It Was A Gold Doubloon, Minted In Spain: The Fog (1980)

I know in the years that I have been writing this blog, I have endlessly bemoaned the notion of the "seminal classic" one that has gained a unquestioned reputation and has become hailed as the be all and end all of a certain type of film, this often holds most true in the realm of the horror film, wherein works like The Exorcist and Psycho remain standards, the veritable Beatles or Rolling Stones of the genre.  Indeed, these works deserve such praise for their continual ability to captivate and challenge cinema goes despite being decades old.  Indeed, I would even argue that these works, much like King Kong or Singin' in the Rain suffer from over-hyping to the point where people thing they have already seen a film through some cultural referencing.  However, for todays film I am not particularly interested in these films, but instead ones that were quite evocative for their time, either for reconstituting the genre or for adding a fresh perspective to its possibilities.  Indeed, John Carpenter did just this when he released Halloween in two years prior to The Fog.  Halloween, a film I reviewed last year during this same marathon, stands up and indeed offers itself as a textbook on how to make a proper thriller heavy slasher film.  So when two years later the now well-regarded director offered The Fog it seems as though people consumed it gladly almost as though it were inseparable from its predecessor.  This is all not to say that The Fog is a terrible movie, indeed, it has some quite moody moments and the special effects are beyond stellar.   However, the film is undeniably dated, particularly in its dry sense of comedy a thing still attempting to navigate itself from the seventies minimalism to the overly done style of the eighties.  The tragedy of this film is that it seems to play it same on certain themes or stylistic choices, perhaps signs of budgeting choices, or s simple fact that producers, and probably Carpenter felt more safe going with methodologies that already proved successful.  There is a trajectory about Carpenter's films, at least this is clearly the case in Halloween and The Thing, wherein things start a bit weird and end up in a state of absolute insanity, this same methodology is at work in The Fog, but the attempt and resolution and, subsequent, undermining of this sense of safety is so wrought with heavy-handed nonsensical elements as to make the movie fall short of its assumed cult status.

The Fog focuses on the town of Antonio Bay in California, who are on the precipice of celebrating their towns centennial, despite a night of bizarre events in the town including objects moving about inexplicably and glass shattering.  The towns folk react in various manners, whether it be Stevie Wayne (Adrienne Barbeau) a late night radio disc jockey whose only concern is the safety of her son, or hitchhiker Elizabeth (Jamie Lee Curtis) whose happenstance wandering into Antonio Bay seems to be far from lucky.  It is not, however, until a local clipper ship goes off the radar for an entire night and is rediscovered in a state that would suggest it had been underwater for months that people begin to get truly suspicious, particularly local politician Kathy Williams (Janet Leigh) and her assistant Sandy (Nancy Kyes) who take it upon themselves to track down the local priest Father Malone (Hal Holbrook) whose has gone into hiding upon a discovery of a journal from a century ago that explains the manner with which the early settlers of Antonio Bay purposefully banished a group of lepers from their community for their disease, completely ignoring the willingness of the lepers to live on the outskirts of the town in the first place.  Paired with this history of oppression and a constantly moving fog through the town, it is revealed that this glowing spectral fog entity carries with it a group of undead killers, who strike during the witching hour.  The town afforded this information, or a degree of it at least, manages to spend a day undertaking preventative measures to deny a larger attack, whether it be Stevie moving her son away from a piece of possessed wood he found while walking about the shore, or for Father Malone to attempt and quell the understandably disgruntled spirits of years gone by.  Needless to say, the preparation, while beneficial still does not stifle an attack completely and the various skeptics remaining in the town fall victim to the ghost attacks, most notably Stevie's romantic love interest a local meteorologist, thus leading to a near fulfillment of the late leper's prophecy that six individuals must die to make the initial loss complete.  However, those with a passion for living and a purpose manage to survive accordingly, although in the closing moments of the film it is made rather clear that not all who thought themselves save actually find this to be true.

