The Fog (1980)

After the surprise success of Halloween one would have thought John Carpenter would be able to do about anything he wanted, and that it would have been followed quickly by another blockbuster.  Instead, Carpenter made two made-for-television movies, Someone's Watching Me! and Elvis.  While not exactly the independent films he would have wanted to do, it did allow him to work with two actors that would feature in two of his well-known movies, Kurt Russell and Adrienne Barbeau.  By the time The Fog was made, Debra Hill and John Carpenter still continued a professional relationship, but he had gone on to marry Barbeau. 

He wasn't interested so much in doing a sequel to Halloween - he remained a producer on those movies, but expected them to be an anthology series featuring other directors - but in directing a story he and Hill had written, inspired by a real 19th century incident in Goleta, California and by a foggy visit to Stonehenge.  Wisely bringing Jamie Lee Curtis back for a second outing, he also was able to get her mother Janet Leigh to play a part, as well as one of the few lead roles by Tom Atkins.  With a little extra inspiration from Play Misty for Me he managed to make yet another hit horror film.

Antonio Bay is a small town in northern California with a local legend.  A ship called Elizabeth Dane was accidentally lured onto the rocks instead of into the bay during a freak fogbank, and it is said if the fog ever returns that the sailors that perished will have their revenge.  As the town's 100th anniversary approaches so does a strange, glowing fogbank that seems to move independently of the wind, while the electronics in the town go haywire.  Father Malone (Hal Holbrook), who tends the old church in town, finds a diary that explains what is happening. 

Meanwhile, radio host Stevie Wayne (Barbeau) becomes concerned as she watches from the lighthouse where she has her studio.  The strange events also affect Nick Castle (Atkins) after picking up hitchhiker Elizabeth (Curtis), and he soon finds himself embroiled in a mystery of what happened to his friends on their fishing boat.  Although Father Malone reveals the truth to Mayor Williams (Leigh), she still goes ahead with the celebrations, but soon the fog overruns the town and it appears that the men of the Elizabeth Dane have come back to right some wrongs.  

Barbeau is isolated from a lot of the other cast.  Part of that was that reshoots were done to add content, such as Mr. Machem's (John Houseman) telling the tale of the Dane to local children and a battle with the ghosts in the lighthouse.  It's probably not something many people picked up on, but if one watches enough movies these things start to become a bit more obvious after a while, and Carpenter expertly hides it by blending it in with the ghosts' attack on the church. 

Makeup and special effects artist Rob Bottin plays Blake, the leader of the ghost crew, and there is some great makeup work the few times that they are filmed close up.  Largely, Carpenter plays to his strengths, letting the fog give the scenes atmosphere as well as keep many of the features of Blake and his men hidden.  A tall, imposing dark figure with glowing eyes works better than a ton of prosthetics, especially since Carpenter, though the budget was much more than Halloween, was still a bit on the low side. 

Everyone gives a decent performance but, as usual, the events of the story often take precedence over building the characters.  It often seems he wrote the characters a building blocks, and treated his best movies like compositions, in which everything plays its part.  That means that The Fog is not going to do a deep dive into even the leads, but rather a decent performance is still needed to make the events work.  They do with The Fog, creating an otherworldly atmosphere with a lot of tension, even if some of the shots of the fog rolling in from a distance aren't that convincing after all these years.  

The Fog (1980)

Time: 89 minutes

Starring: Adrienne Barbeau, Tom Atkins, Jamie Lee Curtis, Hal Holbrook, Janet Leigh

Director: John Carpenter