The Fog (1980)

Episode 437, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Happy Fog Day, Craig.

Craig: Okay. Happy Fog Day to you.

Todd: You may be asking, what is Fog Day? I didn’t even know Fog Day existed until now. But indeed, it is April 21st. Fog Day. And, uh, you would think that, uh, I did all this great research and then we coordinated this episode on Fog Day to celebrate the movie that we’re doing, which is the fog.

But no, it’s actually a total coincidence that here about the time that we put out one of our request polls, it turned out that of the three that we put out on our poll to our patrons, remember our patrons generally get to select which request we’re going to do next from our large pool of requests.

Turned out to be the fog. And so what perfect timing, and this was a request by the way, from Chris. So thank you, Chris, for requesting this movie. And thank you patrons for bumping this to the top of the list. We are doing 1970 nine’s, John Carpenter film the Fog. Now, I saw this movie first when I was a kid, probably earlier than high school, though I’m pretty sure I was in middle school.

Either rented it or saw it on tv. It’s interesting because one of our patrons, when he admittedly chose this movie, said I, I loved this movie more for the atmosphere than the actual movie. I think he more or less said, nothing really interesting happens until the very end, and then it just seems very abrupt.

That is my memory of this movie. So I have to say, going into it, I was like, okay, the fog, you know, it wasn’t gonna be the one that I chose, but I figured this was the kind of movie we would have have to get around to doing anyway. And since I hadn’t seen it, since I was super young, I was anxious to get back to and watch it.

But that was my recollection of the movie as a kid. Kind of disappointing. Nothing really happened. And then boom, the ending came and then it ended. Now I’m gonna save my feelings about it until I hear from you, Craig. Had you seen this before and what had your Yeah. Feelings about it? 

Craig: I know I’ve seen it before.

I think I’ve probably seen it before, more than once I’ve seen the remake. Oh. So it, like, for whatever reason, I, I don’t know. Some people really like this movie and consider it a classic. I, I think that it gets overshadowed by Halloween. 

Todd: Well, it came out the what, two years after. One year after Halloween.

This was John Carpenter and Deborah Hill’s second movie, I think. So there was a lot anticipation, I think, for it. Well, right. And probably a lot of people expecting something more like Halloween. And I think they deliberately wanted to do something scary, but a little different. 

Craig: Yeah. I mean, I don’t remember the year, I wanna say that Halloween came out in 1978.

This IMDB tells me 1980, you said 1979, whatever. It doesn’t really matter. But Halloween, you know, they paid for everything. They did everything for free. I mean, it was really just kind of a labor of love and they didn’t have a lot of expectations for it. And it came out and I think that it got not very good reviews.

And they thought that it was a flop, a bomb. Yeah. But then it got re-reviewed like somebody else reviewed it. The Village Voice. Yeah. And reviewed it really well. And so all of a sudden he was like this hot new filmmaker and, and yeah, because Halloween had been so successful, they figured they probably would want another horror movie.

So he was gonna do another horror movie. I don’t know, you know, how much he intentionally wanted to get away from Halloween? I, I know that they were more interested in doing like a ghost revenge story. They, yeah, the two of them, Deborah Hill and John Carpenter, I think had traveled together and visited Stonehenge and saw Weird Fog and was like, huh, what if there was something in the fog?

And like, that’s literally the idea. Yeah. It’s, and then they’re like, okay, well let’s make it a ghost revenge story. And I get it. I like these kinds of stories a lot. And, and, and they were, carpenter was also really inspired by comics with, you know, these corpses rising from the grave and menacing communities and people and lots of dark shadow and, and fog and that kind of stuff.

All of that. Great. Love it. Yeah, 

Todd: love all 

Craig: of it. And, and I think, I think that’s really what he was going for, right? I’m talking about everything so fast, but I, it’s also fascinating to me that he, that’s, that’s basically the movie. He made a moody, atmospheric ghost story. Yeah. Really? No violence, really. No.

You know, no jump scares, anything like that. Turned it in. First of all, it was too short. I don’t remember, what was it, like 80 minutes? I don’t remember. 

Todd: Yeah, well, about 10 minutes short of a, of a typical feature, like, 

Craig: so the studio wanted. More, they wanted more scares, they wanted more violence. Um, well, 

Todd: and they agreed too.

I mean, uh, John Carpenter and, oh gosh, I watched an interview with him. Deborah Hill, the director of photography, everybody, when they finished cutting this together, including Tommy Lee Wallace, his, uh, editor said, we watched it and we realized it wasn’t very good. It wasn’t very scary. And so it wasn’t just a studio.

They themselves, you know, it was very self pressure trying to save the film. 

Craig: So they, they did, they went back in, they re-edited, they worked on the score more. They, they put in a lot more ghosts. 

Todd: A lot of reshoots. Yeah. Shot a lot of extra footage, whole sequences they added to it. 

Craig: Yeah. And, and jump scares and, and all kinds of things.

And not that I could say that I would know that just watching the movie, but knowing it and then looking specifically at the, the scenes that they say they added in, I’m like, oh, well that makes a lot more sense, because it didn’t really make a whole lot of sense in the movie, you know, like, yeah. It, it felt like extra like.

Todd: Yeah, there was one scene in particular and you were probably thinking of the same one. Yeah. Where it was like, this is Uhhuh a little off tonally from everything 

Craig: else. Right. Like, how are we in a different movie all of a sudden? 

Todd: Right. 

Craig: It was very strange, but there were really a couple or, or maybe even several scenes like that that just seemed a little strangely out of place overall.

It worked, but, but it’s not seamless. And going back you can kind of see that, I don’t know. I almost feel like I may have preferred. The original cut. 

Todd: Really? 

Craig: Uh, I may feel like our friend who said that they like it because of the atmosphere. I do. I like all that spooky ghost story atmosphere. And John Carpenter, you know, generally his feeling is people are more scared by what they don’t see than what they do see.

Yes. But for whatever reason, he just didn’t feel like that was the case here. 

Todd: Well. I think they felt pressure because, uh, scanners, David Cronenberg’s scanners had come out just before this. Um, and this seemed to be the tone of way things were going right now. This is sort of the beginning of the slasher fa craze that John Carpenter himself, more or less kicked off, right?

And so they realized that audiences wanted to see more bloody stuff. They wanted to see stuff a little more in your face. And so I think they were desperately in the midst of reworking this movie that they could tell wasn’t working, decided that they needed to give the audience what they wanted. And I, this is, I like John Carpenter a lot.

I do too. Every movie of his, I just love more him, more and more. He’s a guy after my own heart for a number of reasons. But one of the things I really like about him is he’s very pragmatic. As a director. He makes no bones about the fact that he’s in this business to make money. But you can tell he’s an artist.

He’s not a hack job. He makes really interesting movies. He goes out on limbs, he tries high concept stuff, but he has a smart sensibility about him where he thinks, you know, kind of like in a way, like Hitchcockian, although he, he never wants to be compared with Hitchcock ’cause he has too much respect for the guy.

