The Fog
A film that could be considered one of the few missteps in the legendary and storied career of John Carpenter, itās nonetheless worth a watch for those who had their brains fried by the needless remake of recent years. This viewer knew he was in trouble early here, with John Housemanās showy cameo setting up the story by telling the legend behind it at a campfire in front of a bunch of kids, but it really has little connection to the rest of the film and feels tacked on (as indeed it was, filmed later on when the producers felt that the filmās running time was too short). Then thereās the montage of the different phenomena occurring around the cursed town of Antonio Bay before the fog arrives: What might be creepy to a little kid looks more like a series of random (and not all that interesting) events to the adult viewer. The cast is an eclectic group indeed: Adrienne Barbeau as the owner and DJ of the townās radio station (which plays the most boring music imaginable) has strength and sex appeal aplenty, even if she barely has any interaction with anyone else in the cast; Jamie Lee Curtis as the sexy hitchhiker who rolls into town just as things get started shows promise, but soon descends into an uninteresting near-catatonic state thru the rest of the film as she depends on other characters to protect her (Laurie Strode she is not); As the de facto hero of the film, Tom Atkins is as smooth as shit from a duckās ass, especially the way he quickly and deftly beds down Jamie Lee early on; Janet Leigh as the Mayor brings little to the stock role of the clueless town elder; Nancy Loomis as her assistant (best remembered as Annie Brackett in the original Halloween) brings a sense of humor and her own unique sex appeal to the proceedings; Carpenter regulars Charles Cyphers and George āBuckā Flower show up in minor roles, and even Carpenter himself works in his own cameo to the film, a rare occurrence indeed; Finally there is Hal Halbrook as the tormented priest who figures out the fogās secret: While Halbrook is fine in his serious roles, here he turns up the ham meter to about a 9, par for the course when he does b-level genre films. The filmās biggest fault is really that the premise is just not that scary: The Fog rolls in, various characters get a knock on their door, answer it to see no one standing there, and then get attacked and killed by a bunch of extras in ghoulish makeup. The fact that the undead sailors who travel with the fog were actually lepers when they were alive is a plot point that adds little to the story, and comes off like a gimmicky detail more than anything else. In the end, an exercise in style from the master that nonetheless gets hampered down by its own lame premiseā¦
5/10