10/20/06 The Fog

The Fog (1980), directed by John Carpenter

watched w/ Leslie; theater (Carolina Theatre, Durham, NC); Femme Fatale Film Series

Continuing my appreciation for classic cult film creator John Carpenter's work, and adding to my affinity for exotic film festivals, I was highly anticipating this screening for quite some time. As his work of creative campy cuisine goes (see "Escape From New York," "They Live," and Big Trouble In Little China") its top notch, but the most interesting part of this viewing was to be the presence of the movie's star, the femme fatale herself...Adrienne Barbeau. That's right, not only were we going to see the twisted cheese-fest that is "The Fog," but we were going to get an intimate Q&A session with the starlet vixen afterwards. Now, to the film itself. The story here reminds me a lot of some of the scary campfire-esque tales that were captured in the pages of the 80's children books that could be found on most school library shelves, "Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark" by Alvin Schwartz...scaring small children with its urban legend quality and creepy black & white artwork haunting your daydreams. What we have is a small Northern Californian fishing town that is about to celebrate its centennial, but what dark truths of the town's past will come lurking out of the dense fog on the eve of the festivities? The town was to be based as a leper colony, where people could come to live, but some evil had other ideas. Upon the fateful arrival of the vessel Elizabeth Dane, guided falsely by a campfire light, the crew perished on the rocky banks of the sea. Now, 100 years later, the same dense fog rolls in...and with it brings evil! Barbeau plays local radio DJ Stevie, who broadcasts her show from the perch of a lighthouse (which will not only serve as an ominous beacon to the lurking evil, but also provide a great vantage point for her eventual defense strategy)...who happens upon mysterious goings-on, and must help save the town from the ghostly zombies of the dead crew seeking retribution on the town. Among the other unlikely heroes are sex-pot hitchhiker Elizabeth (Jamie Lee Curtis, who also gets to work on screen with her real-life mother Janet Leigh) and the dude who picked her up, an idiot weather man who's constantly hitting on Stevie, and Father Malone (Hal Holbrook) who finds his lineage linked to the horrific things of the past. The rest of the town is wrapped up in the preparations for the big centennial celebration, and completely unaware of the potential danger that is slowly drifting their way...bringing some gnarly looking zombies with it. Most of the plot and acting is laughable at best, but it still is effective as a good ol' scary story (at least in print, even if it doesn't quite translate visually on screen). The best part of the entire thing was the eventual discussion with the sexy starlet damsel in distress herself, Ms. Barbeau (who's still looking hot for a 60 year-old grandma I might add). It was interesting to hear her talk about the filming process and the movie's cult following over the years, and more intimate commentaries on her relationship to director Carpenter and his use of her as his muse. Some of the audience's highlights when the questions/comments came...one college-age girl in the crowd who was actually in the film "Swamp Thing" with Barbeau in South Carolina, and the pocket-protector dork who owned the movie on laser disc where he could isolate only the musical score components without any of the dialogue. Yeah, it got that movie-geeky. We were there for the cheese, and the historical significance of seeing a great camp movie with its personable camp star. Oh yeah, and the fog didn't win, so don't worry.

3 out of 5 stars