THE
FOG (1980)Director: John Carpenter
MGM
THE
FOG (1980)My first experience with THE FOG is similar to my first experience with ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. Flipping through the channels late one night at my grandmother's house, I happened upon a movie with what appeared to be an old sailor telling a ghost story to a group of kids. From the moment I heard the story of the tragic events, which took place off Spivey Point, I was hooked. John Carpenter's THE FOG is one of the most effective, yet forgotten, ghost stories in modern cinema history.
One hundred years ago, on a night filled with treachery, sin, and murder, the quiet coastal town of Antonio Bay was born. Now, on its hundred-year anniversary, the long-dead, ghastly remnants of that fateful night are returning to the town, via a fog bank, which seeps through nearly every street and valley in the area. Several members of the community, as well as a hitchhiking drifter (played by Jamie Lee Curtis), become trapped in the revenge plot from beyond the grave. Will they survive? Or will they end up as one of the victims of the fog?
At the time I first viewed THE
FOG, John Carpenter wasn't my favorite movie director, as he has since become.
All I knew then was that the guy had made two movies that truly scared me: 
HALLOWEEN
and THE FOG. THE FOG is one of my absolute favorite John Carpenter films. The
musical score (both the lonely, eerie piano at the beginning and the pounding,
bizarre synth stuff later in the film) is among my favorite Carpenter scores.
The cast is probably one of the all-time great Carpenter groupings. It's made
up of both accomplished Carpenter veterans (Charles Cyphers, Darwin Joston,
Nancy Loomis) as well as people who would go on to star in future Carpenter
films (Adrienne Barbeau, Tom Atkins, and George "Buck" Flower).
Dean
Cundey's cinematography is both breathtaking and haunting in nearly every shot
of the film. This film is quite underrated, not just as a John Carpenter film,
but also as a horror film, period. The scenes of the ghosts knocking on doors
are so subtle and spooky, that they scare me as much now as they did when I
originally saw the film so many years ago. The glowing fog itself also continues
to look just as menacing as ever.
The disc's 2:35:1 Anamorphic transfer
is everything I was hoping it would be. Everything looks 
pretty
much as it should, and there are very, very few noticeable flaws at all. For
a film from 1980, MGM has done a spectacular job in regards to how good it looks.
A standard version is available on the other side of the disc. The disc's sound
is presented in either the original mono track or a digitally enhanced 5.1 surround
track. Carpenter's music, the jump scares, everything comes across perfectly.
There is a French mono track, as well as English, Spanish, and French sub-titles
available on the disc.
In
the tradition of other John Carpenter discs, THE FOG is packed with quite a
few bonus features for the rabid Carpenter fan to froth at the mouth over. First
and foremost, is an audio commentary featuring John Carpenter and co-writer/producer
Debra Hill. While not as entertaining as commentaries on the discs of other
Carpenter films (BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA and THE THING), this is probably
one of the most informative commentaries I've ever heard for one of his films.
Both he and Hill manage to get out quite a large amount of info, and almost
never fall behind with what is happening on-screen. They have a story, anecdote,
or secret behind nearly every frame of the film. My only complaint: Neither
Carpenter, nor Hill mentioned how the "dripping wood" effect in the
lighthouse/radio station was done. It's probably something insanely simple to
the point where it doesn't need explanation, but I've always wondered how they
did it, as it's fooled me every time!
Next, there are two behind-the-scenes documentaries. The first is a newly-created 28 minute feature titled "Tales From the Mist: Inside The Fog." This one contains a lot of interviews, stories, and anecdotes that discuss how difficult it was to pull the final film together (they had to re-shoot nearly the entire film, after the first cut proved that it just didn't work at all!) The second documentary is rather short and was done at the time of the film's release. For an old piece of marketing material, I was actually impressed at how good the video quality looked.
Other
interesting features that the disc boasts are a storyboard-to-film comparison
sequence for the first ghost attack, two different sections of out-takes (one
of which is an Easter egg), three original trailers, three TV spots, a gallery
of poster artwork, a photo section featuring FOG memorabilia, and finally, a
gallery of behind-the-scenes photos and publicity shots. The only things I would've
added to the disc would've been the deleted scenes mentioned during the commentary
track. It seems quite a bit of the film was changed, and I'd like to see how
different it initially was.
The cover artwork was something
I had been worrying about, after seeing MGM's pitiful VHS edition from a few
years back. A very moody, silhouetted shot of Blake and the other ghosts adorns
the 
DVD
cover, against a greenish shot of the fog. Paramount and Columbia, take note:
If you're going to change the original cover artwork of a title, THIS is the
way to do it! Inside of the case, you get newly-written liner notes by John
Carpenter, himself.
Simply put, this is a must-have DVD. Horror fans, Carpenter fans, and cinema fans in general--you must all own this disc. I will proudly display it amongst my horror DVD collection, and I strongly suggest the rest of you do the same. Give this little-known classic the time of day, and you may never have to look out across the water and ask yourself, "What in the living Hell is out there?!" (Wes Ray)