As a follow up to his low budget 1978 box office smash "Halloween", Writer/Director John Carpenter and his co-writer Debra Hill unleashed THE FOG in 1980.
Kicking off with a terrific beach side ghost story from the legendary John Houseman, our story focuses on the residents of Antonio Bay, who are about to face the 100 year anniversary of some very nasty spirits.
Coming back for their revenge against the relatives of the townsfolk who wronged them in 1880, our waterlogged specters wield some very nasty meat hooks and a very bad attitude.
Adrienne Barbeau (Carnivale) stars as a local graveyard shift disc jockey that turns her jazz station into the Emergency Broadcast System for our haunt filled weather system.
Jamie Lee Curtis is back as a hitchhiker in the wrong town on the wrong night and her real-life Mom Janet Leigh (Psycho) stars as a local politician in their only film together.
John Carpenter knows how to create a lot of fun tension and scares with a low budget and some good actors and Hal Holbrook helps him out as a nervous priest with some guilty fore-bearers.
Look for plenty of great jump scares as victims tumble out of hidden places and the slow but determined leper ghosts emerge out of the swirling mist.
When test audiences didnt think it was scary enough, Carpenter shot an additional scene with the ghosts killing the crew of a fishing trawler out in the bay. It IS the scariest scene in the film and the gross out moment that includes it still makes me wince after all these years.
Carpenter's music is terrific, the last forty minutes builds plenty of fun suspense and THE FOG lingers as an early 80's horror classic.
Remade 25 years later with the same name but decidedly lesser results. Stick with the original! It gets a bloody great B+.
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