THE FOG
Nice try, and it IS Carpenter, but...
There are no John Carpenter movies that I genuinely dislike, but there are a few that have left me largely indifferent. The Fog is one such movie; it has some good moments, performances, and a lot of great atmosphere throughout, but it doesn't add up to much, and after the closing credits roll, I always find myself unable to remember what just happened.
The movie opens up with a pretty good ghost story from John "We eeeeeeearn it!" Houseman, kind of setting up the events of the film but not really. He tells of a shipload of sailors drowned when they foolishly steer toward a light that turns out to be a campfire (d'oh!), and how one day, they'll come looking for that campfire and take their revenge on, well, anybody nearby. The sailor ghost story we see in the film is a shade different. These ghosts are a shitload - I mean, a shipload - of leper pirates who go house to house, knocking on your door with their hooks, and if you answer, SKLIIIIIIIIOOSH! Groin to gullet.
Hal Holbrook plays a priest who discovers a box behind some bricks in the church on the 100th anniversary of the founding of the town, Antonia Bay. In the box is an old diary which warns him that the hour from midnight 'til one belongs to the dead, and later tells him of the fates of a shipload of lepers who were murdered by Antonia Bay residents a century before, presumably out of fear of them spreading their disease, although you never know, maybe one of them kept turning into a giant monkey-monster or something. What are you lookin' at me for, I haven't got all the answers!
Adrienne Barbeau shows up as the local DJ, sporting a great voice for radio (I've been told the same about my own, but once was by a crazy person, and the other chick is trying to sell me Amway). Jamie Lee Curtis is here are a hitchhiker, Darwin Johnson as a coroner (named Dr. Phibes, no less), Nancy Loomis as a local girl, Charles Cyphers as a weather-station guy...it's like a who's-who of John Carpenter regulars. (even Carp himself shows up near the beginning of the film)
The basic problem with The Fog is that it seems to be all atmosphere and no scares; it keeps promising something frightening, but never delivers, always seeming on the verge of being a truly terrifying movie, but not even trying to pull it off. If it were half as frightening as it hints at, then we could overlook the more minor but more numerous problems: the characters (too numerous to list, none looked at closely in the slightest), the dialogue, the slow, slow, SLOW pace. As it is, well, see for yourself; it feels like about four hours long, no small feat for an 89-minute movie.
There are some creepy moments (like the fog slipping over the hill toward the lighthouse where much of the film's "action" takes place), and some intense ones (a rooftop evasion of the fog spirits, and two people in a car who try to avoid the fog but keep running into it). Carpenter slips in some pretty memorable sights too, like the red-eyed silhouette leader of the ghosts holding on to a big, blazing gold cross. But it all comes to naught - it's striking just how little actually happens in this movie. It might have worked as a half-hour episode of a TV series, but as it is, it's basically a good effort that doesn't pan out.
For Carpenter fans only, really. All others aren't likely to find much to interest them.