John Carpenter's THE FOG: Blu-ray Special Edition (Avco/Embassy, 1980) StudioCanal

A good old-fashioned ghost story with all the fixin's...that's John Carpenter’s The Fog (1980). Heavily criticized upon its initial release for not living up to the expectations created by Carpenter’s own Halloween (1978), critics and audiences of the day were obviously missing the point. Carpenter was not looking to carbon-copy Halloween’s formula. Rather, he wanted the cinematic equivalent of sitting around a camp fire, relaying scary stories. Over the years The Fog has grown on me as simply that - a spooky good time. It remains a moody ‘mood’ piece with some very terrifying moments. Carpenter’s great gift to horror fans has always been his uncanny ability to tap into our fear of the unknown. In his early years particularly, Carpenter could make the blood run cold with barely more than a darkened recess, a carefully-timed bit of sparsely composed music and the subtlest sound effect to cue the audience to something lurking just beyond our frame of reference. I like to think of Carpenter as part Mike Todd/part P.T. Barnum, and The Fog as his opus magnum in ghost stories on celluloid.  The Fog is not Halloween and personally I am okay with that. And Carpenter reveals his own versatility and virtuosity in the horror genre by consciously endeavoring neither to ape or even ‘top’ his previous effort. The Fog is its’ own monster mash – similar to Halloween only in Carpenter’s tradition to make us dread pure evil.  Irvin Yablans had agreed to produce the picture following Halloween’s success. For reasons never entirely disclosed by Carpenter (his working relationship with Yablans had been solid) the director instead went with Avco Embassy to make The Fog – infuriating Yablans and creating a rift in their professional relationship.

It is perhaps pointless to view The Fog as a companion piece to Halloween and yet, given the close proximity of both releases it is practically impossible not to partner them together. They share the same director, but that is all. Perhaps part of the problem with The Fog is that, unlike Halloween, whose murderous antagonist, Michael Myers is immediately known to us, the mystery surrounding what is in the fog is not entirely revealed until midway through the movie. As such we are expected to fear something we have never seen and, arguably, cannot relate to because fog itself is amorphous. Yet, this is precisely what makes the movie scary – the fog’s shape-shifting ability to seep and creep along door frames and window sills, slithering through keyholes or under cracks in the front porch; the ghosts of Antonio Bay’s spurious past come to call anonymously, but with a decidedly insidious purpose to make the residents pay for the fateful indiscretions of their forefathers. They say revenge is a dish best served cold. Carpenter adds wet and clammy to this mix and the results are bone-chillingly perverse to say the least. Carpenter infuses the beginning of his ghost story with some very eerie touches; a kinetic energy coursing through the deserted streets that causes lights to flicker and dim, a chair to inexplicably move across the room, and, cars suddenly turning on their headlamps and horns. In some ways the beginning of The Fog plays like an ominous precursor to Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist (1982). But Carpenter is decidedly not at all interested in impressing us with levitating objects or even inanimate ones miraculously come to life. No, he wants us to feel the unease of a sleepy little hamlet being reckoned with because of a terrible secret chapter in its history.

Like Halloween, The Fog is immeasurably blessed by Carpenter’s underscoring – this time more forlorn, low key and somber – a few bars of a piano solo over a single sustained synthesized note that seems to loom large on the horizon just like the fog itself. The film’s pre-title sequence contains an exceptional cameo by John Houseman as a craggy sea captain dangling his pocket watch and telling ghost stories around the campfire to a group of decidedly impressionable school children. This sequence was actually shot on a sound stage with a traveling matte of the California coastline at dusk later added in for the pan tilt and dissolve into the opening credits. Houseman captures the crusty but benign integrity of an old salt tickling the terror of his prepubescent audience. But he also manages to rattle more than a few adults along the way. His narration also perfectly sets up the premise and tone for the rest of the film. So, get ready to be spooked.

