John Carpenter’s The Fog (1980) 2

Written by: James Drew

Closing in

Yours truly was in a very good mood last night; for one, it was Halloween, and anyone who knows me at all will tell you that, given my predeliction for the macabre in all art forms, it is one of my favourite ‘holidays’ in the long year. But that wasn’t all – the Divine C, in a wonderful break with tradition, actually allowed me to choose the film for our evening’s viewing and, not only that, pronounced it as being ‘quite good’ after we had watched it. I think you know that I am going to say that I believe John Carpenter’s The Fog (1980) to be far, far better than my beloved’s take, but I am *really* not complaining here.

Anyway, back to the film – Carpenter had recently exploded onto the fear-film scene with his magisterial Halloween (1978). The director was set, just two years later, to give the world what is still one of the finest horror films ever made, namely John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) . But, by way of an interim piece, he really couldn’t have done much better than The Fog, which still stands as one of the scariest, most atmospheric ghost stories committed to film.

It has the simplicity of a grim camp-fire tale – it does in fact begin with grizzled sea-salt Mr Machen (John Houseman) sitting with a group of young children on the beach at midnight in the coastal fishing town of Antonio Bay, on the eve of the town’s 100th anniversary. The story that Machen tells involves how a clipper ship was lured onto the rocks near Spivey Point a century ago by a camp fire on the beach, and how the town’s fishermen, and their fathers, and their fathers fathers, tell how the crew will one day rise from their watery grave, to take revenge on their betrayers’ descendants. Guess what…

Please, I beg you, just forget the 2005 remake by Rupert Wainwright. Like Rob Zombie’s version of Halloween (2007), Wainright’s film attempted to provide a ‘back story’ for its terrors, which really didn’t work at all in either case. No – in Carpenter’s original, while the vengeful zombie-like sailors do want to claim lives for lives, they are far more interested simply in scaring people at which, with the simplest of devices (insistent hooks banging on doors at midnight, slow but purposeful lurching towards their prey) they are more than effective.

And the fog itself is simply wonderful. If you haven’t yet seen the film, settle in for an evening with someone dear to you, light the candles, turn off the lights and settle down for a taste of terror. There’s something in the fog…

89 mins.

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