'The Fog': a The Michigan Daily-Thursday, February 28, 1980-Page 5 damp thriller, " By CHRISTOPHER POTTER John Carpenter's The Fog is the best argument I've seen to date for preser- ving the art of the creative B Movie. As Carpenter moves up the social- financial ladder of acceptance, one fears the director's work may correspondingly fit ever more snuggly into conventient nooks of thematic con- ventionality even as it matures and ex- pands stylistically. The Fog is as fe" a horror film as I can recently member-a neat, clean Night Gallery-ish drollery guaranteed to raise none of the human hackles so sadistically jostled by its cheaper but far less compromising predecessor, Halloween.' Perhaps sudden fame and its corresponding big bucks have seduced Carpenter into a Hollywood respec- tability that could never touch a George Romero: The Fog is slick, expensive d ruinously uninvolving. Its hoary rrative spins out the yarn of the curse of Antonio Bay, a California seacoast town founded exactly a hundred years ago. It seems the village's centennial is fraught with guilt-unknown to most of its current-residents, Antonio Bay was originally endowed when its six foun- ding fathers lured the treasure ship Elizabeth Dane onto the rocky coast by means of a false lighthouse beam. The blood loot recovered from the ensuing wreck was used to finance the town, and superstition has it that a hundred ars later the murdered mariners will ise up through a dense fog and claim six Antonio victims as vengence. SURE AS shootin', the fog swirls up right on the centennial stroke of mid- night, the Elizabeth Dane rises from her watery grave and her shadowy, ghoulish crew silently embarks on its miission of grim reclamation. Prime targets of their menace include a local DJ (Adrienne Barbeau) who- has con- erted Antonio's lighthouse into a radio tion, a handyman (Tommy Atkins) and his hitchhiker companion (Jamies Dee Curtis), the town's Centennial Festival chairperson (Janet Leigh) and a.drunken priest (Hal Holbrook) who's damned with tke knowledge that his immediate ancestgrs were responsible for the ancient murders. The horrors that ensue are as predic- table as a made-for-TV movie and elicit a comparable level of viewer in- volvement. Though there's more gore the ounce than in Carpenter's Halloween, there's simply nothing ,in The Fog to "hook" the viewer, to rivet an audience with the unnervingly close thought that this might just as easily be happening to them. OVERRATED though Halloween was, its story of a psychopath menacing the residents of a small Illinois town carried an air of suburban familiarity so claustrophobically tangible 'you uld almsot reach out and touch it. The _ og's California-gothic locals elicit no such view identification, traipsing exotically from Antonio Bay's archly spooky lighthouse through its purple- hued (and peopleless) streets up to its loonily-lit church, whose garish innards resemble nothing so much as a giant juke box. -Halloween's small group of menaced teen-agers rang just true and earthy honed his technical prowess to a con- siderably finer edge than in Halloween. In a wondrous opening prologue, an old sea dog (John Houseman), his craggy face hideously lit by the embers of a dying campfire, mesmerizes a gathering of children with his tale of the curse of the Elizabeth Dane. As the an- cient sailer bites out his grim narration, the youngsters' face reflect the delec- table, eternal human delight in being scared out of one's wits. Later on when the dead ship rises up through the mist before the astonished eyes of the mates on a fishing scow, the scene comman- ders all the errie majesty of the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. AT HE did in Halloween, Carpenter exercises a master's patience in letting his story build with a stealthy, mad- dening slowness until the audience's emotions are pulled so tight the film's inevitable explosion of violence becomes as cathartic as it is horrifying. Yet The Fog's horror is so undermined by every plot turn that any need to scream evolves less out of real terror than out of a Pavlovian notion that this is