But he is like, you know, people are often scared more by what they don’t see than by what they do see. And so he has this tension in his movies yet. I know it’s great that he put this together. He said, you know what? This doesn’t really work, and I don’t think, given the state of the market right now, that audiences are gonna respond really well to it.

We need this movie to make money, so let’s insert some things. They’re gonna respond a little bit well to, and kudos for him for having a, A pulse on the audience. Yeah. And throwing some of that stuff in there. I actually think it’s a better movie for it, honestly, because I totally revised my feeling about this film this time around.

And I don’t know what it was. I don’t know if I’m just an older guy, I’m in a different place, or I was just in the mood for a movie like this. I freaking loved it. I was eating up every minute of it, and I was not expecting that at all. Because that was not my recollection of, you know, and that was not how I first received the film.

So, like I said earlier, talking about how John Carpenter is a guy after my own heart. I love his movies, but I feel like we also had similar sensibilities growing up. You know, I talk a lot about, on this podcast, about how my dad influenced my love of sci-fi and, and in a way horror, even though he was never a horror guy, he was really more into sci-fi and, and that kind of element of fantasy.

There’s a lot of crossover in there. And I had a lot of these old 1950s style horror movies at my house, or sci-fi movies at my house. I was not surprised. And, and we’ve talked about it too, we did Village of the Damned Tear, where John Carpenter was inspired by that old fifties movie. And so I, he and I saw a lot of the same movies growing up.

The only difference was they were contemporaneous to him, right. And for me, they were things my dad showed us. So I wasn’t also surprised to hear that along with Stonehenge, he took a lot of the visual and thematic elements from this. Old, uh, movie called The Crawling Eye, or I think its original title was the Tandberg Terror in Britain.

Anyway, but then when it was exported to the US it was called The Crawling Eye, and my dad and my uncle, apparently, when they were kids, saw the crawling eye on tv and to this. Day they talk about how much that movie scared the bejesus out of them when they were kids. To the point where I want you and I to do an episode in the crawling eye and bring my dad, my uncle in just because That’d be fun.

It is such legend in my family about it that I’d and I’d want kind of wanna see it myself. So I was really pleasantly surprised to see that he took direct inspiration. ’cause I think they’re monsters who come outta the clouds, essentially. 

Craig: Yes. Yeah, I heard about that. 

Todd: But yeah, so that’s kind of cool. And so we’ve seen a lot of the same stuff.

EC comics, like you said before, big impact on me, obviously not contemporaneously, but much later became a big interest of mine. I love those ghost stories. It was so obvious the minute we started watching this, I was like, oh yeah. Totally could have been a long ass episode of Tales from the Crypt, you know?

Absolutely. Yep. That’s the style of this film. So it, this all just fit right in my wheelhouse, and unlike the first time I saw it, I honestly didn’t find it boring at all. I real, I recognize it’s a slow burn, but I also feel like he’s very effective at getting a good atmosphere going. A lot of that has to do with the score.

He, he, he self scored again, like a lot of John Carpenter movies, but he’s really good at this. And so I was entranced by the score. Mm-hmm. And I was really entranced by the cinematography. I thought the cinematography of this film was fantastic. 

Craig: Yeah, it looks great. I mean, I’m, I’m, I’m sitting here looking at the IMDB page and just the, you know, the few images that they have up each of them looks like a, a photograph, you know?

Yeah. It looks like 

Todd: amazing. 

Craig: It looks. It. Yeah, it’s very intentional. It’s very intentional in the way that it’s lit and the way that it’s framed and the framing is interesting because technically this is a low budget indie, right? Yeah. Like, I don’t, I don’t really remember what the budget was, maybe, you know, but 

Todd: about 1 million it, it was originally 800,000, and then once they decided to go in and redo stuff, it bumped it up to 1.1 million.

Craig: It. Looks expensive. Yeah, it really 

Todd: does. He shot it at anamorphic Widescreen too, which is a panavision process of putting a different lens on a camera so you can get something really wide on a 35 millimeter. And that was a very conscious decision of trying to make this look bigger. And it works. It totally works.

Craig: It totally works. Like, I don’t know, there’s just something, you know, widescreen wide, like that’s cinema, that’s film, you know? Yeah. Like, and, and it does, you know, I, I’m looking at a closeup of Adrian Barbo right now, and it’s a closeup right on her. Head, she’s holding a telephone, but she’s way to the left of center.

Mm-hmm. And so there’s a lot of this space, like, it just creates, it creates so much space, and especially when you’ve got, like, when your principle antagonist is fog, like you’ve, you’ve gotta give it space to move. True. It doesn’t, it’s, it’s not gonna be as threatening or, or eerie if 

Todd: it’s just scooting across a square screen.

Yeah. Small screen. Yeah. I, yeah. My, 

Craig: my, my point is. It looks great. I agree with you. I think the cinematography looks great. I think it looks expensive. It’s really well shot. It blows my mind that it was shot on that low of a budget 

Todd: and the special effects I was, I found myself again. Nowadays, do people even sit back and go, God, the effects in that movie were great anymore because just like anything’s possible and you kind of cease to be amazed by anything because well just, they did it in the computer or as a half computer, half green screen or something.

But when you go back to a time period like this and you know that that was not what, they had no possibility of doing that at this time. I’m watching the way this fog is creeping in down these streets and all this stuff, and all I’m thinking about in my head is, how the hell did they do that? The fog has motion.

It moves. It really seems to be going after these people at one point and I got down this rabbit hole and it figuring out how they did it and it was really genius. They talked about how difficult it was to work with this fog and you know, there are fog people in Hollywood. I mean, there are guys who, their specialties are just handling fog because it is a big part of film, right?

Mm-hmm. It, it can be subtle. Sometimes it’s just there to reflect light and create a mood. But in this movie it is, like you said, a character. And so the pressure’s on to make this thing not just look like they were blowing a bunch of smoke in front of the camera. Mm-hmm. And they succeed in that too. And I just didn’t remember that.

I didn’t remember so many shots of fog getting into all these spaces, literally seeming to chase people down the street. And with early eighties, late seventies tech, it’s mind blowing how they did it. It’s so cool. Basically what they did for those street scenes is they would shoot the street and then they went back on the sound stage and they recreated the street in miniature.

With the buildings all covered in black, so they could just shoot the fog and they could more, more easily direct it down these areas and have it envelope those spaces and those buildings in a very, very natural way. And then just superimpose that on it and it, it works. It’s so smart. Mm-hmm. And it’s so good.

Oh, it looks great. 

Craig: It does. It looks fantastic. It shows its age a little bit. It could, I mean, it’s also like a glowing fog. And they did other cool tricks too, you know, like shooting things in reverse because I, I guess it’s really difficult to make fog roll. I. Away. In or out. Yeah. Or whatever. So they would shoot some scenes in reverse, which is smart.

