Now Time for One More Story...A Clipper Ship Drew Toward Land

It has become a running joke regarding how fast Nick Castle (Tom Atkins) gets laid with hitchhiker, Elizabeth (Jamie Lee Curtis), within the “witching hour” (from Midnight til 1 belongs to the dead) of the 21^st of April. It pretty much goes like this: Nick picks Elizabeth up, offers her a swig of his beer (driving while drinking), she accepts (a swig of beer from a total stranger), the two discuss being weird, Nick quips (after told he’s her 13^th ride) about being unlucky with Elizabeth assuring him he might be, as the windows of the truck break, as the film later cuts to them in bed together at his house, afterward learning each other’s names! Ah, yes, California, 1980.

This hour is quite a prominent piece of the film. It sets up what will eventually ascend on the 100^th anniversary of the ancestors of Antonio Bay and their decision to kill the members of the Elizabeth Dane clipper ship with its leper colony/crew, as we see three on a fishing boat fall to them (and a brief glimpse of the ship, engulfed in fog, riding alongside) in quick succession (just out for a bit to get drunk). A sweeper in a service station (I always enjoyed this small visit, where you see seaside tourist items on shelves as the soundtrack (the Foley offering plenty of breakables shattering)) reveals glass breaking while a gas station in town has a car in the shop lifted off the ground while a gas pump drops to the ground, leaking out gas from a pump running up the price. Sandy (Nancy Kyes), in her living room sees her television turn on and a chair move across the floor on its own (my favorite part of this whole strange ordeal), while the fog “behaves” in ways Lighthouse DJ Stevie Wayne (Barbeau) and weatherman, Dan (Charles Cyphers) can’t seem to agree on as their monitors reveal an atmospheric reaction quite extraordinary. All of this, including Nick’s near death when answering his door (as the 1 strikes and the glass in his grandfather clock cracks), sets up a pattern of events to wet our minds of what might be to come.

No other film has challenged how I rate films like “The Fog” (1980). If you look at the screenplay, there are a lot of plot points that just will never hold up to dissection. It will make your head hurt. Like how the fog knows to knock out the phone lines just so Stevie Wayne can’t talk to the sheriff (and why would it matter anyway? The sheriff couldn’t stop Blake and his unmerry band of rot-faced, seaweed-and-worm infested leper walking corpses returning from the hereafter to get their gold back (and revenge) even if he wanted to…) or what happens to victims when Blake and his unmerry band kills them (seriously, where do they go?)  I have often debated whether or not I should reward this 3/5 or 5/5 just because I LOVE watching this. I watch it every year, sometimes two times. I know one year I watched it several times (this was in the 90s on TNT ALL THE TIME), to the point where when it was on at night and I was studying and taking care of homework (or just eating dinner or reading something) I let it go as background. I think it is 50% cast, 25% the California locations, and 25% the ghost story come true. How the fog moves and why really aren’t as important to me as the ensemble in their own different stories within Antonio Bay eventually coming together at a Catholic church where a haunted priest (Holbrook) has realized (after finding an ancestor’s diary from 1880) his township was founded by murderers.

Late last night I was thinking about “The Fog” and if it does have my favorite cast ever assembled for a horror film. I’m quite sure, at the end of the day, this is the case. The cast list: Janet Leigh, Tom Atkins, Hal Holbrook, Jamie Lee Curtis, Adrienne Barbeau, and John Houseman (his one day’s work, an idea Carpenter seemed to decide upon because his previous “finished product” wasn’t up to snuff, kicks off the film and I can’t imagine “The Fog” without his story at a campfire to enthralled kids on the beach), with Cyphers and Kyes as fun support. But the lighthouse and the Pacific Ocean, the wide swath of California beach Stevie’s son finds the “old stick of wood with “Dane” imprinted on it” out of a doubloon), the creepy church Holbrook never leaves, and the little home Stevie lives, along with the smooth jazz on the radio and the township that seems quite closed off and tightly associated all sort of absorb me into its late 79/early 80 world. I do indeed get lost in this film’s setting. And perhaps that is what I think keeps it must-see viewing annually. I can escape into it.

I actually remember seeing clips of it in “Terror in the Aisles” when I was a kid. “Terror in the Aisles” really did prepare the way for me as a horror film. I was stunned by sweet Mrs. Kobritz dragged out of Stevie’s front door by Blake and his crew as they bring down the hooks into the colorful fog that removes her from our sight and thought as a kid…those ghouls will kill anybody! And, of course, Curtis and Leigh in the same film, “The Fog” not long after “Halloween”, and only two years before Atkins gets his own Halloween sequel without that pesky Michael Myers. And the great poster art with Curtis trying to keep out one of Blake’s crew. How the screenplay conducts its group of particular characters and eventually corrals them into the church might not necessarily be altogether clean without its imperfections but the presentation (in Panavision, set to a wide scope) from Carpenter, with just the right score once again, and plenty of ingredients that I have spent perhaps repeated write-ups in the past underscoring (and over-elaborating) over the years, overcompensates for what might not work as well. And we get not just Mr. Machen’s campfire story but two others juxtaposed together: the priest’s diary read by Holbrook’s Father Malone and Nick’s memory of his father bringing home a doubloon from “Resa Jane”, a ship found on the ocean without a crew. Just lots of goodies and Carpenter’s bag perhaps added some more in order to help work out what other problems existed before “tidying up” the film. Whatever he did, I’m glad this is the finished product, warts and all.