I'm in a bind because I'm way behind, so let's get to it.
This week's Thursday Thriller is The Fog.
This 1980 John Carpenter film is a good, old-fashioned ghost story about pirates who terrorize a small coastal town 100 years after their ship crashed and sunk.
The tone is effectively set in the first scene in which John Houseman plays an old sea dog telling some young boys around a campfire the legend of the sunken ship off the coast of Antonio Bay.
Adrienne Barbeau plays Stevie Wayne, a radio disc jockey and lighthouse keeper whose sultry weather updates inform fishermen of dangerous conditions at sea. On the eve of the town's centennial, Wayne broadcasts a warning of a mysterious, glowing, wind-defying fog bank to some drunk guys on a fishing trawler. The fog bank envelopes their boat and the ghost pirates awesomely murder everyone on board.
About that same time, a guy named Nick (Tom Atkins) picks up a hitchhiker named Elizabeth (Jamie Lee Curtis) and the windows of his truck explode.
Down at the old church Father Malone (Hal Holbrook) gets drunk and evades paying John Carpenter for turning off the lights. Then the wall explodes and he finds his grandfather's journal. In it, he discovers the town fathers murdered the pirates for their gold and because they were ugly lepers. As a result, Antonio Bay has a curse on it, and between the hours of midnight and 1 a.m. on the town's centennial, they fully intend on breaking every window in town until they get their treasure back.
This one's not bad. Definitely an atmospheric piece. The fog looks cool and the ghost lepers remind me of the Blind Dead. John Carpenter's music always helps set the mood well for his films. The kills were a little few and far between for my liking. It's a good bedtime story.
The Fog streams on Shudder.
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