Tag: Adrienne Barbeau

The Fog (1980)

THE FOG (1980) **1/2
Fog has been a critical element in many horror movies and the 1939 Hound of the Baskervilles, The Wolf Man, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, and The Return of the Vampire immediately leap to mind as films made definitely better from their use of fog effects to create a foreboding atmosphere.

Edgar Allan Poe died at the age of 40 in 1849 but his writing and his influence live on forever. Is all that we see or seem / But a dream within a dream?

Ghost stories around the campfire have been around longer than The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and I believe that’s how Washington Irving first heard about Ichabod Crane, Brom Bones, and the Headless Horseman.

John Carpenter directed, co-wrote, and scored the original Halloween in 1978, one of the great transcendent low-budget shockers with a boogeyman killer.

Carpenter’s The Fog, his first horror film after Halloween, combines the title character, a Poe quote before the opening credits, a ghost story around the campfire told by distinguished actor John Houseman, and some grisly murder set pieces that far surpass the relatively tame and nearly entirely bloodless Halloween, but I remain steadily down the middle of the road in my reaction to it.

I want to like it a lot more than I do, believe me, and maybe I will get there next time.

I liked it more during the most recent viewing of the film and I definitely understand why it’s developed a cult following and a much better reputation in recent years.

It does create quite the foreboding atmosphere at times, it bears all the trademarks of a Carpenter film with his penchant for great composition both in the sense of framing and the music present throughout, and I do like the story of this small California town celebrating their centenary with a dark secret about the founding discovered, discussed, and confronted during the film as the dead men return 100 years to the day for their revenge.

Still, all the same, it’s underwhelming.

I believe it’s mainly because I don’t particularly connect to any of the characters and thus, I don’t really care about their fates particularly all that much.

I come the closest to connecting with radio station owner and host Stevie (played by Carpenter’s former wife Adrienne Barbeau) and Father Patrick Malone (Hal Holbrook), but they’re not on the same level as Dr. Loomis and Laurie Strode in Halloween, Kurt Russell’s characters in Escape from New York and The Thing, Keith Gordon’s Arnie Cunningham in Christine, Karen Allen’s and Jeff Bridges’ characters in Starman, and Roddy Piper’s George Nada in They Live, some of Carpenter’s best characters and best films.

While it is comforting to see Carpenter regulars like Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Atkins, Charles Cyphers, Nancy Kyes, and good old ‘Buck’ Flower, they’ll still all be remembered first for other characters in other Carpenter films.

We simply don’t get enough of any of the main characters.

The Fog lacks a certain something, energy perhaps first and foremost, to really take it over the top and into the stratosphere like Halloween.

All that said, The Fog still has some very good even almost great moments.

I especially like the scene when Father Malone reads four entries from his grandfather’s journal and then delivers the best line of the film, The celebration tonight is a travesty. We’re honoring murderers.

Speaking of a travesty, I watched the 2005 remake in a theater and I have to believe that it’s one of the 10 worst movies I’ve ever watched in a multiplex near you.

Swamp Thing (1982)

SWAMP THING

SWAMP THING (1982) Three stars
This is the “green” movie I should have watched on St. Patrick’s Day.

Either that or perhaps any of the Incredible Hulk movies or the first SHREK.

Anything, just about anything, would have been preferred over LEPRECHAUN.

SWAMP THING rates as one of those indelible films that leave me with a goofy smile on my face and a warm glow in my heart, probably green colored in this particular case.

It’s been duly noted that filmmaker Wes Craven (1939-2015) earned an undergraduate degree in English and psychology from Wheaton College and a master’s in philosophy and writing from Johns Hopkins. He worked as English teacher before a four-decade film career predominantly associated with exploitation and horror.

Believe it or not, many of his films are informed by his educational, literary background.

Craven’s feature debut THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972) updated Ingmar Bergman’s THE VIRGIN SPRING (1960) for modern times in America; THE VIRGIN SPRING itself told a tale based on a 13th Century Swedish folk ballad incorporating rape, murder, and revenge.

Craven’s third film THE HILLS HAVE EYES (1977) took inspiration from 16th Century Scotland with Sawney Bean and His Cannibal Clan (45 members), responsible for the mass murder and cannibalization of over 1,000 people.

Even Craven’s arguably most famous film, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1984), started after Craven read stories in the Los Angeles Times about how Southeast Asian refugees — who fled to the United States after the atrocities in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam — began experiencing terrifying nightmares and refused to sleep. Some of these men, ranging from age 19 to 57, even died in their sleep.

Based on a comic book, SWAMP THING, Craven’s fifth feature, was his first attempt to break away from the horror genre that would both be his blessing and his curse.

I suspect that one’s enjoyment of SWAMP THING depends on an individual’s level of sympathy for mad scientists, a megalomaniac and his nasty henchmen, a damsel-in-distress, secret formulas, mutations, comic book action, and Harry (FRIDAY THE 13TH) Manfredini’s relentless music that sounds echoes of his most famous work.

Busty actress Adrienne Barbeau proved to be at the peak of her film career at the time of SWAMP THING — it was the fifth picture in a six-picture run beginning with THE FOG (1980) and continuing with ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, THE CANNONBALL RUN, THE THING (“Computer Voice”), and SWAMP THING before concluding later in 1982 with CREEPSHOW. She’s at her very best in SWAMP THING, and her very worst in CREEPSHOW.

Barbeau was married to filmmaker John Carpenter from 1979 to 1984, and half of those films listed in the above paragraph came from Carpenter in a flurry of films after HALLOWEEN.

Barbeau’s most famous talents are on display in the “international version” and the original DVD copies in America before viewers complained and had that “smut” recalled. Seriously, who would complain about Barbeau’s boobies, them magnificent mammaries? American DVD and Blu-ray issues since 2005 feature the American theatrical ‘PG’ version, and it would make America great again if we could have the “international version” of SWAMP THING.

Barbeau herself understands what makes SWAMP THING better than one more run-of-the-mill “creature feature.”

“When I read it, I fell in love with the screenplay,” Barbeau said of SWAMP THING. “It was whimsical, and charming, and lovely. I didn’t see it as a horror film. I guess I don’t see it as a horror film to this day, actually. It’s Beauty and the Beast — it’s more of a fantasy or a fairy tale, maybe, in my mind.”

I’ve long had admiration for Boris Karloff as Frankenstein’s Monster and Peter Weller as RoboCop. We can add stunt man and actor Dick Durock (1937-2009) as Swamp Thing to that list.

Like both Karloff and Weller, Durock creates great sympathy for Swamp Thing.

That human element — pieced together with Swamp Thing’s relationship with Alice Cable (Barbeau) — lifts SWAMP THING out of the swamp, if you will.

Just as when the Monster speaks in BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, there’s poignancy when Swamp Thing says a line like “Much beauty in the swamp, if you only look.”

Swamp Thing and Cable have a better relationship than what the Monster and His Bride had in BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN. Cable gets far more screen time than the poor Bride, as well.

SWAMP THING has some of the same wit and same spirit as BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN.

I always say, “There’s much beauty in B-movies, if you only look.”