A 100-year-old tragedy due to some sinister plotting is revisited when an eerie fog brings along the murderous ghosts of the wronged crew of lepers. The coastal town of Antonio Bay is setting up for a big centennial celebration and the secret of the town elders has been discovered by an alcoholic priest (Hal Holbrook rocking a hair and mustache combo that made me say “Yes. This is how I want to look when I am a grownup.” a handful of decades ago) when a wave of paranormal activity leads to him finding a hidden journal and uncovering a horrible shame. Bodies start to drop as the spirits travel within the slowly spreading fog and the unsuspecting townies begin to pay for the crimes of the forefathers during the hour period f the r he eat betrayal. In a rather ingenious move, John Carpenter manages to deliver an info dump necessary to all that is coming after by relying on powerhouse thespian John Houseman. Naturally, delivering the backstory over a burning fire to a group of spooked kiddos right as midnight approaches. Boom! You don’t even realize you’ve been spoon-fed exposition… ya just got Houseman’d! Caught in the middle of this spooky bullshit is local everyman Tom Atkins, cute hitchhiker Jamie Lee Curtis, smoke-show radio DJ Adrienne Barbeau (transmitting from the fucking lighthouse which makes it easy to monitor what that pesky fog is up to), centennial celebration organizer Janet fuckin’ Leigh and her charmingly sarcastic assistant Nancy Kyes. Dream team. We also get some small roles for Charles Cyphers and George “Buck” Flower. Carpenter’s fourth horror feature (yes, I do count Assault on Precent 13 and the TV movie Someone’s Watching Me) is one hell of a ghost story supported by an impressive cast of genre greats and another moody score from the man himself.
No comments:
Post a Comment