It’s just, it’s smart filmmaking and it does look really good. I love, you know, those effects are great. There isn’t a lot of blood, so there still, even with the added in stuff, there’s, there’s a little bit more violence, but not a lot of blood. So if you’re looking for that, you won’t find that here. I’m actually pretty surprised that the movie is rated R, but I’m guessing that this was pre PG 13.

Yeah, I think you’re right because, yeah, I, I think initially he was going for a PG rating, but especially with the additional stuff, it ended up being R but it, it’s relatively tamed. There really is no blood. But there are many things that I like about it, and I like this. And there are some things that weren’t in the original cut that I really like.

I really like John Houseman telling kids a fireside story. Yes. That ultimately is like the background story for. The whole movie. 

Todd: I can’t believe it wasn’t in the original, honestly. ’cause it just fits in so naturally. 

Craig: Yeah. I mean, I suppose there is more exposition later when that priest finds that journal in the wall or whatever.

Right. But this is actually far more entertaining and I feel like it really establishes the mood of the whole movie. Like, oh, this is a campfire, ghost story. Oh, exactly. Okay. Mm-hmm. I am down with this and John Houseman, who I, I think acted forever. But ironically, what I know him most from is in Scrooge.

He’s the guy that reads. A Christmas carol on, on the TV special at the end. That’s right. 

Todd: I forgot. 

Craig: And, and so here he is, you know, again, doing what he does, and I, I think they brought him in for like a day. I don’t know. Yeah. It was super fast. 

Todd: He filmed it on a sound stage, but if a little fake campfire out brought him in for a day and, and then he was gone.

But he got the memo. 

Craig: Yeah. The story that he tells is super great. Well, first of all, he sets it up. It’s so ominous. He’s like 1155. One more story before 12, and then it’s just this great story. 

Todd: Mm-hmm. 

Clip: 100 years ago, on the 21st of April, out on the waters around Spivey Point, a small clipper ship drew toward land suddenly.

Out of the night. The fog rolled in for a moment. They could see nothing, not a foot ahead of them. And then they saw a light. My God, it was a fire burning on the shore. 

Craig: It was a campfire or something. And they crashed on the shore and sank, and all the men died and the fog left and never came back. But when the fog returns, the men at the bottom of the sea will rise up and search for the campfire and.

Todd: I think that’s a 

Craig: great story, grandpa. It’s a great way, great way to scare 

Todd: kids sitting around a campfire on the very day that this is supposed to be going down. Yeah. 

Craig: The hundred year anniversary at midnight. Little do they know that it really is happening. It just 

Todd: takes, it’s a few days off. Just a little.

Craig: It’s just a little offshore for a while. 

Todd: Yeah. It’s a well told story with some wrapped kids. One of those kids, it turns out, is the son of one of our main people here. Who is Stevie? Played by Adrian Barbo, who you already mentioned, and I could watch her on screen all day long. I 

Craig: love her. 

Todd: Hal Holbrook and her, uh, played husband and wife in the, the crate segment from Creep Show by George Romero just a couple years after this.

And I think Adrian Barbo, I know she was romantically involved with John Carpenter at this point. I think they might’ve been married, right? 

Craig: Yeah. During the filming of this movie, they were married. 

Todd: Yeah, he’s been married to a, a few of his, uh, I think 

Craig: stars or Costars Uhhuh collaborators, if you would. He’s married three or four times, I think.

Todd: Yeah. Yeah. But she’s great in this movie, and I really appreciate the structure of the story. It’s not all coming at you at once, like it lays this foundation of this backstory. But as far as how we are slowly introduced to all the people who are going to be relevant and the denizens of this town, I was getting a little bit of the needful things, vibes.

Yeah. Or Salem’s lot. Yeah, exactly. Where you, you start to get introduced to each of these people and then after a few more scenes you realize, oh, they’re connected in this way. Like, oh, okay. So this kid that we see a lot in the campfire scene is the son of Stevie. You know, that becomes obvious subtly we see that, uh, she’s a widow because, uh, or later on she’s waking up before her stint at the radio station, which is in a lighthouse, which is a great place for radio station, by the way.

Mm-hmm. You know, it pans slowly across her dresser and stuff, and you see photos of the three of them in there, but clearly, you know, the husband is not around anymore. So, you know, just little touches like that are so smart about this movie. There’s so much stuff that is just eventually introduced to you over time that may or may not be necessary, but it really helps to fill in this idea that this is a town and these characters are, are real.

And I think the town is obviously, what is it called? Antonio Point or something like that. I don’t remember. It’s a very much a par a character in this story too, because it’s really all about the heritage of this town and, and it and its past and how that past comes back to haunt them on this date. So good.

Yeah. And how Holbrooke is the drunk priest? Yes. Who of all the people in this town is very One note. 

Craig: Jamie Lee Curtis is in the movie. Yep. Janet Lee’s like the mayor, Tom Atkins. Is just, he plays a guy named Nick, Nick Castle. A lot of these character names John Carpenter apparently does this all the time.

He names characters in his movies about people that he works with. So Nick Castle was the guy who played Michael Myers in Halloween. Mm-hmm. So he used this for the character name of this guy, played by Tom Atkins, who we’ve seen in. Several horror movies, 

Todd: including Creep Show. He was the father in the wraparound story.

Craig: Oh, yep, 

Todd: yep. 

Craig: That’s right. That’s right. 

Todd: Mm-hmm. 

Craig: So there are tons of good people in it. Buck Flowers pops up in it. Yes. Like I love this cast. I’m a little weirded out by one of the, you know, after the opening credits, which was this, didn’t the opening credits go on for like 12 minutes? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I, I get they kept coming and I was like, surely we’re a half an hour into this movie by now.

Todd: It seems like at some point maybe they realized like they had too much footage, and so the, maybe they’re like, let’s, let’s overlap the credits with it for a little bit, because all of this stuff that goes on here in the beginning is also extra stuff that they put in. But again, I, I liked it. I thought it really set the mood.

It’s just weird shit’s going on at night in this village at this time. 

Craig: Yeah. I almost forgot about this. I do have it in my notes, but I almost skipped ahead because I kind of forgot about it because ultimately it doesn’t really amount to anything. I don’t know. I mean, I guess anytime. The ghosts show up.

Weird things just happen. Yeah. But this first scene, there’s not even fog around. No. It’s just weird crap is happening. There’s like an earthquake and all, all the cars turn on and start honking their horns and flashing their lights and the 

Todd: guy’s sweeping in a shop and the all everything’s rattling and something kind of breaks on its own.

And our drunk priest is sitting in the basement of the church at his desk and he, as he dismisses his assistant, who I think was John Carpenter himself in a little cameo. Yeah, that’s right. Suddenly he walks away and we get our first jump scare. There are, there are a few jump scares in this now, and I thought they were all effective.

Honestly, A big brick falls outta the wall and falls onto his desk and he walks over and what was behind it, but, uh, hidden in the wall, a journal and he opens it up and it’s the Journal of Father something, something Malone 1880. And it isn’t until later. When we hear his name for the first time that he realizes, well, this is one of his ancestors.

