The Fog Rolls in Another 21st of April

 

This year my daughter wanted to watch The Fog (1980) with me. Who am I to say, no, right? Her genuine nail-biting, holding hand to the eyes reactions to the fog approaching the weather station and Stevie's house where Ms. Kobritz was babysitting her son was a hoot to me. And John's music score really just increased the intensity. She was happy to have watched it, though, relieved that Stevie made it out okay.

I smiled during the "Are you weird?" question to Nick Castle (Atkins) from hitchhiking Liz (Curtis) because of Tom Atkins' commentary in "In Search of Darkness". Atkins was such a gift in that documentary. Every time he shows up, I grin ear to ear because he has one little comment after another that just cracks me up. He addresses what a lot of horror (and Atkins') fans often joke about to each other in terms of bedding women in all his early movies...why he lands Curtis in bed so early (without them even knowing each other's names even) is because "he's smoooooooth."

That scene where Stevie Wayne (Barbeau) looks out her lighthouse window and sees that incredible ocean, and later when Carpenter shoots her little boy fishing (where he finds the doubloon that turns to a piece of ship wood), the locations, I'm quite sure, of Antonio Bay, California, are a great reason, with the cast a close second and presentation of the fog a near third, of why I can watch this over and over and over. And this viewing, I'm just taking in every shot of water that I guess locals always take for granted. God, that music. I always go back and forth on my favorite soundtrack, but The Fog might just be it.

I just can't help but applaud Carpenter's film editing the story told from Nick, recollecting his father's fishing story about the "Resa Jane" and Holbrook's Father Malone's reading from the diary of how colonists and his ancestor were responsible for the murder of Blake and his leper crew.

Fog poster on the wall while watching film

Debra Hill making an appearance to the left