A 21st of April Ode to John Carpenter's 'The Fog'

A brilliant, unsettling reflection on the sins of the past. Just in time for Antonio Bay's anniversary celebration.

The Fog (1980) AVCO Embassy Pictures

“Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?”

Edgar Allan Poe

John Carpenter’s ghostly, hypnotic masterpiece, The Fog, opens with Poe’s enigmatic verse and so shall I.

Today is the 21st of April. The anniversary of the treacherous murder of Captain Blake and his poor leper colony. Their ship, the Elizabeth Dane, lies under the icy waters of Spivey Point, betrayed and murdered by the founding fathers of Antonio Bay. John Houseman’s enchanting Mr. Machen tells the story better than anyone else could, captivating and terrifying a group of children with his campfire tale:

The Fog takes place exactly 100 years after those hateful events. For 24 hours the disfigured, leprous ghosts of Blake and his colony leave their cold, watery graves and exact bloody revenge on the descendants of the original six conspirators who stole their gold and their lives. An eerie, supernatural fog ushers them into Antonio Bay, which is built on lies, murder, and Blake’s stolen gold.

Creative Movie-Watching

I have what I believe to be a unique way of watching The Fog. I won’t call it a “reading” of the film, nor do I think that anyone involved had anything like this in mind when they made it. What I’m about to share is perhaps best understood as a film critic’s version of fan fiction.

Inspired by the epigraph of Poe’s words that introduces the movie, I sometimes like to pretend that it is, in fact, a dream within a dream. Perhaps the film we are watching is the dream taking place in the mind of a traumatized Laurie Strode as she recovers from her encounter with the unexplainable nightmare, the embodiment of evil, Michael Myers, in Carpenter’s previous film, Halloween.

So many connections reveal themselves.

Jamie Lee Curtis appears in The Fog as a hitchhiker, drifting into town from nowhere. She becomes Elizabeth Solley here, a liberated avatar for the repressed and traumatized Laurie Strode, who lies in Haddonfield Memorial Hospital, dreaming troubled dreams in the wake of surviving Michael’s evil. Unlike the virginal, painfully shy Laurie, her new dream-self hitchhikes alone and sleeps with the first man she meets: a good man who does not try to murder her, but serves as her protector. Incidentally, his name is Nick Castle, a name he happens to share with the actor who played Myers in the original Halloween.

I imagine Laurie lying unconscious in her hospital bed as the DJ Stevie Wayne plays soothing jazz music over the radio in the background. In Laurie’s dream, Stevie’s voice condenses into the hero of the film. Adrienne Barbeau’s Stevie Wayne uses the power of the radio to guide the survivors to safety in the end, where the Elizabeth finally puts a protective arm around Stevie’s young son. Laurie/Elizabeth is ever the protector of children.

And Laurie’s best friend lives in Antonio Bay too. The murdered Annie (Nancy Loomis) from Halloween is resurrected in this dream as Sandy, the snarky, intelligent woman that Annie might have become had Myers not murdered her without reason.

Annie’s father returns as well. Charles Cyphers, who played Sheriff Brackett in Halloween re-embodies as Dan the Weather Man, the doomed weather service meteorologist who loves the voice of Stevie Wayne.

Even John Carpenter’s cameo in The Fog is an echo of Halloween. He briefly appears as a handyman for Hal Holbrook’s doomed clergyman. Father Malone calls him Bennett; the film’s Wikipedia entry reveals his fully name to be Bennett Tramer. Poor, lonely Laurie spent much of Halloween night pining over Ben Tramer, who she’d hoped would ask her to the school dance.

I like to think of the film as Laurie’s subconscious working through the nightmare that she and the rest of Haddonfield endured on Halloween night, 1978, desperately searching for meaning in the aftermath of ultimate meaninglessness.

A Proper “Interpretation” of The Fog

The Fog has become my favorite Carpenter film. Its dreamlike quality and the exquisite detail he employs to create atmosphere and a sense of “the eerie,” make it eminently re-watchable for me. When it occurred to me that the 21st of April was coming up, I couldn’t resist the urge to gush about it. 

I do have a more conventional “reading” of the movie (though frankly, I prefer to bask in my creative viewing).

In the context of Carpenter’s entire body of work, The Fog fills in some of the gaps of meaning we are left with in the wake of Michael Myers. Last year, I wrote an extended analysis of how Evil is defined and conceptualized in Carpenter’s films for Popular Culture and Theology.  I will focus just a bit here on how The Fog might work in tandem with Halloween on that front.

Halloween leaves the view with a lingering and haunting question: why? What explains Michael Myers? The film of course does not attempt to answer that question (a common complaint about the Rob Zombie remakes is that he emphatically does). Carpenter leaves it as an open question that the viewer must simply live forever with. That is the source of the film’s enduring power and why Michael Myers remains an icon of horror.

Still, I wonder if The Fog answers the question just a bit. Whereas there is no apparent reason for young Michael’s psychotic break, we know perfectly well why Blake’s men have returned: revenge. Antonio Bay is a Potempkin Village; a pristine image of small town perfection, that is underneath, a lie. The town’s present tranquility was made possible by distant acts of theft and murder. Blake and his band of lepers have returned to unleash divine, cosmic justice on the descendants of their murderers.

Perhaps this is an explanation for Michael as well. The boy we know as Michael Myers had no reason to become what he became. At least as far as Haddonfield could tell. The town was, after all, peaceful and idyllic to itself; “rows of families” as Sheriff Brackett put it to Dr. Loomis.

The experience of The Fog makes one wonder, however, if some latent sin rests in Haddonfield’s past, some transgression that created a spirit of vengeance that found a home in young Michael Myers.

Regardless, The Fog remains a classic horror film. Perfect for the 21st of April. It’s thrilling, unnerving, and thought-provoking and leaves the viewer wondering about the sins of the past that make our present possible. Do we ultimately get what we deserve?

Note: I should have mentioned that last year, I had the great pleasure of sitting in with the Christian Feminist Podcast to discuss the movie on the network Halloween Crossover series! Find that episode right here: https://christianfeministpodcast.castos.com/episodes/episode-176-the-fog