He’s, I guess in a, in a line of priests, you know, or, or pastors or whatever in this town, and this is like his grandfather’s journal or something like that. Again, you don’t see you, you see it now, but you don’t really recognize, realize his significance until a little later and I just love how that’s just not all thrown at you the instant.

I really like that this script is structured to be this puzzle that is slowly being pieced together because I think that’s one of the things Yeah. That maintains interest through what is ultimately a lot of exposition for a while anyway. 

Craig: Yeah. I mean, the first thing he reads in the book is April 30th, which I think is that day.

Todd: Mm-hmm. 

Craig: 12 to one belongs to the dead and that’s when all the weird stuff starts happening, I guess kind of culminating when Nick Castle, Tom Atkins. Picks up this girl, Jamee Lee Curtis on the side of the road. Now. Her name is Elizabeth. I’m not sure how old she’s supposed to be, and I’m not sure how old she was when she filmed this, I’m guessing early twenties.

Mm. But he’s like. Pretty old 70. He’s a middle aged guy, let’s put it that way. I could probably look it up. And he’s probably our age. I think he’s, he’s 

Todd: probably in his forties, but you’re right, like the, the age gap looks pretty wide here for these two who get very, very flirtatious very quickly. And then later we see that they’ve decided to sleep together.

Craig: Oh yeah. Like they do before and they sleep together and then they’re like, oh, by the way, what’s your name? I know 

Todd: Liz and I were laughing at that. She’s like, they just slept together and they don’t even know their names. I mean, 

Craig: whatever. It’s the seventies. She’s on the road. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: I, you know, I read, I don’t think that this is true at all, but I, I like it as a fan theory that, ’cause she’s very cagey about her past.

Like she doesn’t wanna talk about it. 

Todd: Mm-hmm. 

Craig: Um, but she does say at some point, oh, I’m bad luck. Everywhere I go, bad things happen. And she’s saying this like, as dead bodies are falling around. Right. And so some people are, some people are like, they think that she’s Lori Strode and she was so traumatized by what happened in Haddenfield that she’s changed her name and is going on the road.

To find herself. Bad things keep happening all around her, 

Todd: right? Like she’s a bad luck charm or something. This was very like Tommy Knockers, right? Where it’s like the right time in this town and then suddenly bad things are happening really, really quickly, including when they drive into town. ’cause at first I thought, oh, this guy’s driving through town.

I didn’t think he lived there, but he actually does. And again. In line with all this other stuff. With the Hortons honking and things breaking and the, the stone falling and everything, the windows of his truck just shatter. Oh, right. The windows and the windshield spontaneously shatter. And I have to admit, it bothered me a little bit ’cause later on their driving down the road with this completely shattered windshield and you’d think the windshield was still in place ’cause there was no wind blowing their air.

That’s funny. Anyway, yep. And then, and then the stove Stevie’s at the lighthouse. And she’s this, uh, very sultry nighttime dj, of which we don’t have anymore. 

Craig: I love it. 

Todd: Oh, it’s so 

Craig: nice. She rem Do you remember Delilah? Oh, um, there was a nighttime. Yes. Radio host named Delilah, and she played like 

Todd: in our town, like 

Craig: soft rock and like romantic stuff.

No, it wasn’t in my town. It was a national syndicated thing. Oh, was it? Oh, in fact, yeah. In fact, I, I only heard, I didn’t even hear it in my town. It would only be if I was like driving through cities and stuff, but she reminds me of Delilah. If any of you remember who that was. Yeah, just the very sultry voice.

Clip: It’s exactly 12 minutes after midnight. And Mrs. Stevie Wayne, your night Stand outta here. Around until about one o’clock. I’m Hi. Tonight in the KAB lighthouse on Spidey point, and in case you’ve forgotten, it’s April 21st and a happy birthday for Antonio Bay. Now there’s a celebration plan for tonight, so if you’re so excited about it, you can’t sleep well, stay up with me and I’ll figure out some way to keep you occupied.

Craig: It did kind of bother me that everybody in town. Our huge, smooth jazz fan.

Todd: Well, that’s, that’s what you gotta play at night. Anyway. We mostly hear her doing her show at night. Right. I 

Craig: guess the dialogue is like. If you’re lonely tonight, I’ll try to find something to keep you excited. Smooth jazz,

Todd: like baby that ain’t gonna do it and sleep. No, I am fast asleep. 

Craig: Yeah. 

Todd: She’s got a guy who’s calling her two and they’ve got this cute little relationship that apparently has been only over the phone, even though I guess he’s within very, very short driving distance of where she is. And he’s at the weather station, I guess, where they’re monitoring the weather and she’ll report that there’s fog rolling in or something, or that the weather’s happening and this guy will call back and say, nah, you’re wrong about that.

And what was his name? I, I never, I know. I don’t think I called him. I don’t remember. It doesn’t matter. Weather guy. Weather guy. We’ll call him Weather guy. So they’ve got this cute little relationship going, which I thought was fun and. Just, I really liked the relationships between all these characters.

They felt really real. They felt like they had a bit of backstory behind them. Mm-hmm. It was just cute. And then we’re also out in the water where, where Buck Flowers is with a couple other guys and they’re on a fishing, trawler, 

Craig: and weather guy gives her. He says there’s a big fog rolling in and it’s, it’s, it’s approaching this one particular ship.

I, I guess he has really advanced technology, 

Todd: right? Like, it’s like a fog tracker, right? It’s, it’s almost like the beeping sonar from, I, I can’t even imagine this is real. I think it was just for the movie, right? Where I think, so the little green thing sweeps around and then you just see a big blob on there that’s supposed to be fog.

Craig: Yeah. I think I read somewhere that like, we still don’t have technology that can detect fog. Maybe I’m making that up. I don’t know. But anyway, so she gets on and she’s like, uh, whatever ship you are, you better look out. There’s a big fog coming. And then it’s the, like the hull of this ship where these men are all just drunk and like lounging around on each other.

Like these burly sailor men and buck flowers is looking out like the, the peephole or manhole or whatever you, the window. And he’s like. There ain’t no fog coming in.

And then, and then once I get later, it starts rolling in. He is like. Hey, there’s a fog wall coming in.

Todd: That was hilarious. Do people just call him like, 

Craig: don’t I feel like he mostly does cameos, like, oh my God, he’s only such a small, small role, but it’s so funny. But he’s just. 

Todd: Unforgettable. Every single time. I just, I get warm feelings in my heart when I see Bud 

Craig: Flowers on the screen. I know he’s an Easter egg and you have to cherish him while you can because you know he is not gonna be there for very long.

That’s true. 

Todd: He’s in a ton of John Carpenter movies. I think this is the first movie he worked with him on, but he has a great role and they live, which we also did as I recall. Mm-hmm. Oh God. And maybe his biggest role. Uh, yeah. Yeah. But anyway, yeah. And, and so then, uh, this fog rolls in and that we see it again as this character, it actually kind of sucks into their engine and makes their engine and all their power go out.

