DVD: Horror: John Carpenter's The Fog
Year: 1980
Score: 9/10
Bottom Line: Fear the remake.
Kathy Williams: Sandy, you're the only person I know who can make "Yes, Ma'am" sound like "screw you".
Sandy Fadel: Yes, Ma'am.
This will be the review that gets my ass booted off blabapalooza, I just know it.
Kelly, you and I have spent a significant chunk of our lives watching bad movies. Bad, bad movies. We have developed an affinity for them, an acquired taste, a---whatever. Girl, you are so wrong about The Fog's remake being better than the original. And now I'm gonna tell you how.
The Good:
This is a scary movie, even after repeated viewings. It's my absolutely favorite lonely little ghost story.
As our story begins, the tiny town of Antonio Bay is getting ready to celebrate its 100th anniversary with a big party and an even bigger statue of the town's founders. But a drunk priest stumbles upon one of the founders' diary, telling the story of how he stole the land (and the gold to found the town) from a boatload of lepers. Awkward. Meanwhile, single mom Stevie Wayne runs a radio station out of the town's lighthouse, and is desperately trying to tell everyone about a mysterious fog bank whipping around the harbor against the wind, eating boats. And people. And Higgins from "Magnum PI". Good times.
John Carpenter's score is spot on, lonely soft piano notes afloat on the abandoned coast, and the section where the ship's artifacts go batshit in the radio station and start a fire are pretty creeptastic. As is the scene in the morgue. You know the one. I have seen this movie possibly ten times (oh hush) and I still have to look away, because who among us has not had a nightmare featuring an eyeless zombie shuffling up behind us while we're innocently unaware? Eeeee! And while many people hear the shower-violins from Psycho when they think of horror movies, I hear those lonesome piano notes. Eeeeee!
The scenery is terrific, and well-shot to boot. Not only is "Antonio Bay" (aka Point Reyes) just a pretty piece of Northern California, but this film does a great job of illustrating that Northern California can do lonely, windswept and heartless as well as postcard-golden and surftastic. The cinematography in this film is almost loving of its non-human (and non-zombie) subjects: think of the shot with Adrienne Barbeau walking down all the steps to the lighthouse. You really get a sense of the isolation and loneliness her character is experiencing. All the beach shots highlight the surf slamming into the rocks and the whitecaps out on the ocean.
Nothin' but water, Stevie. But it sure beats Chicago.
Adrienne Barbeau's five inch tall, perfectly semicircular bangs, which are themselves impervious to both undead leper pirates and potentially dampening fog.
Also, and this may be a personal thing, but I'm particularly pleased that the heroine, Jamie Lee Curtis, does not drop everything to begin making out with a zombie leper pirate. Unlike in some movies I could mention.
The Bad:
Hal Holbrook, I feel, is the only casting misstep in the movie. Really, he makes such a crap drunk priest, and it's probably the least challenging role in the movie besides the kid. And the kid would even have made a better drunk priest. Also, when the pirates finally come for ol' Hal, they appear to kill him with intricate ballroomdancing steps that end in fire. It's a moment that is made all the less poignant if you sing the Blue Oyster Bar theme from the Police Academy series while you watch Blake and Malone dance the forbidden zombie dance.
And really, I have just made it sound way better than it was.
The Ugly:
Y'know, there really aren't many things less attractive than undead leper pirates.
And The Meta:
Oh hey, Manifest Destiny, what's up? Yeah, I know, that whole "Westward expansion" PR project is coming along gangbusters. I mean, I haven't heard anyone mention genocide or corruption or religious bigotry in ages. Yeah, totally. We should go for a beer sometime.
It's historically interesting that this movie makes an attempt to bring to light some of the sins involved in settling California and the West, by using a microcosm of that settlement. And it roundly condemns the greed and ignorance that underpinned a large portion of American history in the 19th century*
Convention-defying in a couple key ways. First of all, Jamie Lee Curtis' character sleeps with the guy who picks her up while hitchhiking (classy!), and the killers do in fact come for both of them; however, they are saved by one of two things, depending on your reading of the movie. Just as he opens his front door to admit the zombie pirate (who has been polite enough to knock first) the clock strikes midnight and promptly breaks, cracking the glass. Simultaneously, Stevie's voice comes over the radio, announcing the time. So you could say the lovers were saved by supernatural agency, or you could say they were saved by the Final Girl.
But that in itself is problematic, as the survivors form a sort of Final Crew: the lovers and the mother and child. Really the only people that snuff it are some NPC townspeople, the babysitter and the dancing priest. Relatively low body count but high on the creepometer.
Watching an original movie and its remake is a unique viewing experience, because it's fascinating to see which facets of the story are highlighted and which deleted in the remake. For instance, in the original, when Father Malone says to Blake, "I'm Father Malone. I'm the sixth conspirator: take me!" He's not actually inviting Blake to make out with him.
But truth be told, comparing old Fog to new is unfair for the simple reason that the two are so completely different as to be barely related. One's a moody windswept California ghost story, and the other's like a two-hour Dawson's Creek special on zombies. Apples and oranges, my friend. Apples and oranges.
*Dude. Don't get me started. It's my favorite period of history to read about for the simple fact that even the tamest textbook can't hide the no-holds-barred soap opera of it all. A good primer is William Speidel's Sons of the Profits or, There's No Business Like Grow Business: The Seattle Story 1851-1901**.
**What on earth happened with this review? Where am I? Whose shoes are these? We're in Seattle?