Sunday, April 8, 2012

Ghosts and Fish Hooks:

The Teratology of The Fog



 Everyone loves a good ghost story. The idea that the spirit sometimes lingers after death is so intuitive that even hard-core cynics jump when the tone is right. When you combine such an effective genre with a skillful director like John Carpenter, you expect to jump. The Fog (1980) is a film that attempts to translate that campfire fear to the theatre and succeeds—to a point. Why it fails to be great is partially why Carpenter hasn’t made a good film in more than a decade.

 I saw The Fog under the best circumstances: on the big screen as part of The Belcourt’s Midnight Movie Series. One of the film’s main characters, Tom Atkins (who played Nick Castle), was in attendance as part of a cross-over promotion with the 11thAnnual Tattoo and Horror convention which took place last weekend in Nashville. Atkins described the film as an old-fashioned ghost story in which he spends most of his time riding about in a rusted pick-up trying to save some kid.
"Retro Tom Atkins in an intimate moment with co-star Jamie Lee Curtis"

"Modern Day Tom Atkins. Looks like Santa’s older brother--
if Santa’s older brother was an ex-police lieutenant."

The Fog is the story of a spectral mist that descends on a California fishing town during the centennial celebration of its founding, which coincides with the wreck of a clipper ship, the Elizabeth Dane.  Whenever the fog appears, strange things begin to happen; public telephones ring at once, car alarms go off, windows break.  Worst of all, the Sea Grass, a fishing trawler manned by Castle’s friends, disappears. In the following 48 hours, Castle and Stevie Wayne (Adrienne Barbeau), the local sexy light house keeper, watch in horror as the fog rolls into town, claiming the lives of family and friends. To live, they must discover what happened the night the Elizabeth Dane sank.

It’s decent and has Carpenter’s iconic music, tight direction and intensity. Carpenter makes a million dollar film look much larger through location choice and camera trickery (anything gruesome that happens occurs behind thick mist, saving on special effects). The cast is top notch; along with Atkins and Barbeau are Jamie Lee Curtis (playing Castle’s love interest) and Jamie’s real life mother, Janet Leigh (playing Kathy Williams, town matriarch). In true like-mother-like-daughter fashion, Leigh was a scream queen herself in Psycho (1960).

"Carpenter (left), Leigh (center) and Curtis (right) prove how cool it is to work with your mom."

Of course, if you don’t like the film, don’t worry—it changes genres half-way through, morphing from a slow-build spook-story to an eye-gouging splatterfest. And that’s what prevents it from being a better movie. Deaths that were obscured in the first part are laid bare in the second: The fog lifts and shows that what’s behind it isn’t so terrifying. The suggestion of harm gives way to its dull reality. It adds blood where it should add more fog. 

The tragedy of The Fog mirrors that of its director: It never lives up to its earliest moments. Oddly enough, much of the gore that ruins the movie was added in reshoots as Carpenter struggled against more violent contemporary films, most of which were copying the content of his Halloween (1978). Carpenter tried to please an audience that didn’t get it, souring what made him exceptional. He would go on to other films that are now widely appreciated—Escape From New York (1981), The Thing (released in 1982 and a personal favorite!), Big Trouble in Little China (1986) and They Live (1988)—but most of these were commercial disasters. The '90s were a bleak year for this auteur, with only In the Mouth of Madness (1994) and Vampires (1998) worth mentioning; the '00s, even bleaker. 

"Dear God--why?"
On leaving the theatre, I asked a friend what happened to Carpenter. “He told all the stories he wanted and then checked out,” he replied.

Maybe. But I don’t think Carpenter gave up—I think he was beaten down. After so many box-office flops, he finally got the message: Audiences don’t want good movies, they want schlock.  Eventually, he gave them exactly what they wanted. 

He hasn’t made a good film since.

  
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)