Unlike Halloween, The Fog is very much an ensemble piece, perhaps trying a little too hard to be ‘like’ its predecessor while also making valiant attempts to link its pedigree to Psycho (1960) as an even more distant and glorious counterpoint – casting not only Jamie Lee Curtis, but also her mother – Janet Leigh. Nancy Loomis (nee Kyes) is also thrown into the mix. Given Curtis’ success in Halloween and her prominence in the poster art used to promote The Fog, it is a tad off-putting to discover Curtis and Loomis mere appendages to the plot – Loomis, barely glimpsed in the movie’s prologue and a few fleeting scenes thereafter, and Curtis, playing a hapless grifter who easily falls into bed with the first fella to offer her a ride in his truck. Janet Leigh is cast as the town’s somewhat dotty mayor. The script, written by Carpenter and the late Debra Hill, manages to find room for cameos by Hal Holbrook and Adrienne Barbeau (then Carpenter’s wife) and an even briefer appearance by Carpenter as the goony-looking caretaker of the church. If The Fog does have a flaw, it is that none of the aforementioned maintain the dramatic arch on which Carpenter can affix his ‘dark ride’ chills. The Fog is a series of vignettes – brilliantly told as stand-alone pieces – but otherwise mismatched in a puzzle never completely assembled for us before the final fade out. Worse, primarily for those interested only in ‘body count’ – our ‘stars’ are never truly in harm’s way for very long. The fog’s victims hail from an ever-evolving roster of cardboard cutout characters from the supporting cast, hacked and/or gutted, but with no invested consequence by the audience.

The unsuspecting population of Antonio Bay, a sleepy southern California fishing village built on the ruins of a leper colony, is to be revisited by ghosts desiring vengeance for their own fateful murders, seeping into and out from ‘the fog’ to claim their pound of flesh. Arguably, the star of our story is Adrienne Barbeau as K.P.P.D radio disc jockey, Stevie Wayne who broadcasts her night time jazz program from a remote beacon lighthouse off Spivey Point. From this vantage, Stevie can see the whole of Antonio Bay; a bird’s eye view to that low-lying bank of ominous glowing fog as it creeps, seeps and leaps into town in search of victims. While playing along the windswept beach near their home, Stevie’s young son, Andy (Ty Mitchell) find an interesting relic – a piece of driftwood belonging to the Elizabeth Dane; a tall ship whose cargo of lepers met with an untimely end; smashed against the craggy shoreline nearly a half a century earlier, thanks in part to some deliberate misdirection from the nearby community during a violent storm at sea. Current pastor of the local church, Father Robert Malone (Hal Holbrook) is a direct descendant of the priest responsible for plotting to kill the lepers. He discovers just how sordid the town’s history is after a chunk of stone falls from one of the walls in his rectory to reveal a leather-bound journal hidden inside.

After the crew of a lazy fishing trawler moored off the coast is found slaughtered aboard ship their bodies are brought in to town for autopsy by Nick Castle (Tom Atkins) who previously picked up hitchhiker, Elizabeth Solley (Jamie Lee Curtis) on the side of the road. Nick and Liz become lovers, their pas deux momentarily interrupted by a foreboding knock at the door – one of the fog’s motley spirits come to call. But before Nick can get to the door the clock chimes midnight, breaking the spell and thus saving his life. Instead, Liz finds herself being stalked by one of the dead crew members from the trawler, the body getting up from the operating table in the morgue with scalpel in hand to do a bit of its own creative cutting. This sequence, though nerve-jangling, does not exactly gel with the movie’s premise; that the undead can only wreak havoc on the living between a quarter to and midnight; the bewitching hour. Liz’s stalker gets up in the middle of the afternoon while she is waiting for Nick to return. The corpse never manages his kill – collapsing in a heap on the floor moments before getting too close for comfort – just enough to startle Liz half to death. But the corpse is not one of the ghosts of those ill-fated spirits emerging from the fog. So why he should seek vengeance against Liz – a gal who is not even from around these parts and therefore not part of the curse plaguing Antonio Bay - is even more perplexing and frankly, never explained away. Silly, inconsistent and misguided? Yes, but carried off with such unsettling purpose by Carpenter that it really does not matter. It works.

As the town prepares to mark its 100th anniversary Father Malone makes Kathy Williams (Janet Leigh) aware of Antonio Bay’s brutal history. Meanwhile, the ghosts descend on Stevie’s home where babysitter Mrs. Kobritz (Regina Waldon) is preparing to put Andy to bed. Frightened by the same threatening knock at the door, Mrs. Kobritz nevertheless opens it, unleashing the fog. It quickly claims her. But Andy manages an escape out the back window, thanks to Nick and Liz’s quick thinking. The trio is pursued up the road by the fog, taking refuge in the church along with Kathy and Father Malone who confronts the ghost of Blake - the pirate king and his crew, offering him the golden cross that was the town’s booty after they deliberately caused Blake’s ship to sink off the coast of Antonio Bay. The ghosts reclaim the cross, but seemingly spare Father Malone before vanishing at the stroke of midnight. Relieved at having endured - and presumably escaped - the curse of Antonio Bay, everyone goes home. However, as Father Ted prepares to lock up the church Blake returns, this time to kill him.

