The Last Showgirl

Off The Razzle

The Last Showgirl
Directed by Gia Coppola
USA 2024
Picturehouse Entertainment

Once again, one of the famous Coppola clan takes to directing. This is not Gia Coppola’s first movie but, it’s the first one I’ve personally heard of directed by her.

The Last Showgirl is an interesting piece, starring Pamela Anderson as an ageing showgirl dancer for a casino in Las Vegas. Her friend, an ex-performer and cocktail waitress there, is a harridan of a woman with too much make-up and an irresponsible side to her, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, who also does remarkably wel here… although Pam is absolutely the star of this one, in what is possibly her best acting role she’s ever performed. Once again she is pigeon-holed a little into a dumb blonde kind of role but, in this case, one who has a lot of knowledge and interest in her art. But wrestling simultaneously with trying to repair an estranged relationship with her daughter (played by Billy Lourd), looking after some of the other showgirls (to an extent) and struggling, as always, to pay the bills.

Then, one day, their show runner, played by the always incredible David Bautista, breaks the news that the show, Razzle Dazzle, is being ditched after a 38 year run (Pam’s character has been working it there for almost that long) and they have only three weeks to go before their last show and, definitely in the case of Pam’s character Shelly, a future of probable unemployment.

The film starts off strongly with the intro to an audition that Shelly has to put herself through to try and get work, before the opening credits roll and then flashing back to just before the girls hear the news the show is closing and spending almost all of the movie catching up to that devastating audition. And it’s very good. All the actors are top notch including the aforementioned Pamela Anderson (and check out her recent Criterion Closet entry on YouTube if you have a mind to). And, yeah, everyone is just so good in this, somewhat low key set of incidents but, a special shout out to Bautista who really is one of his generation’s best actors. I first realised this in his performance opposite Jodie Foster in Hotel Artemis (reviewed here) and, yeah, what he does with his facial expressions and the way he reigns in his physical presence to make himself seem like a somewhat run down, awkward man is absolutely amazing… and he certainly plays well opposite the main lead.

The photography is great too, with a lot of the visual information in the centre of the shots being in deep focus with the periphery of the frame at the margins kind of blurring somewhat… I’ve seen this photography style used in films before (it’s probably got a very specific name) and it gives everything a nice texture and contrast. And the naturalistic acting styles of the various characters is matched with a constant moving camera, often with lots going in on the shots and the hubbub of the backstage world of the showgirl nicely picked up, pulling the audience in voyeuristically without breaking the spell once it’s got you. In this respect, it reminded me a little of the films of Robert Altman, with his overlapping dialogue and shots packed full of people before, in this case, pulling back to a safer distance and observing the odd character alone in their environment.

I liked some of the scoring by Andrew Wyatt too which, to my mind, sounded somewhat reminiscent of some music at a certain stage in the career of Philip Glass, which certainly doesn’t do the film any harm and underlines some of the melancholic moments without lapsing into full on melodrama (which is a neat support from the music on this one, for sure).

Perhaps my one criticism of the film might be that I felt, somewhat, like it didn’t give any real closure or sense of an ending. It felt like it needed a little more happening towards some kind of resolution… positive or negative… at the end but, surprisingly, a few hours after watching this one, I was plagued by nightmares featuring some of the characters from this film. I must have taken things in more than I thought I had here so, already this film is haunting me a little and I’m surprised it didnt get more of an Oscar nod at this year’s Academy Awards (not that I like awards ceremonies or anything to do with them, to be honest... but I'm glad Anora did well, it's well deserved, read my review of that one here).

So, yeah, The Last Showgirl is a slow moving, thoughtful film with great acting, beautiful cinematography and a somewhat, deliberately muffled style to it, I thought. I really liked this one and you might want to take a look at it, if you are of a certain mindset.

Borderlands

A Border
Understanding

Borderlands
Directed by Eli Roth
USA 2024
Lionsgate
UK cinema cut

Warning: Some insinuated spoilers.

Well now, I’ve not played the video game Borderlands, which this film is based on, so I really can’t tell you how close of an adaptation this movie is. Not that close is my guess. I also have a problem with the films of Eli Roth... I don/t like them (the few I’ve seen by him) so I went into this expecting to be disappointed.

You might then ask why I went to see this movie in the first place?