And this was where I first was like, God, this movie is just dripping with atmosphere because the lighting is just so. Good here. Mm-hmm. As they go outside, two of them anyway, go outside, including Buck and, uh, they look and they see this ghost ship come in. It’s this classic 18 hundreds clipper ship or something with the mm-hmm.

Just your classic ghost ship. I mean, it’s straight outta comic books, right? Yeah, absolutely. The sails are tattered and there’s a fog and it’s come up close to them and so Cool. 

Craig: And, and we’ve said this about other movies too, like creep show, and it seems like at least not all the time, but many of these frames are set up so that they look like comic cells.

Yeah. Shooting that ghost ship from the character’s, POV. So you’re looking up at it and looking up into like the skeleton of the sails as it slowly goes by, then the ghosts arrive, but they are just black silhouettes. With the light emanating from the fog behind them, that is a cell directly out of one of those comics.

And, and I love that. Like I will just eat that up with a spoon every time. And that’s, that’s much of this, 

Todd: it is, 

Craig: I really. Yeah, I, I, I like this movie too. I don’t know, like, I can’t say that it’s one of my favorites and I like other John Carpenter movies more, but I don’t want to give the impression that I don’t like it.

There are so many things that I really like about it. And you said, I don’t even consider it a slow burn. I feel like things continue happening. Like I actually, and there’s a lot going on. 

Todd: Well, it’s not a hack and slash I guess that’s what I meant. It’s not like an action filled hack and slash Right. But there’s always something going on.

There’s always something intriguing happening, or at least just a beautiful image on the screen. Something unsettling. 

Craig: Exactly. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: And like you said, the score is very informative too. I, I, carpenter does such a good job with that of letting me know when the tense moments are, or they’re coming or, or when I can ease up a little bit.

He, he’s really good at that. And I thought that it was well paced because apparently the rules for these ghosts are that they can only be out from 12 to one. Yeah. So the first night that they’re out, like they have a ghost curfew. That’s so cute. The first night they’re out, like they break a bunch of.

Shit mysteriously, apparently weird things happen. They kill the guys on the boat. 

Todd: Yeah, all three of ’em. 

Craig: I, I think they almost get to 

Todd: like, there’s a knock at Nick and Elizabeth’s door. Yeah. Well, first of all, real quick, they killed the guys on the boat and I forgot. That this movie went here so early and I forgot that it was actually this explicit and brutal.

And I don’t mean it’s really bloody, it’s not. But they stabbed right through this guy and then they hook another guy right in the neck and then they sneak on the ship and there’s an arm coming out and everything. And I mean, you talk about mood and the lighting. I loved that scene where the last guy is inside the boat and he’s calling out to the other dudes and just like outta Halloween, really?

You see that figure appear far behind him? In the, I guess you call it the doorway, just lit by the back, but because the light is kind of swinging and it’s, it’s in and out, every time that light swings back around, that figure is a little closer and then it swings out and it’s just the guy’s completely surrounded in shadow.

And then that light swings in that figure’s closer, and then that light swings out and you can’t see where that figure is, and suddenly he gets the guy. It’s just so cool. I mean, again, this is John Carpenter being suspenseful, John Carpenter, even in these scenes, like apparently he never really intended to shoot the first time around.

Right. So yeah, there’s even some excitement like this happening at the beginning. For sure. 

Craig: I said earlier that I think that I would’ve liked to have seen the original cut, and I would like to, but. I don’t wanna suggest that, I don’t think that adding these things in was the right idea. Mm. I think adding these things in was absolutely the right choice.

Sure. Because I, especially at that time, like you said before, the audience would have certain expectations and I think without some of these more explicit scenes, I think audiences would’ve been disappointed. So I totally think it was the right choice. And, and they’re fun. They’re fun scenes. Some of them get a little silly.

There are some junk chairs that get a little silly, and I don’t remember exactly where they come. I, I just remember there’s one where Janet Lee is looking for the priest in the church and she can’t find him. And then he. Pops out of the, uh, the shadows like fucking anywise. What’s, what’s like was 

Todd: what’s on his shoulder.

Craig: It almost looks like he was intentionally hiding from her and trying to jump out and scare her. It’s true. It’s a little 

Todd: silly 

Craig: and I definitely jumped, but there are a couple of stupid ones like that. 

Todd: There are, yeah. Well you were talking about Nick and Elizabeth who are now lounging half naked at his home, flipping through magazines or something and there’s a knock on the his door as well.

And you can see the silhouette of somebody outside there and he’s just about to answer it when it turns one o’clock. And I think this is another jump scare, right where the clock shatters. Yes. At at one o’clock and then he opens the door and sticks sticks his head out and there’s nobody there. I was still waiting for something to get him, but it didn’t.

Craig: Right. Yeah. But now we have, now we have 24 hours to meet a few new characters and, and start putting these things together and getting some exposition. The first thing, and again, I don’t know if this was in the original script or not. It was, it was, this was one of the stranger things to me. We don’t even know yet that that little boy from the beginning we find out here, pretty soon we see that little boy from the campfire looking along the beach.

I thought he was gonna find a, a body. I thought he, he was gonna find one of the sailors, but he doesn’t. First he sees like a gold de balloon and then a wave comes in over it and pulls back. I didn’t know what was going on here. I thought that, okay, well I guess the wave pulled the de balloon away and washed this board up.

But he takes it and shows his mom, who turns out to be Stevie and he’s like, 

Clip: mom, mom, come on. I. But look at first it was a gold coin, and then it turned into this neat piece of wood. This is one of those times Uhhuh. But look at it mom. 

Craig: And she’s like, okay, whatever. Run along 

Todd: and she’s got this board and it, what does it say on it?

Dane? 

Craig: I think it’s supposed to be part of the name of the ship. Yes, 

Todd: it is. A hundred percent. 

Craig: Hey, when? When the kid comes in and gives her the board, as he’s leaving, he says, can I have a stomach pounder and a Coke? 

Todd: What does that mean? I’m not sure. I don’t know if it was like a snack of some kind. I don’t know.

And 

Craig: she was like, nah, maybe later. I don’t, I don’t know if you should give your kid a stomach pounder. 

Todd: Sounds like a drink. It sounds like a mixed drink, doesn’t it? 

Craig: I don’t know. It 

Todd: sounds like something you shouldn’t eat. 

Craig: Someone’s 

Todd: gonna educate us about that later. 

Craig: It sounds like something that would be on one of those like novelty menus, like at one of those 

Todd: right 

Craig: burger places where if you can eat the five pound burger, the stomach pound, or like if you weigh over 400 pounds, you eat for free or whatever.

Eat 

Todd: the stomach pounder in 10 minutes and you get it for free and your name on a plaque on the wall. 

Craig: We also find out now. That Nick, either like, I think, does he own the boat or he’s somehow connected to the boat somehow? Yeah. And he knows the crew. And so he’s worried when he finds out that they’re missing.

