THE FOG @ 45

An old salt tells a group of kids around a beach campfire about a ship that wrecked from a false light during a sudden fog which lifted as soon as the damage was done. At the stroke of midnight, things in the nearby Antonio Bay township go haywire, alarms go off, things move by themselves and, over the horizon, a luminous fog is rolling towards the coast. Things could be better.

John Carpenter's third feature followed on the heels of his first hit, the monster Halloween which started the following decade's strain of teen slashers. The Fog was intended as a kind of fame rider: it didn't have to reinvent, it just had to draw them in. Drawn in they were with a huge margin of the production cost tenfold, even more and for longer on the new home video market. Carpenter was unconvinced by his own work in this case, thinking it muddled and unclear. He reshot scenes and added others. From this you might expect a mess but you'd be wrong.

The various threads of character driven arcs slowly converge as the plot progresses and one of the emergent properties of the whole thing is a more definite sense of setting than Carpenter had ever achieved (and his first one was in space!). Antonio Bay with its haunted servos, lighthouse radio station, antique church and small town seaside houses, feels like a place the way that the LA of Assault or the Haddonfield of Halloween don't quite get to.

Is it unrealistic that a lug like Tom Atkins could bed the barely in her twenties Jamie Leigh Curtis? How come all those bids in the prologue are out at midnight listening to an old man spin yarns? What's stopping the ghosts at the physical doors? Aren't they ghosts? Well, do you want it realistic or atmospheric? Sometimes you can't have both. What sticks through those holes in the upholstery are the setpieces like the attack on the fishing boat, the various single attacks on homes, heralded by ominous knocks at the door. And under all of this is the slow revelation that the tale told in the prologue left out some very dark details.

Antonio Bay, about to celebrate its centenary, was founded on mass murder and theft. It's not just the locals who are coming along to the statue unveiling. The familiar American story of an official telling of sins of the fathers presented after bleaching is familiar to Australians, as well. If Carpenter treats it lightly, having established it, it at least has been brought to the fore for the viewer and compels the final act of retribution. The film might not have the terrifying force of Halloween, the slowburn siege of Assault on Precinct 13, or the dizzy black comedy of Dark Star, but it does have a door to open: what's on the other side might well be someone who doesn't think you deserve a home.

The cast list is like a roll call of Carpenter collaborators past and future. Jamie Leigh Curtis plays to one side of the main narrative but is welcome for that. Her real life mother, Janet Leigh, is in running cope mode throughout and kept barely in the safe zone by assistant the wonderful Nancy Loomis. Assault's bad guy, Darwin Joston is a coroner. Tom Atkins breaks his Carpenter affiliation cherry with the roughnecked but gold hearted truckie. And so it widens. Everyone does a good turn.

The locations are stellar and if you get a local release of the 4K, you will be rewarded. A few process and matte shots are given a little too much clarity which would have been invisible on VHS but the shots of the bay to the horizon and the winding seaside roads are breathtaking. Antonio Bay doesn't just feel real, you want to live there.

Crowning this is another John Carpenter electronic score. Few elements of the movies of the late '70s and early '80s got closer to the intersection of the times in music and the times in the cinema than these. The score for the Fog with its underplayed piano theme, builds dread with a quiet assurance. It's the kind of thing that still gets a mention if a recent film goes out on a limb and uses synthesis. And that goes for the film itself. No, it doesn't quite have the chops of the great moments around it, but it holds its own and improves a little with each viewing, reminding that Carpenter's name was one like Cronenberg or Lynch, that made the ears of moviegoers prick up. I say moviegoers rather than cinephiles because Carpenter served this up to mass audiences in a way that few others could and still maintain such a solid cool.

Viewing notes: I watched my local Studio Canal 4K release from 1999 and it remains a stellar transfer which does justice to the source. At one point a pack of four '80s Carpenter titles was made available in 4K (without the Blu-Ray discs or extras) which went on sale for $19! Never seen it since and would've bought it just for back up discs. But the individual double discs are still available retail in Australia. Fun fact, I'm writing this on the anniversary (local time) of the premier screening of the film.