Two reasons. Firstly the trailer was bright, colourful, had some nice stabs at humour and with a lot going on. Secondly, one of the main protagonists, bounty hunter Lilith, is played by Cate Blanchett... who I think is one of the greatest actresses of her generation. Not to mention that Jamie Lee Curtis is also in the movie. So I was going on trust that if Blanchett had signed on for it, there must be something to the script.

Now, I’d like to be able to tell you I finally loved a movie that Eli Roth directed. However, as I was coming home I looked up the trivia on this title and found that he’d shot the movie in 2021 and finished a cut early 2022 which was all in keeping with the violence and bleakness of the video game on which it is based. However, the studio didn’t go for this so they held it over for two years and got another director to come in and shoot/reshoot a load of scenes to try and dumb the movie down to a lower certificate... what in the UK is a 12A (says it all about how rubbish studios are and how their executives make bad decisions).

The punchline to all this is that, in spite of really terrible reviews coming in for this film (presumably written by people who have played the game and been disappointed by the deviations from the tone the film takes), I actually really loved the movie and I will definitely be picking up the Blu Ray at some point, if and when it arrives on proper physical media. I just don’t know if the parts of the movie I’m responding to are Eli Roth, the original director, or the next guy along.

But I did really like it and I even found Jack Black, playing the voice of the irritating robot character, to be less irritating (in terms of me being able to put up with him) and fairly entertaining also.

Yeah, it feels like a typical, late 1980s/early 1990s sci-fi action flick and I generally had a good time with it (especially with the always watchable Gina Gershon playing a character who, I can only assume, is somewhat influenced by the style of Mae West, in a couple of scenes). It’s pacey, humourous, has some nicely edited action sequences and does most things right (even if the trailer maybe gives away too much, it has to be said). The rest of the cast are all great too, including Kevin Hart as an ex-soldier, Ariana Greenblatt as ‘the chosen one’ and Edgar Ramirez playing a nasty villain.

Having said all that, though, it does have a couple of tiny problems.

Firstly, there’s a scene where Kevin Hart’s character sacrifices himself against overwhelming odds as a gazillion psycho killers jump on him. Later on, he just gets up and extricates himself from a pile of dead bodies. Did I miss something here? My best guess on what the hell happened (it’s never explained) is that the character was supposed to die there but the studio brought him back for the reshoots and didn’t bother to explain things. That is just a guess, though.

Secondly, there’s a so called twist near the end (which I’m assuming is also in the game on which it’s based) involving the character played by Cate Blanchett and a certain deus ex machina moment at a crucial point. It’s badly telegraphed and I think anyone paying attention to her character’s back story will be able to figure things out from about 20 minutes into the film. You can see it a mile off and... my best guess is that it’s an element from the video game and that they didn’t want to lose it. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the moment and its implications but... I’d almost rather the writers had changed their minds about this because, honestly, it’s hard not to guess that this is coming from very early on in the film.

But, other than those two small things, I’m happy to report that I really liked Borderlands and will be recommending it to people for sure. A cinematic throwback, maybe but, a nicely done one, I think.

Everything, Everywhere, All At Once

Happily
Evelyn
After

Everything,
Everywhere,
All At Once
USA  2022
Directed by Dan Kwan
& Daniel Scheinert
(aka Daniels)
UK cinema Unlimited
cardholder preview.

Warning: Some inevitable spoilers.

Wow. It’s ‘the morning after’ and I’m hoping that my brain has managed to process enough information for me to try and write something half intelligent about this confusing but, ultimately very fun experience at the movies.

Well... okay, in a nutshell, the plot of Everything, Everywhere, All At Once involves an infinite number of alternate multiverses and a team of ‘good guys’ who have come to our universe because they believe a character called Evelyn can help fight against a villain known as Jobu Tupaki, who is threatening to destroy all the different multiverses by sucking them all in as part of the ‘everything’ of a giant black bagel with ‘everything’ on it. So Evelyn is taught how to jump into different versions of herself in different worlds to acquire the memory of the skills she needs in order to slingshot back into her current universe and try and fight a battle, of sorts, in her own reality. That’s my best take away from this as a plot so, if I got it slightly wrong, forgive me but, it’s a very dense film of different layers and, well, everything kind of happens all at once in it, as the title suggests.

