Retrospectre
By Kim August
The FOG
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| The Fog © Avco-Embassy |
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| The Fog © Avco-Embassy |
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| The Fog © Avco-Embassy |
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| The Fog © Avco-Embassy |
So why do I think The FOG is one of John Carpenter's cooler movies, here are 4 reasons why it works as a Horror Film.
1) Core Story. The central crux of the story, lepers only wanting to better their living situation by moving closer to the mainland, only to be bumped off and burglarized by the local populace living only a mile distant from proposed new leper colony is scary enough. Prejudice against afflicted, diseased and crippled people still goes on today. Just look at what the people with AIDS have to live with. The majority wins over the minority and that's sadly still the case. Of course, the ghost story beginning hides this truth from the locals and 100 years to the day of the murders. I can't help but root for Captain Blake and his spectral cohorts as they right the wrongs done unto them a century previous.
2) The Fog as living entity. Part of the reason why this movie still scares the bejeebers out of me, is because Fog is a mysterious, and often foreboding act of nature. Carpenter and Hill's concept of a 'living' Fog bank that glows (accomplished with pulsing lights) heightens the ominous potential of these cloud banks by 1000x. The audience doesn't feel any safer than the cast. It's alive...what's inside? And who hasn't been stuck walking home enveloped in fog at night at least once?
And fog lends itself to the dream state, take the saying "lost in a fog" for example. Not surprisingly the film opens with Debra Hill's insertion of Edgar Allen Poe's quote:"Is all that we see or seem that but the dream within the dream?"
The effects were done with actual fog, filmed on location at Pt. Reyes Station, California (the second foggiest place in America), and optically. Dry ice and fog machines (by Dick Albain Jr.) provided the monstrous cloud banks.
3)Music and Sound Effects. Like many of Carpenter's early films, both music and sound effects enhance the imagery. Carpenter uses his musical skill to lend the apt creepiness to The FOG, just as he did with HALLOWEEN and ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK.
The music is particularly effective when the ghosts hunt their prey. Sound has a lot to do with my scares from this film. The relentless pounding of the door to the weather station by the ghosts, still makes me tremble. The unstoppable force that you know will come and do you in. And few noises are scarier than the clanking of chains in the otherwise stillness of night. It's something we know. The sloshing of the drowned lepers feet, seems to pump the reality of their return from the dark, cold depths of the ocean. But the sound effect that sticks with me is the noise of Blakes century-old cutlass decapitating Father Malone. That whoosh and resulting squish still makes me jump.
4) Lastly, the coolest thing about The FOG are The Ghosts themselves. Played primarily by Tommy Lee Wallace and Rob Bottin, the reborn shapes stand horribly out in the pulsating light of the living Fog.
Seen mostly as imposing black shapes in the glowing sea of mist, we don't know, or perhaps don't want to know what their appearance is. Only the being know as Wormface makes a brief show while fighting to get at Adrienne Barbeau's Stevie Wayne character. One of the films better scenes hints at more than just a mere shape in the mist. Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Atkins and Ty Mitchell are desperately trying to flee the Fog in their truck but can't due to the vehicle being stuck in mud. Trapped as the forms of the lepers creep closer, the tension builds. Clever camera angles raise the scares! For instance only seeing hand of one ghost holding a very large fish hook. Tommy Wallace plays most of the hand grabbing ghosts and the one that gets to bump off all of the cast members except for Father Malone. But the best is Captain Blake (played by Rob Bottin). A giant who slowly 'walks' toward Father Malone in the Church climax at the end of the film. His sword gradually being released from it's century of stillness in the scabbard, eyes blaring a nasty luminous red: you know Malone will not survive his encounter with this vengeful spirit. Blake's form almost engulfs Malone as he takes back the gold (in the form of a golden cross) that was stolen from the lepers 100 years before. When Blake and his comrades vanish after retrieving the gold, we know it's not over.
A lot of people thought the movie should have ended at this point, but the final scene: the claiming of the 6th conspirator was a perfect way to end a film filled with so many things that go bump in the night. Carpenter and Bottin fans are urged to pick up the deluxe laser disc of the film.
© 1997 Pharr Out! magazine, page designed by Maddalena Romano.