Recovered Classic: The Fog

No slouch when it comes to nail-gnawing terror and suspense, John Carpenter’s credentials as a genre director are indisputable. With the likes of Halloween, Assault on Precinct 13, Christine, They Live, In the Mouth of Madness, and Escape From New York under his belt, the man’s got a pretty decent track record, even if he has churned out some garbage along the way. But his second helming effort, The Fog, is easily one of his best, a chilling supernatural ghost story displaying a masterful simplicity of style which Carpenter has rarely repeated.

It works so effectively because after opening with John Houseman telling a creepy late night ghost story to a bunch of kids huddled round a beachside camp fire, the film doesn’t stray into familiarly overblown slasher territory. Instead, Carpenter (who makes an early cameo appearance) maintains the same measured, brooding tone throughout, slowly escalating the fear and panic before unloading both barrels in the final act.

Written by Carpenter and producer Debra Hill (who also produced Halloween and various other Carpenter movies), the story is centred on Antonio Bay in California, a sleepy seaside town which hides a sinister 100-year-old secret. A century ago, the members of an offshore leper colony, led by a wealthy man named Blake, planned to relocate to the mainland close to Antonio Bay. Outraged by the prospect of having lepers as neighbours, the town’s most influential residents hatched a dastardly plot and caused their ship to sink in foggy seas as they made their way to their new home, killing everyone on board. To make matters worse, they also plundered the vessel for Blake’s riches. Now, with Antonio Bay about to celebrate its centenary, the current residents—who have the blood of their ancestors on their hands—are about to be visited by some mightily hacked off ghostly lepers, who are keen to do some hacking off of their own in an effort to wreak vengeance and reclaim their treasure.

The dreadful truth about the town’s grisly past is discovered in an old journal by priest Hal Holbrook (whose grandfather was one of the original conspirators). But his fate is left until the final reel. Before that, the undead mariners—whose arrival is always preceded by the appearance of an eerie fog bank—have other residents to dispose of. These include young hitchhiker Jamie Lee Curtis (appearing alongside her mother Janet Leigh) and sultry local radio DJ Stevie Wayne (played by Adrienne Barbeau, who was then Carpenter’s wife) a single mother whose station is located in a remote lighthouse.

Always ready with a he’s-behind-you scare to build on the spooky atmosphere created by Carpenter’s bone-rattling soundtrack, while it seems a tad over-polite on the part of the spectral slayers to knock before they come in and slice you to pieces, there’s a universal creepiness to The Fog which owes a lot to the ominous titular haze. It’s not the main villain of the piece, but it does signal impending doom, Carpenter using its malevolent presence to crank up the tension and often leaving the viewer to complete their own mental picture of what’s happening, which can often be scarier than actually being presented with the images on screen.
Much of the juicier action is left for the build up to the climax in Holbrook’s church, with Barbeau twigging that “there’s something in the fog,” prompting her to broadcast its movements over the airwaves in a desperate attempt to warn the town’s residents, including her own son. But having abandoned their watery grave after 100 years, the phantom lepers (who brandish a frightening array of pointy weaponry) prove to be an unstoppable force, unlike Carpenter, who could have done with some of their resilience during his later directing career.

The Fog, however, is a prime example of what he’s capable of and as a film it offers plenty of lessons in how to do scary, suspenseful and spine-tingling to maximum effect with minimum effort.

David Lichtneker

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