But, as I implied, asides from not being 100% on how the physics and rules of the ‘jumping’ from incarnation to incarnation works... it kinda doesn’t matter. Once you can relax into this film and just take it for what it is, which is a bombardment of rich and, frankly, crazy ideas, then you should have a lot of fun with it. There are endless pop culture references in here from 2001 A Space Odyssey through Ratatouille (which I’ve not seen myself but, even so, I totally got the long running Racacoonie joke in this) and even Wong Kar Wai’s In The Mood For Love.

But this is only one level of the fun as we are transported along with Evelyn, rapid fire, into alternate realities where, for instance, Evelyn is a rock with googly eyes (like a pet rock... and the googly eyes are kind of an inverse black bagel in terms of their significance in the movie) or caught in a lesbian love affair in a universe where everyone has hot dogs for hands (and ooze mustard and ketchup from their mouths when having sex). So there’s stuff going on all the time at, trust me on this one, a fair lick of a pace... love it or hate it, you at least won’t get bored during this film, which is split up into three parts... 1. Everything, 2. Everywhere and 3. All At Once.

So you need a cast who are experienced to be able to handle all this stuff credibly (and also handle some of the quite intense action choreography which is sometimes needed for many of the scenes). And that’s exactly what we have here...

Evelyn is played by Michelle Yeoh who, frankly, I’ve always had a soft spot for and she really demonstrates that at 60 years of age (looking pretty much like she's 30) she’s still not too old to really carry a movie on her back. She’s always had brilliant fighting skills from her pre-Bond (and after) days of making kung fu action movies and, while that certainly stands her in good stead for this role (which was apparently at first conceived for her old Supercop co-star Jackie Chan), her brilliant way of putting over the emotions and complexities of her character are absolutely wonderful. What a fantastic actress.

I’ll get to Evelyn’s husband in a little while. Her daughter is played by Stephanie Hsu, who I don’t think I’ve seen before but, once her different multiversal personalities start snapping to and fro, it’s a quite dazzling performance as she captures multiple different states of mind at the flip of a switch. Again, a very strong actress who really shines in the second half of the film.

As Evelyn’s father we have the living legend that is James Wong. He just turned 93 a couple of days ago and has finally been given a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame (with over 600 roles to his credit... it’s about time) but he was certainly spry and nimble enough to do some sequences you would expect from a much younger actor in this.

Joining these three as a villanous henchman... or rather henchwoman (and sometime hot dog fingered lover) is the equally legendary Jamie Lee Curtis. She’s certainly come a long way in her career and does a great job with one of many complex roles in the film, which must have been far from her comfort zone. Trust me when I say that all the actors in this movie look and act totally ridiculous for a lot of the time... which has always been the case with actors but, in this movie, more so.

And then there’s the big surprise (for me at least, I went into this one relatively blind), of just who is playing the key role of Evelyn’s husband Waymond. He gives a very good, supporting, warm hearted performance but also, in an incredible fight sequence where he uses his belt bag as a pair of nunchucks in a tax office, acquits himself way more than adequately in the fighting skills department. All the way through the movie he looked somewhat familiar but I just couldn’t place him. All the candidates I thought he might be would have been a lot older than he is here. So, when I saw in the credits that he’s played by Ke Huy Quan, I blinked somewhat, said to myself, “Wait... really? Is that...?” and then confirmed what I suddenly realised with the IMDB app on my phone. Yep, it’s the guy who, as a boy, played Short Round in Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom (and who was also in The Goonies, which is a movie I haven’t seen, actually). All I can say is wow. He’s just fantastic in this and, I can tell you, has great chemistry with Michelle Yeoh. They should put these two in more movies together, I think.

And that’s all I’m going to say about this one. Especially since it’s almost impossible to describe most of the scenes in any credible way... you kind of have to experience it to know it, I think. Suffice to say, I found Everything, Everywhere, All At Once to be a highly entertaining and extremely impressive cinematic experience and I’ll definitely be importing the Blu Ray release of this very soon (I have a feeling it won’t get one in the UK... I believe it’s reserved for TV channel exclusivity aka ‘the death of the art of film’ over here). It’s not showing in a lot of UK cinemas... or certainly a lot less than, say, other multiverse movies currently at the cinema (which I will catch up on soon for the blog, I promise)... so I would definitely try and catch this one on the big screen if you have the opportunity.

