The Fog (R)
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This came out in 1980, but I didn't see it until 2013. It's possible I hadn't heard of it until 2005, when a remake came out starring a few actors I've liked in other things. But I haven't seen that remake, and probably never will, considering how universally reviled it seems to be. Anyway, I didn't have any particular plans to ever watch the original, either (though I also didn't have any particular plans not to). But I happened to find it in a box of movies Dad had out in the garage, so I brought it in and figured I'd check it out at some point. And I did, the day after a remake of "Evil Dead" hit theaters- which is of course totally unrelated, other than being a horror film, and probably had little if any influence on my decision to watch this tonight. Still, I do tend to mention in my reviews that I sometimes watch similar things on DVD when I can't watch something that's in theaters. So maybe it cemented my decision to watch it. I dunno. Um... I should say "The Fog" is a bit of a classic of the genre, and I can see why. I'm not much of a fan of horror flicks, generally speaking, but they can be alright. And while this didn't turn out to be one of my favorites, of the few things I have seen, I definitely think that in some respects it's one of the best. First of all, it's incredibly atmospheric, and has some genuinely creepy music (which was composed by the film's director/co-writer, John Carpenter). Carpenter, incidentally, is one of very few names I'm aware of from the genre, and someone whose work I've always wanted to see some of. So it's nice to get a taste of it, here. I should also say this movie has some actors of interest to me, including Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, Hal Holbrook, and Janet Leigh (from Psycho, which I hadn't seen yet when I watched this). But possibly the best thing about the movie, IMHO, is that Carpenter clearly understands- unlike many horror filmmakers- that "scary" doesn't have to equal "gory."

Anyway, the movie is set in a coastal town called Antonio Bay, California. It begins with an old fisherman telling a ghost story to a bunch of kids around a campfire. And while I kind of wanted to punch holes in his story, I had to admit it was a fairly good one. It just takes a few minutes to tell (it concludes at midnight), and it's about a ship called the Elizabeth Dane that sank off the shore of the settlement one hundred years ago, just before the place actually became a township. Apparently it had sunk because of a mysterious fog that rolled in, quite unexpectedly. And the story holds that if the fog ever returned, the people who had died on the ship would come back to take revenge on the town. (It doesn't make much sense from the story alone why they wanted revenge, basically the rationale seemed tailored to make it an effective campfire story. But eventually we'll learn the truth behind the shipwreck, and that makes the desire for revenge more plausible.)

One of the kids listening to the story was named Andy Wayne. His mother, Stevie (Barbeau), owns the local lighthouse, which also houses a radio station, KAB, but she's the only one who works there. She apparently DJs every night from 6pm to 1am, and she's got the perfect voice for it. She regularly gets calls from a guy named Dan, who works at a weather monitoring station. On this particular night, around midnight, he tells her about a fog that's heading toward a boat. We then get to see the three occupants of the boat, who encounter the fog, and a ghost ship, and, you know, some murderous ghosts. Meanwhile, there's a guy named Nick Castle, who picks up a hitchhiker named Elizabeth (Curtis). Some weird stuff happens to them, just as weird stuff is happening all over town. But it ends at 1am. The next day, they go out looking for the boat (I guess the guy who owned it was a friend of Nick's). Also, a woman named Kathy Williams (Leigh) is the chairperson of the town's preparations to celebrate its centennial, that night. She and her assistant, Sandy, had each experienced some of the town's weirdness the preceding night. And I guess her husband was one of the guys on the boat (though I didn't catch whether it was the same one who was Nick's friend). Anyway, Kathy and Sandy go talk to a local priest, Father Malone (Holbrook), who I guess is supposed to give a benediction at the celebration. But he clearly likes his wine a bit too much. More important, during last night's weirdness, he discovered a hidden diary kept by his grandfather, who'd also been a priest, and among the founders of Antonio Bay. The diary revealed the shocking truth behind the town's founding, and also why the ghosts want revenge, but I won't spoil that.

Again that night, the fog rolls in, and it glows, and it goes wherever it wants throughout the town, and wherever it goes, the ghosts show up. We barely see them, for the most part, because of the fog, which I think is a pretty effective device for a horror film. There's not much that's scarier than knowing there's something very dangerous that you can't see- at least until it's too late. Of course, Stevie spends the night in her lighthouse, using the radio to warn people about the fog, so eventually anyone who's important to the story follows her advice to get to the old church. And of course, the ghosts attack both the church and the lighthouse. And I guess that's all I want to say. But I usually don't actually find "scary" movies all that scary, and this one... I kinda did. There are deaths, of course, but no real gore. The plot was effective and suspenseful without being complicated. The characters weren't particularly complex, but they were believable, and in a way I felt like their vague everyman/everywoman quality made them more relatable than characters in a lot of movies that are better defined. There's more of a sense of "this could happen to any of us watching the movie," I guess. Or something like that. Eh, I dunno, it was just a good movie.