Welcome to Horror Secret Handshakes, a monthly column spotlighting horror stories off the beaten path that serve as an instant vibe check with new friends, acquaintances, and fellow fans. If you both know the story, you feel the bond.
It's John Carpenter's birthday this week, and because he's my favorite horror filmmaker, I started thinking about which of his films might qualify for this column. So many of Carpenter's best-known genre features are, of course, classics of horror and science fiction, but which one is the film that engenders that deep Secret Handshake bond between fellow fans?
Right away, we have to throw out Halloween (my favorite Carpenter film), The Thing, and probably Escape From New York. These are icons of cinema, classics by any measure, and if you've seen any of them you understand why. My mind also immediately pushed away from films like They Live, Prince of Darkness, and In The Mouth of Madness, as they seem to have developed solid and devoted fandoms over time that make them institutions among horror fans. So, what's the Secret Handshake movie among Carpenter's films?
For my money – and it's my column, so my money's what's good here – it's The Fog.
Released in 1980 as Carpenter's follow-up to the cultural behemoth that is Halloween, The Fog is not an obscure movie. It was a box office hit when it came out, it still has admirers, and even if you haven't seen it there's a good chance you know it's out there. What makes it a Secret Handshake film, in my experience, are those fans (like me) who view it as a top-tier Carpenter film on par with his best-known classics, which fell through the cracks between Halloween and Escape from New York. It's a masterpiece of tone, an old-school ghost story for the ages, and if you really love it, and you find someone else who feels the same way, you could talk about it for hours.
Though Carpenter's riffs on various horror concepts from madmen with knives to alien invaders often spin those ideas into new stories, The Fog emerges as a classic ghost story in every sense of the word, to the point that it actually opens with an old man (John Houseman) telling a ghost story by a campfire. It's the story of the coast town of Antonio Bay as it celebrates its 100th birthday, and the vengeful ghosts tied to the town's founding who use that birthday as an opportunity to right past wrongs by traveling back to the town in a supernatural fog bank. That's as straightforward as ghost stories get, and that directness might be one of the reasons some viewers are able to write the film off as predictable or even rote.
Those of us who love The Fog, though, recognize it as an exercise in tone and craft that rivals many of the very best cinematic ghost stories. Carpenter's mastery of place as he films Antonio Bay in beautiful widescreen makes for some of the most beautiful cinematography (done by the great Dean Cundey) of his career, and Carpenter and Debra Hill's screenplay is an effort to encompass an entire community's response to a dark chapter in its past that was meant to stay buried. Is it a Play the Hits kinda movie where ghost stories are concerned? Sure, which might be why it's still overshadowed by other masterpieces of the era like The Shining and The Changeling. Is it made with extraordinary care and precision? Absolutely.
For a lot of movie fans, John Carpenter's next great work of horror after Halloween was The Thing, and while The Thing is inarguably great, I don't think that's true. Yes, it's a masterpiece, but The Fog has always been there, tucked in the middle of an extraordinary run of genre pictures which began with Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13 in the years before Halloween was released. For my money, it's the most hypnotic and visually stunning of any of Carpenter's films, and a testament to his maturation as a filmmaker with a focus on craft, patience, and incredible performances (Hal Holbrook is amazing in this film) to wring maximum tension and dread out of a well-worn horror concept. If you get it, and this film's spell works on you, we are friends. For the rest of you, don't underestimate this film.
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