One of the jokes in any fandom, is that the reason fans love certain films, books etc is because they are really terrible. There are plot holes, bad acting, bad writing and so forth. The work itself leaves so many gaps in it's own storyline, that it allows fans to project their own interpretations on to them and in essence, expand on it. I count Carpenter's The Fog among one of my dubious fandoms.
While the film is not absolutely horrible, it seems lacking in some areas. And yet it is considered an early horror classic. It has bigger intentions at heart, rather than just be a slasher it longs to be a ghost story. While it never reaches the heights of "The Haunting", it is a nice mesh between late 70's slasher films and classic ghost stories. The recent remake never even touched the same vein. It was just plain awful.
Since fandom conflates what isn't there, I've done that quite a bit with this film.
First, none of the scenes seems to relate well to one another. The interpersonal connections between the characters seem distant and infused with passive aggression. It is the female characters who are the most angry. The hitchhiker who has that story about being the poor little rich girl runaway, the overly industrious town philanthropist (trying to either avoid her husband or fill in the hours while he avoids her) and her miserable assistant, and finally the DJ who runs her own radio station in an isolated lighthouse. The men stand in as appendages. They have no personal power over the lives of these women. They are used as temporary lovers, sullen spouses, ignored suitors or emasculated clergymen. It is interesting that in this film, it is basically only the men who are attacked by the fog. Up to the end, only a few women are endangered and it is interesting to point out just who those women are....
I believe the film lies in the imagination of one little boy. The film begins with him and his friends camping on the beach. They are listening to the local fisherman/story teller in the person of John Houseman, telling them a ghost story. The elements of all that proceeds is in the fisherman's story of the lost ship at sea during a fog and how it was doomed by a malicious camp fire. We never hear the end of that story, in fact Houseman's character pauses for effect then the film cuts away to the opening credits. What was the end? Perhaps a variation of the events in the film.
The young boy is the son of that DJ. While none of their family background is revealed there is a small pan shot of their family photos. They show a happy growing family, then all of sudden there is a shot of the DJ, alone, in front of her new lighthouse radio station. This change feels as if a huge loss has occurred in the lives of Stevie and her son. I don't think it was a divorce, I had the notion that the husband died. And now the mother and son have decamped to an isolated spot to get over their grief and rest in a place that is not surrounded by memories of the missing father figure. It is within this relationship that reveals all the ambivalent feelings toward the female characters and the men who are menaced by the fog.
The boy is basically alone all the time. While he has friends, he seems to enjoy wandering the beach, near his waterhouse, alone. And when he isn't picking up driftwood and other lost sea treasures, he is desperately angling for this mother's attention. When Stevie tells him half jokingly/half exasperatedly that he is a pain, the boy blithely ignores it. So intent he is on having any kind of discussion with her even if it means waking her up early knowing she works the late shift. This is probably the only time he gets to make an impression on her. This is where that distance takes shape in the presence of the feminine. The boy is around 11 years old, not really a child anymore but not yet a teenager. He is probably just coming into awareness of girls and realizes his mother is one as well. And she, like the other females in his life, is a mystery. But she is a figure of authority who seems more absent then present in his world and he feels her loss as aggression. This spreads to the other female characters who seem to have this frenzied handle on life, while their menfolk stand back and watch them longingly. In fact the women don't need the men in the way the men need the women.
The DJ has a suitor who she keeps fobbing off. I wonder if he was mentioned at all to the boy. Enough that it caused him mental anguish. The mysterious hitchhiker, who I take as a projection of the boy and his longing to escape, picks up with a local precisely because he seems fine with her flighty lifestyle. The philanthropist and her assistant are a rather self contained unit. But the assistant seems to be a stand in for the husband and she is just as annoyed by the philanthropist's bossiness as the actual husband.
As I mentioned before, the film deviates from the standard horror film convention in that it is the men who are attacked. Which seems to stem from the helplessness of the boy and his fears of abandonment. The first to meet their doom is the husband of the philanthropist and another suitor of the boy's mother. This man mentions that his younger brother goes to school with the boy, so he is not a stranger. And his crush on the boy's mother was rather obvious. The philanthropist's husband also mentions that he likes the boy's mother. So it is no surprise that their demise is lingered over when the fog arrives. It is also not insignificant that at the same time these murders occur, the boy's mother can see the fog.
The men who are menaced the least are the two who need women the least. That is local who takes up with the hitchhiker and the town pastor. However, the pastor has a large drinking problem and the local man works long isolated hours as a truck driver. But most importantly, neither of them have an interest in the boy's mother hence their relative safety throughout the film. These two male characters are almost equal status of the females and have a part in solving the mystery of the fog.
Not so the most determined suitor of Stevie. He meets his end while she is on the phone with him. Again driving home the point that the boy's Mom is bad luck or off limits. This man seems to have the most in common with the boy. In that the only relationship they have with Stevie is through her phone calls. She is always a disembodied presence to them. The only way for either of them to be near her is to listen to her radio show. Which is strictly a one way medium. Her radio show is filled with sexy banter and jazzy music. This arouses the interest of the weatherman suitor, the boy's reaction to these shows is not shown.
When we see the boy listen to the radio show, he is always under the care of his elderly babysitter. A jovial woman who acts as a mother stand in and rather too fussy over him. The boy shows a vague annoyance over this by acting distant. The film's ultimate set piece is when the fog finally comes for him.
The fog surrounds the house, while the mother seeing the fog in the vicinity of her house, screams for anyone to help her son. However she never leaves her post at the radio station which is rather sinister. Instead of the mother being taken by the fog, her stand-in (babysitter), is attacked. The film doesn't dwell on her death only showing her being pulled into the fog. The boy hides in his bedroom while the ghosts of the fog pull down the door to get to him. He is saved by the truck-driver who is the only good man of the film. Later the boy listens to his mother tell him through the radio that she could not leave her post to save him. I wonder if the sinister element of the mother not protecting her child was symbolized by the driftwood fire. In that scene, the boy's gift of the driftwood proves to be haunted. It catches fire, while a nearby tape recorder spews out a ghostly voice screaming about a "millstone". Does the boy believe that he is the millstone around his mother's neck?
The mythology of the fog ghosts take root from the fisherman's story. They are haunts from that lost ship who are determined to find the people who led them to their deaths with that false campfire. Again the boy's mother has another symbol attached to her in that she owns a lighthouse and represents something of a false fire to her many suitors. She plays at being radio coquette but due to her personal loss is really not that interested in the men around her. She is leading them on.
As the film reaches the last attack of the ghosts, they finally reach their destination at the "false fire", Stevie's lighthouse. The film spends a lot of time on Stevie being terrorized by the ghosts outside her door but she cannot keep them out. She takes refuge at the pinnacle, the roof of her isolated haven. Only to be horrifically stabbed by one of the ghosts. However unlike the past victims, Stevie really fights back. She pulls the hook she was stabbed with, out of the hands of one of the ghosts and attacks her attackers.
She is only saved when the two male "heroes", discover the real cause of the fog hauntings. They were after the gold that was stolen from them and the original 6 conspirators who murdered them with that false fire. But again, the victims of the film were not related to the original 6, with the exception of the Pastor, so the ghosts only required 6 random townspeople. We never find out if other people were attacked during this ghostly siege. The film only focuses on the people closest to the boy.
Which only indicates to me that this is all the fevered dream of a boy who listened to too many campfire ghost stories. In this dream, he dealt with his ambivalent feelings toward his mother and her many admirers including himself.
Labels: commentary, fandom, filmmaking, horror, reviews
