Cult Classics: THE FOG (1980)

Horror movies got much gorier after the advent of the slasher, and the most iconic chillers of the 1980s tend to lean into that genre and its enthusiasm for arterial spray, but John Carpenter's The Fog (1980) is an atmospheric throwback to the subtler style of horror master Val Lewton, the hands-on producer (and often uncredited writer) behind moody RKO masterpieces like Cat People (1942) and I Walked with a Zombie (1943). The Fog is a very different picture from other Carpenter projects like Halloween (1978), The Thing (1982), and They Live (1988), which is the reason it's one of my favorite movies from the director's oeuvre. Fans of eerie but bloodless classic horror will find a lot to appreciate in the way this movie unfolds its tale of long-simmering supernatural revenge, and those looking for more female-led stories will enjoy the emphasis on Adrienne Barbeau as the DJ heroine with Jamie Lee Curtis and her mother, Janet Leigh, also playing major roles.

Barbeau leads as Stevie Wayne, a late-night DJ in the town of Antonio Bay. Stevie's overnight shifts in a lighthouse allow her to witness and report the arrival of a mysterious fog that coincides with the disappearance of three local fishermen, including the husband of town mayor Kathy Williams (Janet Leigh). As the coastal California town prepares to celebrate its centennial, the local priest, Father Patrick Malone (Hal Holbrook), discovers his grandfather's diary and learns that a cabal of six founders started the community with a shocking act of betrayal, which is now literally coming back to haunt the townspeople on the hundredth anniversary of the crime. Meanwhile, hitchhiker Elizabeth (Jamie Lee Curtis) gets a ride into Antonio Bay with town resident Nick (Tom Atkins), and their efforts to find out what happened to the fishermen lead them to numerous close encounters with the supernatural threat.

Despite reshoots that bowed to the increasing expectation for gory ghosts and peril, The Fog remains a classic haunt at its core, with the eerie titular fog getting a lot more screen time than the spectral mariners. The opening campfire tale, also a late addition, sets the mood with John Houseman telling a group of children about the wreck of the Elizabeth Dane, a ship carrying a colony of leprosy victims to the bay. Between the introductory ghost story and the diary found by Father Malone, we know pretty much everything we need to know about why these murderous spirits are emerging from the fog to avenge themselves a century later. The fog and its ghosts are not so much mysterious as they are unstoppable, a conjoined force of fate that moves at its own pace, slowly but surely descending on Antonio Bay until the town's debt is fully paid. The goriest scenes happen early, with the murders of the fishermen and the subsequent discovery of just one corpse by Elizabeth and Nick, but these are pretty tame compared to Jaws (1975) or other horror films of the era, and mostly the mariners are shadowy figures who drag their victims away into the fog. John Carpenter has talked about his desire to make a movie inspired by Val Lewton's subtle but chilling horror classics (see this 2022 Collider article for more on that), and it's easy to see their influence even after the additions meant to appeal to the horror-going audiences of 1980.

While I love the Lewton-inspired atmosphere of The Fog, I also appreciate its commitment to agency and variety for its female characters. Co-writers Carpenter and Debra Hill offer us more women than men as our central characters, with Carpenter's wife at the time, Adrienne Barbeau, in heroic mode as a single mother who strives to protect the community and also find a way to save her young son as the fog closes in on him and his elderly babysitter. In a different horror movie, Jamie Lee Curtis's hitchhiking Elizabeth might be condemned to a gory death in her underwear, but instead she's smart, empathetic, and able to recover quickly from each close call. Janet Leigh doesn't have any scenes with her daughter until the third act, but her character is also presented as a fully realized individual, and despite her small town political status she's far more likeable than the mayor in Jaws. She's prickly with her assistant but grateful for her all the same, and she strives to forge ahead in her mayoral duties even as she worries about her missing husband. The two male leads, Hal Holbrook and Tom Atkins, seem perfectly comfortable with their female costars, and their characters both eschew the casual sexism exhibited by the fishermen and weatherman Dan O'Bannon (Charles Cyphers). Not every character who gets killed by the ghosts deserves that fate, but the picture doesn't see women as obvious victims just because they're women, and several of the male victims give us little reason to mourn their loss.

