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From the Corner: The Fog (1980)


I love John Carpenter movies.

I also love foggy nights.

I love that there's a movie that combines both these two loves of my life.

John Carpenter's "The Fog"!

A small coastal American town is celebrating their 100th Anniversary.  Strange phenomena, and the discovery of a fishing vessel with all of it's crew drowned below decks marks the beginning of a night of ghostly horror... all accompanied by the slowly creeping fog swallowing up the town in its depths...

"The Fog", is an excellent little ghost story.  It's spooky, suspenseful, and mysterious all at the same time.  The sort of story you'd tell on a dark night around a campfire... which is how this movie starts out, actually.  The opening of the "Sea Captain" about to tell one last ghost story helps to set the mood and tone of the rest of the movie.

One of the best opening scenes of a movie I've seen in a long time.  Don't believe me?  Check it out:


Just a masterpiece of exposition, and mood setting.

But a good opening is nothing if the rest of the story isn't up to the same standard.  Fortunately, you won't be disappointed- so long as you enjoy suspense more than gore and grue.  This story slowly builds in tension in the same way the fog slowly grows and takes over the scenery.  I found myself engulfed in the mood and storytelling right to the end.

The characters are pretty decent.  Fairly standard for the time period- but unique enough that you come to like them.  I must confess that as much as I enjoyed the multiple character arcs, it did make it hard to really come to care about them as much as it might have been possible.  There just wasn't enough time spent on each arc to really get you emotionally involved with the characters of that subplot.

The acting, however, helped to compensate for the lack of time spent on the development of the characters.  Each performer brought a reality to their roles that helped to make you care at least a bit about each of them.  Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, Janet Leigh, Tom Atkins, Nancy Loomis, and Hal Holbrook were- as usual, put in great performances.  And special kudos to John Housemen for his role in the opening scene.

While, the camera work used some pretty standard techniques for the time period, John Carpenter uses those techniques deftly in order to weave a wonderfully visual flow to the story.

I will not hesitate to say that "The Fog" is one of my favorite horror movies of all time, and sits firmly by the campfire on the log reserved for "The Good".
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