Knives Out

Old Knives Tale

Knives Out
2019 USA Directed by Rian Johnson
UK cinema release print.

I really enjoyed the earlier films of Rian Johnson and absolutely adored his 'high school mystery told in the vernacular of hard boiled detective fiction' movie Brick. I also thought Looper was quite good. When I’d heard he was on board with a Star Wars movie I was kinda nervous because, from the evidence of these two works, I really didn’t think he was a good match for he project. Turns out I was right too. Although not completely unwatchable (no Star Wars film has been so far), it made the mistake of having a few nicely done and appropriate set pieces kinda grafted on to a story that was possibly one of the least ‘Star Warsy’ we’ve seen to date. So, as far as I’m concerned at least, The Last Jedi kinda ranks right at the bottom of the pile with Attack Of The Clones and Revenge Of The Sith.

However, I was really looking forward to seeing what he was going to do next and was delighted when another mystery story... this time in the vein of those old Agatha Christie ‘Whodunnits’... called Knives Out, was announced. I was also pleased to see it getting a very positive response on the internet too. Alas, the first warning I had that the film might not be ‘all that’ was when two of my real life friends, both who had seen the film at different times in different towns, both told me it was... well... kinda disappointing. That being said, I was still looking forward to the film enough so that, when I saw it, I was indeed disappointed with the end result.

So... good things first.

Johnson has assembled a pretty impressive cast with the likes of Daniel Craig (good actor, bad Bond), Toni Collette, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Chris Evans, Don Johnson, Frank Oz and Christopher Plumber. There’s also a brilliant young actress who I’ve not seen before called Ana de Armas playing the lead character, as becomes clear as the movie progresses. I was always going to be a sucker for whoever was going to be playing this character, to be honest, because she’s written as one of those people who truly are ‘pure in heart’.

The style of the film takes exactly the form that one of those old, ‘gather up all the guests’ whodunnits would have taken and the story, it has to be said, emits a strange and, perhaps, ‘welcome to some’ air of snooziness as it plays out in front of the eyeballs. There’s nothing really offensive or in your face about the movie at any point in the proceedings and, if this floats your boat, then it’s definitely like a Christmas movie that you can fall asleep to after dinner.

And that’s pretty much the only good stuff I can think to say about it.

The real problem for me was that... the film feels kinda uneventful and a little bit like the cast and crew were having a far better time with the material than the audience were ever going to. There are no real surprises in this movie either and though it’s certainly a little twisty-turny as the film continues on its merry way, there aren’t really any revelations in store for anyone either. So even though the story line seems quite fluid for a lot of the time, it still, I’m sad to say, manages to telegraph itself a lot as we follow Ana De Armas trying to dodge an explosive situation which she has, it seems, partially created.

The other thing which I was disappointed by, in all honesty, was the brilliant cast. I mean, you have all these truly wonderful actors and actresses and most of them seem to be just wasted in their roles. It was nice to see people like Chris Evans and Michael Shannon playing against type but, mostly, some really famous people seem like they’re a little relegated to the sidelines and I couldn’t help but think that a lot of these 'A List' performers could have been replaced with relatively unknown people and the studio could have saved themselves some money.

Nathan Johnson provides a score for the movie which is a throwback to those 1960s and 1970s genre films that the director is trying to emulate and is completely appropriate to the on screen visuals. That being said, it didn’t really do a lot for me and I did find it a step down from his absolutely amazing work on Brick. The score for Knives Out doesn’t really stay with you after the movie and, even though I am writing this less than 24 hours after seeing it, I can’t remember much about it, to be honest. It fits the film and probably elevates it but I can’t imagine trying to listen to this one as a stand alone musical experience.

And... yeah... sorry for the short review here but I really don’t have much to say about this one. Knives Out is a competent and unobtrusive little movie which kinda strolls along at its own sleepy pace but never really, as far as I’m concerned (and I know I’m in a minority here), strays into the great or even ‘wildly entertaining’ category. If you like old style whodunnits and want a movie you can relax to without needing to worry you’ll be caught off guard, then Knives Out is probably just for you. As for me... I’m just grateful I don’t have to ever sit through it again.

78/52

Shower Power

78/52
2017 USA Directed by Alexandre O. Philippe
UK cinema release print.