As I write the somewhat vague synopsis, I am realizing one of the other elements of this particular Carpenter film that made it one of my less exciting viewing experiences.  Having seen Halloween, Dark Star and The Thing, I recall them all centering their narratives either in specifically personal or decidedly confined spaces.  For example, what makes Halloween work so well is that it is almost entirely a confrontation between Michael Myers and Laurie, who is the primary focus of the film.  Sure this film does branch out and show other characters meeting their demise and includes shots of what viewers presume to be Myers following her, but the narrative always returns to her experiences.  In a slightly similar sense, the narratives of Dark Star and The Thing work because they happen in a very small, almost claustrophobic space.  The former, existing in a state of paranoia predicated upon a spaceship that is both a source of constant protection, while also threatening to fall part (indeed as it does) at any moment.  The Thing is scary, precisely because it takes place in the confines of the Arctic, proving, yet again confining, and the horror of every person involved becoming a point of paranoia due to a quickly spreading only adds to this inescapability.  Sure, The Fog is situated within a singular community, but the manner with which Carpenter brings outsiders into this space, or branches out to the very limits of this space become somewhat frustrating to a film that possesses a feeling of frustrating disjointed narratives.  I would posit that to a considerable degree The Fog is at least three different films that were forced together around the premise of one idea of horror, making the impending fog mean different things for the persons involved, none of which carry enough weigh to make the larger film work.  If I did, however, have to chose one for which I wished Carpenter had solely pursued, it would, undoubtedly, be that of Stevie and her son, particularly the sort of anxiety surrounding the discovery of the plank of wood.  Without the excessive narratives of the clipper ship and Father Malone, the impending fog as being solely attached to this wood and thus extending as a metaphor to Stevie's anxiety as a single mother would become brilliant.  Indeed, it would even help to explain some of her dialogue throughout the film.  Unfortunately, this is not the film made available and as such it lacks a high degree of cohesion.

Key Scene:  There are some shots of the fog approaching that work on a great special effects level visually, even for the outdated technology at play.  The soundtrack is also quite nice.

I would watch this purely in terms of becoming a horror classics completist, hopefully, it will prove a far less disappointing experience than I had.

I Like You...: V/H/S (2012)

I will be the first to admit that this was the most anticipated of the films I would be reviewing this month and was quite worried when my car got put in the shop limiting me from going to the theaters to see this  film, however, thanks to its somewhat limited release and a watch instantly option on Amazon I was able to catch up with this found footage anthology with much elation.  I am aware that there are two camps for this film, the first claiming that is lack of plot and non-notable performances result in a weak film overall, while another camp claims it to be the savior of the horror genre and a veritable renaissance in scary movie creation.  I have firmly centered myself with the latter group, because not only did I find this conceptual horror film to be intensely scary, but it went far above any level of expectation I had formulated.  Sure some of the segments in the film are weaker than others, but overall each story commits to an idea or form within the horror genre and creates a suspense driven narrative of ten to fifteen minutes that had me more than leaning out of my seat.  I was taking notes on the film for this post but completely forgot about it within moments, the work was far to intriguing and certainly to scary to become distracted by what would invariably be half-assed comments on the social nature of the film.  If anything we as a film viewing community, particularly those favoring horror films, should be praising the efforts of such a film, regardless of what you may think of their execution.  The directors Adam Wingard, David Bruckern, Ti West, Glenn McQuaid, Joe Swanberg and the group Radio Silence deserve acknowledgement if only for trying to breath some fresh life into a flailing genre.  V/H/S purely on a experimental level is something to be enjoyed with great pleasure and a certain level of psychological discomfort and remember this film has been said to induce vomiting and black-outs, even if it is purely because of the rattling camera work and onslaught of color bars and film tricks.