what one ought to do at a horror movie. Such methodology enabled Hammer Films, the epitome of the schlock scare picture, to milk the monster market for two decades to the tune of unswervingly rewarding profit. I hope a filmmaker of Carpenter's obvious talent won't prove merely an upper-class slave to the same assembly-line mentality. There's just too much good horror material waiting for the right hands to mold it in a way that won't sell both its creator. and the public short. Do a Tree a Favor: Recyely Your Daily STARTS TOMORROW C-ONE WEEK ONLY! MON, TUES. THURS. FRI REGUAR PICESNO PSSESAT 7:30915 SAT-SUN-WED 1:30.3:30-5:30-7:30-9:I5 MONDAY NIGHT 1S "GUEST NIGHT" Histo c f K2 FOR $3.00 WED MATINEE ANN ALL SEATS $1,50 Tit 5:30 ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S 1943 SHADOW OF A DOUBT Screenplay by Thornton Wilder. A well-bred, eastern man-about-town pays a visit to his relatives in a small town middle America and there a nightmare ensues. JOSEPH COTTON is subperb as Uncle Charlie, the charming sophis- ticate with an undercurrent of warped ruthlessness and madness. As the tense drama of his exposure unfolds, his niece (TERESA WRIGHT) struggles to protect her family at all costs. Friday: THE THIRD MAN (Joseph Cotton & Orson Welles) Saturday: THE LADY VANISHES (Alfred Hitchcock) i CINEMA GUILD TONIGHT AT 7:00 & 9:00 OLD ARCH. AUD. $1.50 A mysterious but definitely unfriendly hand reaches out of the mist to claim another victim in John Carpenter's new supernatural thriller, "The Fog." Those expecting more of the terror of Carpenter's "Halloween" may be dis- appointed to find "The Fog" closer in spirit to "Invasion of the Seaweed People." enough to make you tremble and fret over their suddenly imperiled existen- ces. By contrast, The Fog's larger, more geographically distanced assor- tment of protagonists are such meagerly-sketched stick figures that you'd have to seriously ponder lifting a finger to help any of them. Indeed, these drab folks may not even technically have right on their side; whereas Halloween's killer was the personification of Satanic evil, the Elizabeth Dane's avengers are, after all, merely seeking a equal retribution for past injustice. It's an ethical dam- per switch that effectively deprives the viewer of relishing the traumatic delight of the truly inexplicable unknown; The Fog allows one to merely' sit back and nod in judicial satisfaction over just deserts, contrasting one's gut recoil to the chaotic violence inflicted upon Halloween's wholey innocent vic- tims. AND WHAT could have possessed Carpener and co-scripter Debra Hill to further de-fuse the suspense by injec- ting the legal neatness of a six-victim limit? What reasonable ghouls these mariners are! The Fog has barely begun before three citizens are sum- marily dispatched, with two more liquidated shortly thereafter. By the time the movie reaches its frenzied climax, complete withd ecomposing hands crashing through church win- dows and-fiery crosses self-immolating, the viewer is safely insulated in the sure knowledge that all but one of the film's central characters are guaran- teed to survive this grisly Armegeddon. Was ever a monster movie more benign toward its prey? The Fog is the most old-fashioned of movie exercises dressed up in neo-mod scare garb. More's the pity Carpenter has wasted his efforts on such a wheezing enterprise, since he has PITCHER NIGHT at tI ouq 1140 South University 668-8411 I Now Playing at Butterfield Theatres WEDNESDAY IS "BARGAIN DAY" $1.50 UNTIL 5:30 EXCEPT WAYSIDE ADULTS FRI SAT SUN. EVE & HOLIDAYS $3 SO MON THRU THURS EVENINGS $3.00 MATINEES UNTIL 5 30 EXCEPT HOLIDAYS $250 CHILDREN 14£9 UNDER $1 50 MONDAY NIGHT IS "GUEST NIGHT" Two AdultsAdmittedj For $3.00 EXCEPT WAYSIDE V i lk Campus 1214 S. Unive ity 668-6416 Mon. Tues. Thurs, Fri at7:30,9:15 Wed. Sat, Sun at 1:3005:00, 7:00.s9:15 IT'S COLD IT'S WET IT'S NEREI (R) I I ii r r rr I 3020 Menow 434-1782 ENDS Tue, Thur. 7 & 8 THURSDAY wed. 1-3-5-7-9 i 1i 1 a j CAPTAIN JOHN RfTER AVENGER ANNE ARCHER MAKES DUST BUSTII HELP ' IS ON THE WAY. 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