78/52 is an unusual documentary in that it spends an hour and a half examining what is, after all, a scene which last less than a minute in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho... the (in)famous shower scene. Of course, the power and initial shock (on first viewing) of this sequence more than justifies the importance and influence it has had on cinema history and modern pop culture but... well, if anything I could have done with a slightly longer movie on the subject (but I’ll come to why I think that in a minute or two).

The film is certainly interesting and the writer/director Alexandre O. Philippe has obviously put in a lot of time and effort piecing together small pieces of footage from a wealth of interesting people from both behind and in front of the camera... giving us a kind of collective ‘expert witness’ of the quality and visceral effectiveness of this effective short sequence. This includes some interesting little moments from Janet Leigh’s body double, who spent a lot of the time filming the scene... her body is in the majority of the short scene, which took seven days to film. Basically, if you see any shots without her face in clear view in the shower scene in Psycho (including the dead body in the clean up following the murder), you’re almost certainly looking at actress/model Marli Renfro, playing the part of the ‘cut down before her time’ character of Marion Crane.

And there are some interesting nuggets to be found during the vivisection of the sequence, some of which I actually didn’t know and some of which are, if you watch the film, self evident. For example, the awkward cut back one last time to the shower head in the pan away from Marion’s body before you get to the money is picked up on by one of the people being interviewed and then explained by another as a mistake in that it was later found that Janet Leigh had taken a visible breath. So that moment had to be eviscerated from the movie as quickly as Norman Bate’s knife made short work of the red herring of a character whose demise is depicted in the scene in question.

There is also a great little moment where the relevance of the painting that Norman Bates (played in Psycho by Anthony Perkins) moves out of the way to reveal the ‘spy hole’ is explained, in terms of both its relevance in the world of art but also its purpose in its placement in the film. I won’t go into it here because... you know... you can watch the film and find out for yourself but, basically, the voyeur is removing a famous interpretaion of a voyeuristic scene to be a participant in the very act that the painting is depicting. And this is all very interesting and revealing, to be fair.

That being said, I did find the documentary to be lacking in many ways, too.

For instance, the long list of people included, most of them extremely briefly, like Mick Garris, Walter Murch, Danny Elfman, Guillermo Del Toro, Neil Marshall and Peter Bogdanovich... are people you would trust to make an observation on this movie but there are others in here who, while very enthusiastic, well... you have to wonder what warranted their inclusion. Presumably, for instance, Elijah Wood is here mostly to comment on the acting in the parlour scene (which is also discussed here) since he’s played a notable psycho or two on screen himself (such as in the recent remake of Maniac or as Kevin in Sin City). Some of the others, however, you have to wonder about.

The biggest problem with the people interviewed, however, is that most of them have such a limited amount of screen time that I would have liked to have seen and heard more from all of them and I reckon the film could have done with being another half an hour longer, in all honesty.

Another fairly large problem with the movie are the re-enactments of certain scenes in Psycho which make you wonder why the director bothered with that when he could have just tracked in scenes from the original. Similarly, the film has a lovely string soundtrack by Jon Hegel (which I really wish was on CD so I could listen to it out of context) and it’s playing over everything, including clips from Psycho and... well you just have to wonder why they chose to go with an original score for this when Bernard Herrmann’s powerful score to Psycho, which the score to 78/52 is obviously trying to invoke in some way, was surely available. I also think that Bernard Herrmann’s astonishing contribution to the film could have been covered a little more in depth, especially since the story of Hitchcock’s insistence that the shower scene needed no music on it until Herrmann proved him wrong is nowhere in evidence in this documentary.

Another thing which is absent here is the very obvious ‘elephant in the room’ of the fact that, as far as I can tell from sorting out various bits of second hand testimony and evidence in books and interviews over the years, Hitchcock didn’t actually direct the shower scene himself but, instead, left it up to the scene’s designer, Saul Bass (one of my hero’s). Now there seems to be a lot of contrary evidence to both support and disregard the claims of both Hitchcock and Bass that they directed the scene and this film doesn’t mention this to weigh in on either version of events. It simply ignores it although, to be fair, it does take a little time to show a few of the many gazillions of story boards that Bass designed for his shoot... I know who I believe but I guess that’s an argument for a different time, especially since, as I said, the auteurial ownership of the scene does not come up in this piece. In fact, it would also have been nice to see the original shower scene actually played out before us in one piece as a reminder of the visceral power of it too, it seems to me. It’s surely been a while since a lot of movie goers watched Psycho.

