I don’t remember how old I was when I first saw John Carpenter’s The Fog, but I was in elementary school. We lived in the country with an antenna for our TV and no cable whatsoever; this was before satellite dishes became a thing, and whatever came on the three channels we could get was what we could watch, weather depending. One of the networks would air The Fog once a year or so, heavily edited, natch, and at some point I started watching it.
The first thing that really struck me was the music. The haunting, atmospheric electronic score has always stuck with me. I distinctly remember my sister Katye and me staying up to finish the movie one night after our parents decided to go to bed (Heavens, it must have been from 8:00 to 10:00!) and I turned the volume up on the television—one of those old floor models with intricate woodwork and speakers on each side—just to blast the score as the movie progressed to its climax. I remember being told to turn it down.
To this day I find that film one of my favorite horror movies—possibly THE favorite. I became an avid John Carpenter fan, and later learned that he was also a Kentucky boy, having grown up in Bowling Green, Kentucky, about 60 miles from my home.
Today is the day in which The Fog is set, the 21st of April; hence my desire to pay my small tribute to it. The beginning sets the tone with John Houseman telling a ghost story to children of the town on the beach: “…[I]t is told by the fishermen and their fathers and grandfathers that when the fog returns to Antonio Bay, the men at the bottom of the sea out in the water by Spivey Point will rise up and search for the campfire that led them to their dark and icy death…. Twelve o’clock. The 21st of April.” For those fond of the creepy, there is nothing like a good ghost story, and this, in my opinion, is one of the best in American cinema.