For more great ghost stories, try The Uninvited (1944), The Haunting (1963), The Changeling (1980),  and Lady in White (1988). Adrienne Barbeau also appears in Carpenter's Escape from New York (1981), Wes Craven's Swamp Thing (1982), and George A. Romero's Creepshow (1982). Jamie Lee Curtis became an iconic scream queen in the 1980s thanks to films like The Fog, the Halloween series, and Prom Night (1980), but over the decades she has proven herself a versatile actress and great comedic star, eventually winning an Academy Award for her role in Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022). Her mother, Janet Leigh, is of course best remembered for Psycho (1960). For my other favorite John Carpenter movies, see Escape from New York, Christine (1983), and Big Trouble in Little China (1986). 

As of October 2025, you can watch a wide range of John Carpenter films on the Criterion Channel, which is celebrating the director with a curated collection of his work. 

See also: "Hogarthian Gothic: Imagining the Madhouse in Val Lewton's BEDLAM" 

Classic Films in Focus: PSYCHO (1960)

Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) marks the arrival of the slasher genre on the Hollywood horror scene, and today it retains a powerful hold on the public imagination, even though the movie itself is quite tame by modern standards. Because the picture has become so familiar, even to people who aren’t necessarily fans of old movies or Hitchcock, it’s almost impossible to watch Psycho now without knowing all of its major twists and turns. We can’t recapture the suspense of seeing it the way audiences did in 1960, but we can still appreciate its iconic Bernard Herrmann score, its diabolical cinematography, and the absolutely brilliant performance of Anthony Perkins as one of cinema’s most dangerously devoted sons. It isn’t Hitchcock’s best or smartest picture, but Psycho remains essential viewing for all serious cinephiles, especially those interested in the history of horror.

Perkins plays the boyish Norman Bates, an amateur taxidermist and the proprietor of the largely empty Bates Motel. His establishment attracts Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), a Phoenix secretary who has skipped town with $40,000 of her employer’s money and is on her way to find her divorced lover, Sam (John Gavin), whom she hasn’t been able to marry because of his alimony payments. Marion’s sister, Lila (Vera Miles), and a private detective (Martin Balsam) both set out to track Marion down, and their investigations lead them to the Bates Motel, where Norman’s mysterious mother seems to be the key to finding out what has become of Marion and the missing money.

Much has been made of the brevity of Janet Leigh’s screen time as the picture’s ostensible leading lady, but from the moment he first appears Psycho is really Anthony Perkins’ movie, and his performance gives the film its chilling appeal. His Norman is so vulnerable and eager to please, but the intensity of his personality lurks just below the surface of his puppyish amiability. With Perkins’ assistance, Hitchcock lures us into liking Norman and sympathizing with him, even after the first murder takes place. Norman’s efforts to clean up Mother’s mess reveal his revulsion at the sight of blood, his discomfort with a naked woman’s body, and his determination to protect the object of his adoration, no matter how badly she treats him. Madness or monstrosity by themselves are mere bugbears; Norman’s fragile, sensitive humanity makes him fascinating and, ultimately, all the more disturbing, because we find ourselves sharing his perspective. The final, shocking scene jolts the audience by revealing just how deranged that perspective has become.

As a technical accomplishment, Psycho demonstrates the ways in which camera angles, editing, and scoring help to create effective horror and suspense, especially in the infamous shower scene, where viewers often imagine seeing a lot more than is actually on display. It would be naive, however, to claim that Psycho is a perfect movie. The menacing Bates house, so much more evocative than the bland motel, is rather underused, and the psychiatrist’s scene near the end drags on like a high school lecture. With only two murders in the entire movie, the second one might have benefited from a little more time and attention, even if it doesn’t provide the salacious voyeurism of the first. Finally, Vera Miles and John Gavin are not especially interesting as Lila and Sam; they don’t have any chemistry with each other, and their mundane, middle-class American characters leave us unconcerned for their welfare. They’re just cogs in the plot machine, like so many characters in later and lesser slasher films, and we know that Hitchcock could have done more with them than that.

Psycho earned four Oscar nominations, including a Best Director nod for Hitchcock, but it went home empty-handed in a year dominated by Billy Wilder’s The Apartment (1960). For contrast, read the original novel by Robert Bloch or endure the generally panned 1998 remake starring Vince Vaughn. Anthony Perkins starred in a couple of Psycho sequels and never really escaped the typecasting that followed the role, but you can see him in a different light in Friendly Persuasion (1956), Desire Under the Elms (1958), and The Trial (1962). Catch Janet Leigh in Touch of Evil (1958), and look for more of Vera Miles in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). See Shadow of a Doubt (1943) for an earlier Hitchcock foray into serial killer territory.