Another thing which might have been made clearer... and I don’t remember it coming up in the film itself although it might have been so quick that I somehow missed it, is the reason for the title of this film. Apparently, according to the IMDB, it’s because the short scene under scrutiny here, is made up of 78 different camera set ups and 52 edits... which could have done with a little clarification, I think. I suspect some people are going to be walking away from the screenings on this one puzzled about it.

Something else which would have been nice to have been touched upon, since Marli Renfro, the cover girl of the September 1960 Playboy bunny girl, was on hand... was the mysterious and bizarre story of her apparent murder and the confusion of a killer who actually murdered the wrong ‘girl in the shower’ stand in... or some such. I actually don’t know the ins and outs of that story myself (the book on the subject is in one of my many ‘to be read’ piles) but it seems like it might be, at the very least, of passing relevance here. 

All in all, I quite enjoyed certain parts of 78/52, such as the sequence showing the stabbing of different kinds of melons to establish the perfect sound of a knife passing through human flesh and it was nice to hear Jamie Lee Curtis’s own thoughts on her mother’s demise in the scene in question. It’s something which fans of the movie should probably take a look at sometime but I did come out of the cinema feeling fairly unsatisfied with the production. On the other hand, it did provoke some discussion between me and a friend who I saw it with in the pub afterwards... so that was a good thing. This won’t be making any of my top ten lists this year but, as I say, if you are a Hitchcock or Psycho fan, then you might want to give this one a go.

The Fog

Wag The Fog

The Fog
1980 USA 
Directed by John Carpenter
Optimum UK Blu Ray Zone B

“I don't know what happened to Antonio Bay tonight. 
Something came out of the fog and tried to destroy us. 
In one moment, it vanished. But if this has been anything
 but a nightmare, and if we don't wake up to find ourselves
 safe in our beds, it could come again. To the ships at sea
 who can hear my voice, look across the water, into the
 darkness. Look for the fog.” 
Stevie Wayne, KAB Radio, Antonio Bay

I really love John Carpenter’s The Fog. It’s not just one of my all time favourite horror movies, it’s also... asides from a few things I’ll point out here... an almost perfect movie in its own right and one which I put on nowadays if I just want to watch a nice, relaxing movie full of beauty and colour. I think one of the reasons I still carry this movie around inside of me may be partially because of the circumstances in which I first came to see it.

It must have been the early to mid 1980s when it was first shown on TV in the UK. I would have been maybe 16 or 17 years old and, although I was already a fan of the director’s science fiction movies Dark Star, and the then recent cinema release of Escape From New York, I’d not seen Carpenter’s “horror movies” before (although I was no stranger to the Horror genre, having watched various Universal and Hammer classics from around 4 to 6 years of age). For some reason, my parents were out of the house. I think they must have been at some kind of party and they were due back around the small hours. The Fog was showing fairly late at night (it may have even been a midnight showing for the BBC... can’t quite remember) and I was all alone in a dark house, sitting down by myself to watch this movie...

And it was brilliant... nail-bitingly suspenseful and I instantly knew three things once I’d got done watching it...

1) I was in love with Adrienne Barbeau and wanted to be her boyfriend/sex slave, 2) I wanted to see more of this director’s movies and 3) I needed to buy a long playing record of the music, if I could get my hands on such a thing. Alas, I only was ever able to tick off the second and third things on that task list over the years but still have high hopes for Adrienne Barbeau if the lady ever visits the UK.

The Fog is all about a cursed town, Antonio Bay, celebrating its one hundredth anniversary.  It’s also about a gang of supernatural pirates/lepers visiting their revenge, 100 years on, to the six original conspirators who built the town using their money before sending them to their death because they didn’t want a leper colony setting up near them. And by revenge, I mean the spectral pirates want their gold back and they want to violently kill the conspirators’ living descendents.

