John Carpenter: The Fog
Blogger’s Note: When I
first started this retrospective, I always had my eye on The Fog, for it is probably the most popular John
Carpenter film I had yet to see. Crazy, I know, but the film had always eluded
me, so I’m more than thrilled to have finally rectified this particular blind
spot.
By the time The Fog had
come out in 1980, Carpenter was on a bit of hot streak: he had seen success in
Europe with Assault on Precinct 13,
and had had major success in both American theaters (Halloween) and television (Elvis).
It made sense that his next theatrical film would be a horror movie; after all,
Halloween at that time had been the
highest grossing independent film, and so it made sense for the auteur to
return to the horror genre for no other reason than it seemed like a profitable
idea. Indeed The Fog was a hit for
Carpenter (the film cost only a million dollars to make and made over 21 million at the box office), but I have to say: it falls short of being in the upper echelon of
Carpenter’s filmography. The film is a wonderfully told ghost story filled with
atmosphere (thanks to Dean Cundy’s great cinematography) and dread and
impressive set-pieces — it has all of those things in spades — and another
great Carpenter music score, but there’s something that just isn’t right about
the execution of the film’s ending, specifically in how it deals with its antagonists:
ghost pirates (or as I prefer to see them as: zombie pirates) out for revenge. There’s
so much in The Fog that is tremendously
executed and effective that I can see why some would claim it as one of the
filmmaker’s best films — calling it a masterpiece of the horror genre in the
process — and I don’t dispute that a lot of the elements in The Fog work brilliantly and show the
master in fine form, but It certainly falls under the oft-used expression, “a
flawed masterpiece.”