutiny and if you want to waste your time dissecting it's flaws, ready to point out the litany of contrivances, the film is a victim for vivisection. I just don't give a fuck. It is FUN! It is so beautiful to look at and the final result of several creative minds produced a film that builds a campfire story into 1980 seacoastal Cali, with fishing village contemporary folks commemorating 100 year anniversary, "celebrating murderers". The diary, a haunted priest, a beach campfire story where an old local tells a story at Midnight to spook a gaggle of kids, fog that has a life of its own, paranormal reactions sparked by a reawakening curse, fishermen out on the Sea Grass to get shitfaced meeting their doom in the form of maggot-faced ghouls from the leper colony ship returning to seek six lives, the jazz lighthouse radio station DJ divorcee who tries to warn others and endangered herself, a piece of plank board from the Elizabeth Dane seemingly transformed from a gold dabloon found by DJ's son, a hitchhiker from Pasadena who strikes up with an easygoing fisherman investigating just why his friends never returned to dock after a night on the water, village committee chairman always busy about the community with her sarcastic assistant with the "rolling her eyes" attitude hoping to get the commemorating event off without a hitch starting to worry about why her hubby didn't return from the Sea Grass, the weatherman always flirting with lighthouse DJ making the wrong decision to work the night he was supposed to be off, and the babysitter who unlocks the door to see who is knocking while DJ's son wants to see who it is makes up a film that could get critically knocked around but has plenty to offer the undiscriminating fan. Let's the story work itself over you. Worry less about how the film gets all the characters to the church and just embrace it's implausibilities as efforts made to tell the ghost story of ghouls from the past seeking the gold stolen from them, looking to take six lives in exchange for the conspirators who murdered them. And that cast is to die for, accumulated skillfully, perhaps Carpenter's best ensemble. And the music once again layers the film with mood and unease. The poster with Curtis I'm always willing to pimp...

I've spent many a Saturday night with The Fog. And I will spend many more if allowed in the future. It has been with me, as other Carpenter films, during almost my entire life. We're lifers.