Now, before I go any further, it has to be said that in some ways the plot of this movie is full of more holes than the leaky driftwood from the ghost pirates ship which washes ashore and does strange, supernatural things. The opening set up of a montage of mysterious occurrences happening around Antonio Bay as the credits roll is almost straight out of the early parts of Spielberg’s Close Encounters Of The Third Kind... with various inanimate objects suddenly coming to life on their own and frightening people. It’s probably not a sequence which would play well in front of a modern cinema audience, I suspect, but it was an effective way to set up the idea that crazy happenings are afoot. However, other than a stone block in a church knocked loose and giving the character of Father Malone (played by Hal Holbrook) an explanation, by way of a written historical account, for the killings which are about to start happening throughout the course of the movie, the majority of this opening montage seems to have absolutely nothing to do with any logical ties to the actual idea that the ghosts of a colony of leper ridden pirates is coming to take revenge, 100 years on from their death.

And that’s the one thing about this movie which is something you have to forgive it for... a lot of the scares don’t make that much sense. The pirates are using the glowing fog of the film’s title to move around in but... the fog isn’t present in the first round of supernatural happenings at the start of the movie. Now I’m told a lot of the scenes were shot and then added in a matter of a few weeks or so leading up to the release of the film after negative feedback on the initial cut and I suspect that some of those extra scenes might have been put in to spice up the thrills without actually making a whole lot of sense, if you see what I mean.

For example, Jamie Lee Curtis, fresh from her success in John Carpenter’s earlier film phenomenon Halloween (not a film I particularly like that much, for some reason) here plays a drifter named Elisabeth who hooks up with Tom Aitken’s character Nick... who’s a local fisherman. This is good plotting in terms of Aitken’s profession because it means these two characters can give a window into some of the strange things happening and provide the jump scares when provided. After they discover the corpse of one of Aitken’s deceased friends, completely dry but with lungs filled with water (the pirates got him in an earlier scene of suspenseful scariness) we are later witness to a scene in the morgue where Jamie is frightened by the reanimated corpse of the guy trying to end her life with a scalpel. I’m pretty sure this was an insert sequence and, I have to say, it seems to have nothing to do with the rest of the story. It does, however, feature a key Carpenter signature in that the scary thing is happening in the background of the shot, quite visibly but slightly out of focus, while the main character is oblivious and in sharp focus in the foreground of the shot... which is the kind of thing which “gets an audience going”, it seems to me.

A similar non-sequitur of an idea occurs in the presence of our other main lead actress, Adrienne Barbeau, here playing disc jockey Stevie Wayne, who broadcasts her nightly programme to Antonio Bay from a secluded lighthouse. Her son finds a piece of driftwood bearing the name of the ship which was originally the vessel belonging to the pirates (we get a glimpse of the ship in an earlier scene when three fishermen are slaughtered in their boat by the fog bound pirates). At one point some sea water starts oozing from the driftwood and into Stevie’s tape deck before inhabiting the demo tapes she is listening to with a creepy voice and then catching fire. After she’s put the thing out with an extinguisher there’s no real sign that anything just occurred but, more worryingly from my point of view, no real reason for this ghostly apparition to be happening in front of her in the first place anyway.

It matters not though because this film manages to scare up the chills and when the town is attacked properly by The Fog and the spectral pirates lurking inside, you won’t really be contemplating stuff like this if it’s a first time watch for you.

Apart from having an amazingly sexy and relaxed voice (“Ahoy, mateys.”), Stevie’s character is also a brilliant one in that she serves a purpose. She has hardly any scenes with anyone else apart from as a voice on the radio or telephone to them (barring one brief scene with her son) and she’s kind of a key role in the film because she works out that the fog is dangerous and, from her lighthouse, she can see just which parts of town it’s attacking from. The climax of the movie becomes essentially a three hander cutting between Stevie Wayne who is being attacked by pirates in her lighthouse, Elizabeth and Nick who are trying to rescue Stevie’s son from the warning she is screaming over the airwaves and the duo of Mrs. Williams (played by Janet Leigh) and her assistant (played by Nancy Loomis, as she was known in the days Carpenter was using her as an actress).

Just before Stevie retreats to the slanted, slippery roof of her lighthouse to ward off attacks from two pirates, who are presumably there because they either listen to the radio and know she’s got them pegged or... you know... for no good reason actually pertaining to the plot, Stevie gets everyone to converge at a certain place in town, the church of Father Malone (the descendant of the sixth conspirator) and we are treated to a Night Of The Living Dead style lock-down and siege sequence (almost certainly inspired by one of Carpenter’s favourite John Ford westerns) which includes on screen scenes featuring real life mother and daughter Janet Leigh and Jamie Lee Curtis (daughter of Leigh and Tony Curtis, naturally). Of course, if the pirates manage to kill Stevie in addition to Father Malone then they end up with a body count of seven, which makes no sense whatsoever to the plot about six conspirators but, you know, who am I to judge?