And Elizabeth’s hacking along with him 

Todd: and she’s like, I’m just gonna stick around. He’s like, didn’t you need to go somewhere? She’s like, ah, you know what? I think I’m just gonna stick around. Yeah. So we know they’re gonna be a couple for a while. She doesn’t, having her to be 

Craig: Right. Yeah. They’re gonna be together.

And, and the, the movie is kind of set up that way. Like these stories are happening concurrently. Mm-hmm. And they are connected, but they’re still like disparate stories. Yeah. Their, their paths cross from time to time, but, and I suppose at the end it becomes a little more ensemble, but as of right now, everything’s, everybody’s just kind of doing their own thing.

And Mrs. Williams, who I, is she the mayor? I don’t know. Or is she just like, like, I think she’s 

Todd: the mayor or the chairman of the city council or something. I mean, it’s clearly a very small city, right? Maybe they don’t have a proper mayor or who knows. But yeah, she’s in charge. 

Craig: Well, whatever. She’s in charge of planning this.

Ceremony to celebrate their centennial and it’s gonna culminate in like this candlelight vigil, conveniently honoring the sixth founding fathers or something tonight, right 

Todd: at night. Usually we do this shit in the day, but, oh, well 

Craig: Elizabeth and, and what’s his name? Get to the boat and they find it, but, and it’s empty.

There’s no crew there. But for whatever reason, the boat, even though it’s floating, appears to have been at the bottom of the ocean for a long time. Like there it’s full of silt and sand. 

Todd: Yeah, that’s a weird thing that I don’t know was ever really fully explained. 

Craig: No 

Todd: at all. It’s just like a weird ghost thing, I guess.

Like he, he smells a beer and then takes like an open beer and like takes a sip of it. He’s like, Hmm, salt water. There’s a jump scare that I thought was really effective in there where like everybody leaves and the two of them, Nick and Liz are just in the boat sitting there and it’s really just an excuse for him to tell a story about his.

Father, who apparently also had an interaction with that same ghostship that they don’t know about yet, but about how he actually boarded it and found a delo. 

Clip: It was a gold de balloon minute in Spain, 1867. My dad picked up the coin, put it in his breast pocket of his jacket, zippered it up, came home, told us a story, and he unzippered the pocket to gimme the coin.

It was gone. 

Todd: This is referencing obviously the same ghost ship we saw, but as they’re sitting there, there’s like the, the latch on a, like a locker starts to move and then of course it opens up and this stuff falls out. And that’s supposed to be our jump scare. But I thought, well, we knew that was gonna happen.

That was pretty lame. But then like two seconds later, a body falls on top of her and she screams. And that made me jump.

Yeah, that was a good fake out. It 

Craig: was funny. It it was good. It was, I liked it. I liked it. It was funny to me because it was right after she had gotten done saying that she was bad luck and weird things, and then that body just like fell right on top of her. It was 

Todd: hilarious. They didn’t do a very good search of this ship if they, they missed this body.

Craig: Yeah. Meanwhile, while that is happening. Kathy, the lady in charge for some reason goes to talk to the priest. I guess she wants him to say something at this vigil or whatever, 

Todd: give the benediction 

Craig: and, and while he’s there or while she’s there, they just get to talking about the journal. He’s not in the move that he found.

Todd: Yeah. ’cause of what he read in the, in his diary. Yeah. 

Craig: And this is where we get the explanation for why these ghost sailors are, are seeking their revenge. 

Todd: Yeah. Somehow. Okay. I was a little mixed up on this. Same, because there was. Something about the captain of the ship wanted to establish a, he was maybe a leper and wanted to establish a leper colony nearby, and they weren’t excited about that and he took some gold to do that.

But maybe, and I don’t really know the motivations, but for whatever reason, the town or several co-conspirators, including this priest, did this trick that the guy at the very beginning told us about where they lit. I don’t know, they were sailing out or in I, none of this makes sense to me. But anyway, they’re out on the water.

They crash into the ocean, into the, the shore. The whole ship sank along with all of the gold that they were going to use to establish their colony. And those conspirators went down and grabbed the gold and took it. So it’s like a lost gold situation as well. Very typical ghost story. 

Craig: Yeah, I that you may very well be right.

I think and because I was confused about it too. What I had it in my head was that it was even more dastardly than that. Was that the gold, or at least I think that this guy, whoever it was, I think that he wanted to establish a leper colony. I don’t think that he was a, well, he may or may not have been a leper, but I think that he was trying to establish a colony in a humanitarian effort.

Todd: Oh, 

Craig: I don’t know. I don’t know either, but I think what happened was at least some of that gold was, oh God, maybe I’m making this up. But it’s, it, it, it didn’t sound convoluted in my head when I was saying, I think that they made a deal. I think that the guy who wanted to establish the leper colony made a deal with the leaders of this township or whatever it was, this colony at the time, and said, we wanna establish this leper colony nearby.

We will give you money. And the colony leaders, the sixth of them or whatever, wanted the money, but they didn’t want the lepers. Oh, gotcha. So that’s, so that’s why they sank the ship and they were just gonna take it all for themselves, which apparently they did. I have no idea. You could totally be right.

No. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter. Now we know why they’re mad. 

Todd: Yeah. Their gold got stolen and their ship was sunk by these people in the town. And the priest in his diary admits that he was one of them, and that’s caused him a lot of consternation. Ah, 

Craig: right. 

Todd: There’s a, I have down in my notes, crazy jump scale.

Oh, I know what that is. So now we’re back examining the body. 

Craig: Oh 

Todd: yes. Oh my God. This, this was the scene I was referring to earlier, and maybe you were too about, this was just so out of place in this movie that I was just scratching my head. I just didn’t think the movie was gonna go here. I mean, we’ve seen weird things happening always between midnight and one, but nothing this gregarious, they’re back at the morgue examining the body.

The mortician is there, and I think it’s, uh, isn’t it just Stevie and, no, it’s not Stevie, it’s Nick and Elizabeth. Right? 

Craig: The, yeah, the, the mortician and Nick are out. Side talking about how this body died. I they, on, I, I think they only found one of the guys, it looked to me like his eyeballs were gone maybe.

Todd: Mm. 

Craig: But the, the coroner or whoever is, is telling him this guy, it’s like he’s been dead at the bottom of the ocean for weeks. And Nick is like that. Well, that can’t be, I just talked to him yesterday. Okay. So that’s happening out in the hall. Meanwhile. Jamie Lee Curtis is just sitting in there with the corpse.

Todd: Mm, yeah. 

Craig: And, 

Todd: and then go ahead. There’s, there’s movement under the sheet behind her, and you see a hand fall down the side, and then the hand goes searching up under the tray next to it and finds a scalpel. And then now we see everything kind of from underneath there, where these two legs swing down and they to get up and they start to come towards her.