As noted the film is series of "found footage" pieces, all centered within one story titled Tape 51, in which a group of found footage enthusiasts are hired to retrieve an unexplained tape from a house.  Upon arrival to this house they find a man dead on a chair and a handful of televisions displaying either blue screens or electrical snow.  Perusing the house one of the members decides to pop in one of the tapes into his camera thus beginning the series of the films.  The first work Amateur Night follows a group of college males, one equipped with a glasses cam as they attempt to pick up women in a night club only to return home to video tape the entire conquest.  One of the women they meet named Lily (Hannah Fierman) is particularly attached to a member of the group starring blankly at him wile uttering the phrase "I Like You"  over and over again.  A bit paranoid the group agrees to take her and a few other women back to their hotel, only to discover that Lily is not exactly a woman and a creature far more disturbing an event that proves cataclysmic to the whole group.  The second tape title Second Honeymoon follows a guy named Sam (Joe Swanberg) and his wife Stephanie (Sophia Takal) as they travel through Arizona on a trip to celebrate their marriage, all seems uneventful until a young woman awkwardly asks them for a ride one night, only to break into their hotel later in the night and steal their money, an act that is caught on tape by the girl as she films it with their camera.  The next day leads to an awkward moment between Sam and Stephanie as they argue about money, an issue that becomes all the more intriguing when the young woman returns with a vengeance later that night.  The third story titled Tuesday the 17th follows a group of young people as they travel to the woods for a vacation, only to become the prey of some sort of spectral maddened assassin, however, what one would assume to be a group of unsuspecting youth is turned on its head when one girl admits that she has experienced this all before.  The next, and perhaps my favorite has the lengthy title of The Sick Thing That Happened To Emily When She Was Younger is a webcam based video in which Emily (Helen Rogers) confesses to her doctor boyfriend about having an insatiable desire to itch a bump on her arm, something he promises to look at upon return from school.  Later that night Emily explains that she has been seeing ghosts and is able to catch one of them, a small child, on camera, leading her boyfriend to agree to help with her confrontation with the ghost.  This confrontation is far more than Emily bargains for and we come to realize that her relationship with her boyfriend is also not quite what we expected.  Finally, a tape called 10/31/98 focuses on a group of young men, one dressed as a nanny cam, providing for the found footage video, as they travel to a Halloween party.  This party upon arrival appears to be empty and the group discovers what they assume to be an intricately designed haunted house, yet when they get to the attic of the house and attempt to join in what they think to be a fake occult ceremony the falseness of the entire experience is undermined and the group undertakes an attempted rescuing of one of the houses victims.  These films compose the main narrative of the film, yet it should be no surprise that the video about finding this video also has its own twists of horror as well, something that I dare not ruin because it is yet another moment of brilliant metacinema scares.

A lot of the complaints directed at this film are about its lack of scary qualities, as they relate to its unexplained narrative and little to no back story.  I would argue that it is precisely this lack of logical connection that makes this work indeed unsettling.  Imagine if you will that you were to randomly buy a set of unmarked VHS tapes from a local thrift store as a means to do some found footage experimental work, say like the folks over at Everything Is Terrible.  Most of the stuff would probably be dubbed television shows or awkward home videos, but what if you were to find something like a group of kids being murdered in the wood.  The context would not be explained and under no circumstances would you find this not scary.  Conceptually I think this is what V/H/S was aiming for, an attempt at creating something that would genuinely reflect a piece of "found footage" of the paranormal degree.  While I am certainly a huge fan of the Paranormal Activity franchise it does bother me at times that the narratives spend so much time explaining a back story and having character be a bit to keen on occult and supernatural occurrences.  Sure the film has a slew of social criticisms, whether it be the condemnation of male sexual dominance, something that often leads to date rape or group sexual abuse and another film makes a blatant commentary on the effects financial strains can have on the unity of a marriage.  Hell one of the works could even be seen as making an backhanded commentary on women's reproductive rights, but they all exist primarily as horror works.  To me it is very much like The Shining, in that so much of the horror is such because it has not logical explanation for occurring and this is definitely what makes V/ H/S so intense.

Key Scene:  There is a moment during Amateur Night in which the camera pans across the bar and catches Lily starring into the camera, it is really really creepy and more than sets up the intensity that will consume the remainder of the film.

Buy this movie.  Buy your friend this movie.  Buy anybody you love this movie...although it may cause them to question why you love them.