What I can judge is that this film is both absolutely scary and taut with suspense sequences put together by a director who is an absolute master of his craft and shows just exactly why he is with this movie. The Fog is also really beautiful to look at with some phenomenally clean framing and some beautiful colours thrown together within the cinematography. And on top of that it’s got a great double ending with one of my favourite pieces of postmodern horror homage of all time. It’s the second from last scene, coming right before the inevitable twist ending that involves a few more pirates. Stevie is back on the microphone in her lighthouse as soon as the attacks have stopped... warning people about The Fog in exactly the same tone and with the same sense of the dramatic as the original “one character broadcasting to the outside world”  ending of the original The Thing From Another World, which Carpenter would soon remake himself as The Thing. I’ve printed Adrien Barbeau’s end monologue from The Fog right at the start of this review to set the mood. Here’s what Douglas Spencer’s Scotty character had to say as a wrap up in The Thing From Another World...

“And now before giving you the details of the battle, I bring you a warning: Everyone of you listening to my voice, tell the world, tell this to everybody wherever they are. Watch the skies. Everywhere. Keep looking. Keep watching the skies.”

The delivery’s a bit similar too and this pleases me a lot. It’s good to hear a piece of dialogue in a film like The Fog and hear it hold up on its own plus know exactly the kind of tone the director was going for. In both movies, that kind of downbeat warning of possible future doom in the face of victory gives them both a haunting edge which has a lot of appeal for even the most jaded horror movie fan.

And the final cherry on the cake is the fantastic musical score on this one... one of many written and partially performed by John Carpenter himself. If you are one of those people who think synthesiser soundtracks don’t work in the movies then watch this and think again. The haunting three note theme* which opens the movie and plays out during the quieter moments of the film is quite a hook... but when you add in the intense high pitched alarm sounds and the whooshing textures which are presumably musical reminders of the presence of the fog, youre ears are in for one hell of a ride with a score that goes from mellow, relaxing cues to out and out “get me the f*** out of here at just the right moments. I always used to take a copy of this score with me if I went to a holiday on the coast... still do in fact. It’s a perfect score to play when you’ve got a dark night and can gaze out at the sea with a glass of whisky in your hand (or a nice cuppy tea). When I first used to take it along on my holidays it was a recording of my old Colosseum vinyl album onto a magnetic cassette in my old Sony Walkman. Then, as the years flew by, my soundtrack to The Fog got converted to a CD walkman, a mini disc player and, nowadays, after there have been a fair few expanded editions of this excellent score, it’s always to be found somewhere on my iPod classic for emergency coastal visits. I wouldn’t want to be without it because it captivates the atmosphere very quickly.

A quick note about the UK Optimum Blu Ray release of this one. Frankly, I wish I’d have bought the US Blu Ray which would have matched my previous American edition DVD with absolutely loads of extras and a much better transfer of it than can be found on the UK one. The UK one seems way too luminous and colourful than it should be in certain areas and there’s an unforgivable sound error at a key point which renders the scary jump moment, and the musical stinger used to punctuate it, almost useless. Stick with the DVD if you are buying a UK edition until they decide to bring out a better one for our Blu Ray market. Or better yet, just grab a multi-region/multi zone player and grab a copy from the US... that would solve the problem.

So there you have it. One of my favourite horror movies which, even with the slight plot holes that seem almost solely to be there to serve the scary bits, is an absolute masterpiece mixing solid acting, impeccable direction, timing and editing, jump scares pitched against the slowly creeping dread kind of horror and, when all is said and done, an absolutely terrific score... one of the greatest in cinema history in my opinion (and I don’t think it’s ever been a bad seller in any of its many incarnations either). If you are a fan of films in general then you might want to put on The Fog one dark night so you can see how expertly Carpenter makes you forget the logistics of the plot and controls your emotional stakes in the characters (I’m told the remake is ghastly so maybe don’t bother with that one). If you are a fan of horror movies and you’ve never seen this absolute classic... what the heck are you waiting for? It needs to be the very next movie you see... you won’t be watching it just once.

*with thanks to @katrinjenny of twitter for reminding me that the score is partially based on a three note theme.