And I’m like, why is, is this a zombie movie now? What’s going on? And then she kind of turns around and there’s a stumble and a scream and they rush in and the body’s on the ground. And like, I just did it just collapse before it got to her. Uhhuh. Okay. And then, and then 

Craig: they’re all like. Whoa. That was weird.

That was weird. Alright. Put it back and then 

Todd: that’s just it. 

Craig: Like they nev never talk about it again. So, so 

Todd: dumb 

Craig: it. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s entirely out of keeping, like that shouldn’t be happening. Yeah. These kinds of things are only supposed to be able to happen between 12 and one. 

Todd: Yeah. And certainly nothing like this really.

Yeah. Like, but at the same time, or maybe just before this actually Stevie Inexplicably has decided to bring that piece of driftwood with her to the radio station. I’m not sure why, but. She set it down on top of a stack of eight tracks and while she’s busying herself on the phone and chatting with some, that guy again, I think behind her and I thought this was cool.

’cause in ghost stories, you know, you always wanna see something a little different. You know, not just the lights flickering or the electricity going out or the shadow along the wall. Sure. Uh, water was seeping out of the driftwood and then starts coming out at full force and starts to short circuit some of the equipment down there, which causes it to catch fire.

She turns around and just before it catches fire, she sees that the word on it has changed and it says six must die. And after she blasts it with her fire extinguisher, of course it’s back to what it looked like before. And I guess then this corpse in, its in its final gasp of zombies had scratched three on the ground with his.

Scalpel. So, I mean, it’s very obvious. No, and I like how this had all come together though. Like at this point we get it, we get what’s going on. Okay, the ghosts are coming, they’ve taken their revenge. I did a count in my head. There were three guys on the boat, right? And so now three more people have to die, I guess, before they’re satisfied or they go back to the ocean or something like that.

So I’m thinking, okay, it’s cool. Like now we know how many more people are gonna die. And I thought, well, that can’t be too hard. You know, like, sure, it’s gonna be a low body count and I guess three will die. And then they go back to the water. I don’t know. But you know, you’re curious to see what’s gonna happen.

And so now it’s nighttime and everybody’s having their nighttime celebration to unveil the statue. As Stevie announces, that candlelight procession will be happening in about an hour. And at this time the fog is rolling in. Huh? 

Craig: It gets to end the weatherman. She warns him that it’s coming ’cause. 

Todd: Now she’s afraid of it.

Craig: Yeah. She thinks there’s something in it. There’s something in the fog and he gets killed by one of the sailor guys or whatever. Then it’s also she’s, she’s yelling over the airwaves for her kid, Andy. She’s like, stay in the house or, or first she’s saying, get out. I don’t remember. He’s with a babysitter.

Something I don’t remember because, you know, I read stuff about it, but I don’t think that it was ever specifically suggested, these ghosts, they appear to me to be targeting. People or, or am I or is that incorrect? I’m not, I’m not sure. Becau are they just, are they just moving around and just whoever they stumble upon, 

Todd: that’s who they get.

See, that’s why I would say like, it would be a rather short movie. ’cause they almost got fricking Tom Atkins’ character and possibly Jamie Lee Curtis the night before, which would’ve gotten ’em almost completely to their quota rather quickly. Unless this is a case of where these people are, are, you know, like descendants of the co-conspirators.

And it’s just never fully explained 

Craig: Well, right. Because what’s his name? The priest is for sure. And he said, he says near the end, he’s like, I am the sixth conspirator. I am. 

Todd: Mm-hmm. 

Craig: It, it’s almost like he is. Aware of some prophecy that I we’re not aware of is, I don’t, I don’t know, whatever. 

Todd: Yeah, 

Craig: it’s fine.

Todd: It literally states in the, the diary something about how Blake’s gold will be recovered. And I’m pretty sure the diary more or less tells him that this is gonna happen. Yeah. 

Craig: Yeah. Something. But this last, I don’t know. I, I feel like we’re in like the last 15 minutes. Yeah. And it’s kind of a lot of running around.

Mm-hmm. Um, the fog is getting close to people. It’s getting close to Andy, but then Elizabeth and. The guy, whatever his name is. Yeah. Rescue the kids so that it almost 

Todd: kills Andy. 

Craig: Yeah, it does kill the babysitter. Yeah. The old, the nice old lady babysitter. I kind was not expecting that, surprised by that.

Todd: But now you realize there’s just one left, right? I mean, that would 

Craig: the baby, that’d be five. Yeah. Mm-hmm. That’d be five. And somehow the vigil goes on. Nobody, it just so happens that the ghosts cut all of the power in town, like right before the candlelight vigil is supposed to begin. So like nobody really questions it.

It was like, oh, that was nice, I guess to turn out all the lights. For the vigil. 

Todd: Yeah, I know, right. It’s a good thing. They were all holding candles at that time. Very good coincidence. Right? The mayor’s good at playing, but 

Craig: I don’t, and there’s big panic and you know, they’re driving, there’s driving around and this is the fog.

And 

Todd: this is where I thought the effects on the fog really shine because they’re driving down the street and the fog is creeping on. Oh, she’s giving play by play from her perch up in the, up in the lighthouse. Although I have to say, if you actually look at where the lighthouse is located, it’s, it’s actually down by the cliffs.

It there’s no way from where she was. It’s below. Yeah. There’s no way she could have been looking down on the town from up there. Quite the opposite. She wouldn’t have seen shit. 

Craig: No. That real lighthouse was very, very cool. But you had to go down more than a down. Yes. More than 300 steps to get to it. 

Todd: But anyway, she’s given play by play of other, the streets and they’re driving the car around.

They’ve got a backup to get away from the fog. And of course, like she’s like, eventually she’s like, get to the church. The church is the only place that, that, the fog hasn’t gotten to yet. Where did all, did all the other people from the vigil 

Craig: just go home? I don’t, because eventually 

Todd: I know it’s, 

Craig: it’s just, it’s just the boss lady and her assistant lady with the priest, and then they meet at the church with Jamie Lee Curtis and, and her boyfriend.

Yeah, and the kid. The 

Todd: kid too. And 

Craig: so they’re all there. Yeah. And so that’s, that’s basically the showdown because Stevie apparently is so duty bound. 

Todd: Yeah, 

Craig: that she cannot leave this radio station. 

Todd: Right. She’s like, it’s my job to report on the fog for everybody. Keep ’em safe. She 

Craig: apologizes to her son over the air.

I’m so sorry. Mommy couldn’t come. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me. I swear I love you, but I have to stay on the radio. It 

Todd: honestly would’ve been better for the movie if she just hadn’t called that out so 

Craig: explicitly And she never does leave. 

Todd: No. 

Craig: Like I, does she even have any scenes with anybody? I don’t remember.

Todd: That is a very good question, because what happens next is, oh, 

Craig: she has a scene. She has that scene with her kid. In the morning. In the 

Todd: morning, and that’s it. When it gives her 

Craig: the wood, I think that’s it. She talks to other people on the phone, but I think the rest of the time she’s just on a, a set by herself.