Despite all its waffling about, The Fog is a fairly solid movie. Nevertheless, it must be taken without prejudice and/or comparisons made to Carpenter’s other masterworks from this fertile creative period. And in some cases, it really needs to be excused - even accepted - for and on its own narrative merits and flaws. Evidently, some critics were not willing to do this. After a disastrous preview, Carpenter went back to the drawing board, re-shot and reediting his footage with some more obvious scares thrown in to satisfying the audiences’ blood-lust: the result, an often disturbing and thoroughly engrossing minor masterpiece – quite successful at telling its tale plainly and without much fanfare; also, without succumbing to the urge to go all the way into ‘gross out’ slasher territory for its fifty-cent shock value. Does The Fog work? Superficially speaking – yes. Is it perfect? Hardly. Is it a horror movie? I would argue against it. Cheap thrills and blood and guts are never Carpenter’s modus operandi. What The Fog remains, is an expertly crafted ghost story. One can choose to poo-poo the logistics of the exercise. But the net result is exactly what Carpenter and Hill set out to create – a spooky yarn with a few good chills factored in along the way.

StudioCanal’s U.K. re-issue of The Fog is culled from a 2018 true 4K remastering effort. The results are astounding and well beyond Shout! Factory’s Blu-ray release from 2010. A quick note here: this is a ‘region B’ locked presentation, except for the 4K disc, which is ‘region free’ – meaning, it will play anywhere in the world. This means, if you are buying StudioCanal’s deluxe packaging in North America, only 2 of the 4 discs here will be of use – the 4K Blu-ray (sans extra content) and the remastered soundtrack presented on a CD. The standard Blu, with all its fascinating content is a Frisbee. Exactly why the rest of the goodies included herein are ‘region B’ locked – including all standard Blu-ray extras, remains an oddity and a disappointment for lovers of this great spook fest on this side of the Atlantic.  Those who have reviewed The Fog’s history will recall it was shot ‘quick and dirty’ on a modest budget for just under a million dollars. Remember, Carpenter loves the dark – or rather, loves to make us cringe at the myriad of possibilities lurking in the murky peripheries beyond. StudioCanal’s 4K release achieves this perfect pitch of inky, indistinguishable night scenes, with grain levels that are earthy and accurate. Grain is amplified, but so are fine details. Color saturation is superb. This image is accurately textured and avoids the intermittently crushed blacks that plagued the Shout! Blu-ray release. The audio is offered in both original mono and re-purposed 5.1 DTS, the latter favoring Carpenter’s synthesizer score. It should be pointed out that like Halloween, The Fog’s chills would be nothing without Carpenter’s bone-chilling and relentless music cues. Most reviews overlook the score, but actually it makes Carpenter’s movies work on a whole other level.

Aside: I sincerely wish StudioCanal would get the rights to market their content in North America, as a good many of their deep catalog titles have yet to find their way here from alternate distributors and thus, remain MIA to most reading this post. The Fog looks and sounds tremendous here. In addition to all the Blu-ray extras, we get 5 ‘art cards’ a folded ‘theatrical poster’ and a 48-page booklet with stills and essays from Kim Newman.  The standard Blu-ray extras (denied to most) include a brand-new retrospective, ‘Retribution: Uncovering John Carpenter’s The Fog’ that is comprehensive and features interviews with Dean Cundey, Tommy Lee Wallace, Kim Gottleib-Walker, Steve Johnson, John Muir, Daniel Schweiger, Justin Humphreys and Larry Franco. We also get ‘The Shape of The Thing to Come: John Carpenter Un-filmed’ – a fascinating featurette exploring the projects John Carpenter hoped to make…but never did. Recorded for the French DVD release: Carpenter, in his own words, introducing the movie, as well as specific ‘scene analysis’, also derived from this 2003 disc. StudioCanal rounds out its generosity with vintage fluff: Fear on Film - Inside The Fog, a brief featurette produced in 1980, plus outtakes, TV spots, trailers, a photo gallery and storyboards.  There are two audio commentaries, the first from Carpenter and the late, Debra Hill, the other featuring Adrienne Barbeau, Tom Atkins and production designer, Tommy Lee Wallace. Last, but not least, is Horror's Hallowed Grounds with Sean Clark - a Cook’s tour of the locations used in the movie. Both commentary tracks and the HHG featurette were part of Shout!’s Blu release. Bottom line: The Fog in 4K is fantastic viewing. As before, the regret here is denying many the right to appreciate the extra content, unless you own a ‘region free’ player. Dumb! Silly! Idiotic!  Judge and buy accordingly.

FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)

4

VIDEO/AUDIO

5+

EXTRAS

4 (for those fortunate enough to own a ‘region free’ player)