EVEN at the height of his career, John Carpenter knew that as a director, he was a throwback.
The under-appreciated master of the updated B-movie famously told an interviewer: “If I had three wishes, one of them would be ‘send me back to the 40s and the studio system and let me direct movies’, because I would have been happiest there. I feel I am a little bit out of time.”
And there could be few better taglines to describe his 1980 cult classic The Fog, which is re-released this week ahead of Halloween in a spanking new 4K digital restoration at the Nuart Theatre in West Los Angeles.
At the height of his productivity Carpenter specialized in low budget pictures that echoed some of the best works of his heroes, Howard Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock. In movies such as Dark Star (1974), Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) and his slasher masterpiece, Halloween (1978), Carpenter created fully realized, atmospheric and claustrophobic worlds teeming with visceral excitement and rich cinematic texture. And The Fog is no different, opening as the small northern California town of Antonio Bay readies to celebate the 100th anniversary of its founding. In a bravura opening thirty minutes, Carpenter meticulously builds a sense of creeping dread, employing an inventive use of sound and visuals, letting us know that something wicked this way comes and and that very soon the claret will start to flow.
For it turns out that back in the 19th century this sleepy seaside burgh was built on an ill-gotten treasure obtained by the deliberate wrecking of a sailboat with the loss of all souls on board. A century later, those sailors are upset, and using the fog as cover, they’ve come back to exact a heavy toll.
As is always the case in this genre, the townspeople are almost completely clueless to the threat slowly engulfing them, consistently putting themselves in harm’s way as the body count rises. Only the local radio DJ/lighthouse keeper Stevie Wayne (Adrienne Barbeau) and the town’s priest (Hal Holbrook) have an inkling of what is happening and why. Other well-known faces hamming it up as the fog rolls in include the town’s can-do mayor (played by Hitchcock favorite Janet Leigh) and her real-life daughter Jamie Lee Curtis, who pops up as the free-spirited hitchhiker Elizabeth Solley, who catches the wrong ride at the wrong time.
Although The Fog was considered a letdown at the box office after the worldwide success of Halloween, it has aged surprisingly well and benefits hugely from the opening campfire scene of John Houseman, no less, giving a prologue about the town’s founding and foreshadowing the horror to come. The movie plays now as an imaginative mashup of Tales from the Crypt, H.P. Lovecraft, and a Hammer Horror movie and benefits hugely from this new 4K restoration by Studiocanal, with its breathtaking color cinematography by Dean Cundey, who deftly captured both the daylight beauty of the Point Reyes shore (where the movie was filmed) and the ghostly goings-on in the dark, eerie night. It’s all a bit camp, but it’s creepy as hell. In other words, perfect Halloween fare.
The Nuart is located at 11272 Santa Monica Boulevard in West Los Angeles (just west of the 405 Freeway). For details of the theatre’s schedule, visit landmarktheatres.com.
