The Fog. (15.)
Directed by John Carpenter. 1980.
Starring Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, Janet Leigh, Hal Holbrook, John Houseman, Tom Atkins. 89 mins. A brand new 4K restoration. Back in cinemas for Halloween.
The Fog isn't the obvious choice for a John Carpenter film to re-release for Halloween. Mostly because he directed Halloween, but also because it's one of his least effective films. Still, his Halloween has already had a run out back in cinemas this autumn, the new version directed by David Gordon Green is still in cinemas, so Studiocanal are pushing this as the lead in to their restoration of four Carpenter classics: the other three are They Live, The Prince of Darkness and Escape From New York.
His follow up to the breakout hit Halloween was originally intended to be a change of pace after the slasher scares of the Michael Myers story. Here, he was aiming for more of ghost tale, something suggestively spooky. The original cut didn't work, so Carpenter went back and shot a few more sequences to add a bit of gore to the picture.
Set in a small California coastal community, on the evening of their 100th anniversary, the town find itself engulfed by a great fog that sweeps in off the sea, a fog containing various cast members of Pirates of the Caribbean hidden within, all bent on murder.
It's a nice premise and the intentions were good but the handling is clumsy. The menace is never clearly defined. For example, the night before they have a kind of test spook, between midnight and one, where they break a few windows, creep out a few locals and slaughter the crew of a fishing boat. During the big climax, spoilers, the entire town is swallowed in fog and presumably by the murderous seamen, but we only follow the small group of lead characters, so the film never tells you what happens the town as a whole.
It does have one of those distinctive and rather magical Carpenter scores, but we only hear the main theme a few times, so it doesn't have a chance to take a hold of us or the picture.
Directed by John Carpenter. 1980.
Starring Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, Janet Leigh, Hal Holbrook, John Houseman, Tom Atkins. 89 mins. A brand new 4K restoration. Back in cinemas for Halloween.
The Fog isn't the obvious choice for a John Carpenter film to re-release for Halloween. Mostly because he directed Halloween, but also because it's one of his least effective films. Still, his Halloween has already had a run out back in cinemas this autumn, the new version directed by David Gordon Green is still in cinemas, so Studiocanal are pushing this as the lead in to their restoration of four Carpenter classics: the other three are They Live, The Prince of Darkness and Escape From New York.
His follow up to the breakout hit Halloween was originally intended to be a change of pace after the slasher scares of the Michael Myers story. Here, he was aiming for more of ghost tale, something suggestively spooky. The original cut didn't work, so Carpenter went back and shot a few more sequences to add a bit of gore to the picture.
Set in a small California coastal community, on the evening of their 100th anniversary, the town find itself engulfed by a great fog that sweeps in off the sea, a fog containing various cast members of Pirates of the Caribbean hidden within, all bent on murder.
It's a nice premise and the intentions were good but the handling is clumsy. The menace is never clearly defined. For example, the night before they have a kind of test spook, between midnight and one, where they break a few windows, creep out a few locals and slaughter the crew of a fishing boat. During the big climax, spoilers, the entire town is swallowed in fog and presumably by the murderous seamen, but we only follow the small group of lead characters, so the film never tells you what happens the town as a whole.
It does have one of those distinctive and rather magical Carpenter scores, but we only hear the main theme a few times, so it doesn't have a chance to take a hold of us or the picture.