You are right. Anyway, so it’s the big climax. Mm-hmm. So the ghosts show up at the church. The ghosts show up at the lighthouse and the priest figures out, oh, they, they just, they’re like leprechauns. They just want 

Todd: their gold. There must be gold somewhere. Let’s go back downstairs. Maybe. It’s 

Craig: right here, right?

Oh, it is. Yep. There it is. Didn’t notice it before. Here is an enormous. Gold cross that surely must have weighed hundreds of pounds. And how Holbrook, God bless him. 

Todd: I know. There’s no way couple people could have carried that thing upstairs. That thing was massive. Also, I love the way, like when they were pulling it down, like these, these bricks, these rocks were just like, I don’t know, an inch deep.

Yeah, the rocks look all beautiful, like rocky and stuff from the outside, but when they’re pulling it off, it’s clearly plaster. Oh my God. Yeah. That was cheap. 

Craig: Oh gosh. These things are happening. So while that’s happening and those ghosts are approaching in the church, Stevie the ghost converge on her in the lighthouse.

So she climbs up on the roof. I mean, I guess, what else are you gonna do? Yeah. And they’re grabbing at her and like, you know, I, I think one of them hooks her and then shoulder or something, but she’s Okay. So back at the church, the priest is like, here, here’s your gold. And I am the sixth conspirator. Take me.

And so the ghost, the main ghost like grabs the cross. Mm-hmm. So they’re both holding the cross 

Todd: and it starts glowing. I got the sense it was burning up, you know, that was just my feeling, but I. Oh, 

Craig: Nick, or whatever the guy’s name is, so I can never remember, like pulls the priest away, like off and onto the floor, and then the cross kind of just, it doesn’t explode, but like just a super 

Todd: bright light.

And then the ghost are just gone, right? And the fog’s gone. Everything’s gone including, uh, from the top of the lighthouse. And so I’m sitting here scratching my head. I’m like, okay, so if they get their gold back, then they don’t need to kill the sixth person, I guess, because yeah, they’re all gone and everybody hugs and I thought, well, Stevie’s the least gonna need to find a new babysitter.

But every everybody else is fine. The fog’s gone, and I guess that lifts the curse. Right. At least that’s what I’m thinking. 

Craig: Right. 

Todd: But, uh, 

Craig: but Stevie on the radio, like it warns that the fog could come back. 

Todd: Mm-hmm. And then, and then it 

Craig: cuts to the priest and the church and you see some 

Todd: fog come out from under a door.

And then that was kind of cheap. I mean, I don’t know, I, I, I thought it would’ve been better if the priest just died along with the, the gold cross and then that kind of is a neat and tidy bow on the whole thing. 

Craig: Yeah. They 

Todd: got their six people, they got their gold back, which presumably means they’re, they’re, they’ve got nothing to come back for and they’ve been satisfied.

And the ghosts are done. This was obviously constructed so that they could have that one last jumps scare at the very end. That singer, you know, that are pretty typical for horror movies. But, and I would like to think that wasn’t part of the original. 

Craig: I don’t know. We did when Stevie’s fighting them up on top of the tower.

There’s one moment where we, you we. Throughout the whole rest of the movie, we really don’t see their faces. They’re, they’re mostly just silhouetted, they’re kind of hooded. Mm-hmm. But for one moment we see one of their faces and it’s just a big blobby magdy mess. Oh yeah. Like, and I didn’t, and I didn’t care for it.

Todd: Um, 

Craig: they, they could have, they could have not shown that, and I think it would’ve been better, but 

Todd: Oh, yeah. 

Craig: That’s a, that’s a small 

Todd: complaint. Way better like you Yeah. When they’re just shadowy ghosts and not so much like, oh, it’s like kind of a zombie type thing. Yeah, I know what you’re saying. 

Craig: I don’t know.

It was really weird. It was like green and it was, it was strange. 

Todd: It was definitely a, a late edition. I, I know that for a fact ’cause I read about that and, and Rob Boten was the guy who did all the makeup effects and, and that thing in particular, I think we’ve talked about him before because, uh, when we did The Howling, he was, um, makeup effects creator on The Howling.

And he worked with John Carpenter a lot. The thing he did, the, the stuff for Explorers and Legend and Innerspace and Robocop and Piranha Seven even, and Basic Instinct later on. Total Recall, basically all of my favorite movies this guy did pretty much the makeup effects for, but this was one of his earliest ones.

Yeah. It’s, uh, I, I’m telling you, man, I still, I just freaking love this movie. Uh, it just hit all my right buttons. I was in the mood for a spooky ghost story like this. I thought it did have momentum throughout. I could see where some people might call it slow, but I was engaged throughout the whole thing.

I liked how the plot was constructed, like a puzzle that pieces together. I got a real sense of place. I felt that this place was a real town. These characters were real. They had real relationships. It hit all my buttons and I just was really, really happy with it. It’s totally different from what I remembered as a kid.

I, I think I would totally watch this again. I’d introduce other people to it. I highly recommend it. 

Craig: Yeah, I recommend it too, especially if you haven’t seen it. I mean, so many, especially, especially if you like slasher movies, especially if you’re into eighties stuff. If you’re a John Carpenter fan and you haven’t seen it, Adrian Barbo is worth the price of admission.

Yeah. There are so many great things about it. I think for me, more than I love the movie, I love the nostalgia that it inspires in me. Like, 

Todd: mm. 

Craig: This is the type of movie. That I really love, and it’s a really well done one. I will watch it again. I’m sure, I know I’ve seen it more than once before this. Mm.

It’s not one of the ones that’s in my regular rotation. 

Todd: Sure. 

Craig: I, I guess probably just because it’s not one of the ones that I consumed like on a monthly basis as a kid, I just didn’t see it as much. We didn’t have it, so I don’t have that kind of connection to it. I’m not as inspired to watch it that often, but when I do.

It’s lovely. Like it’s, it’s really nice. It’s, I think my fa the atmosphere and, and just the cinematography are my favorite parts of it. But I agree with absolutely everything that you said. I don’t find it boring. I didn’t find it slow. I was engaged in every moment. I loved the score. There are so many wonderful things to say about it.

So yeah, I agree a hundred percent. You should watch this if you haven’t seen it. 

Todd: Well, thank you so much for joining us on this Fog Day. Happy fog day. Everyone out there. Thank you to our patrons for putting this to the top of the list. Thank you, Chris, for requesting this. We were so excited to do this today.

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We have an awesome book club going on. We’ve got mini sos unedited versions of our phone calls that, that go into this podcast. All you need is five bucks a month. Go over there, become a patron. Support the show. We just love you for listening. We love you for passing this along to a friend. You’ve got a friend who is celebrating Fog Day with you.

Pass this along. I’m gonna milk that fog day shit for all it’s worth. Pass this along to them. The best way that you can help support this show is by helping us to get new listeners. Until next time, I’m Todd. And I’m Craig with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.