Thread: The Fog

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Has anyone seen the preview for "The Fog"? it looks like it would be pretty good.

Amber

I've seen one TV Commercial about it. Looks good but hard to tell from just these few quick shots.

After seeing the preview for "The Fog", I decided to go rent the 1979 version with Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Kurtis, Hal Holbrook...

Believe it or not, I never saw it before.

It was surprisingly really good... and scarey too! I have to say I jumped more than once!

I guess I always pre-judged this film by it's name. "The Fog". It's like naming your film... "Slight Chance of Precipitation" or "High Humidity".

I thought the original was semi-entertaining and very cheezy. I'm excited to see the remake, although I think it will vary quite a bit from the original.

Great story about the original....

My brother and I went to see it back when it came out in 1980 (I was 16 my bro was 14), we walked a couple blocks to the local theatre and of course it was late when we got out, our block sits atop a golf course and that night was humid and of course there was an honest to god FOG rolling out from between the houses, you never saw 2 kids run so fast in your life!! We look back and laugh now but back then it was NOT funny!! LOL.......

Now don't get me wrong...the 2005 version of "The Fog" really isn't a bad movie. In fact, if you never saw the original - and most likely a lot of the audience hasn't - you'd probably like it. It's fairly faithful to the original. Certain details have been changed for a more modern audience. For example, fisherman Nick Castle doesn't pick up a stray hitchhiker in the new version - he instead picks up a hitchhiker that turns out to be his former girlfriend makiing it much more accepable for him to be falling into bed with her in this paranoid safe-sex society we find outselves in. Father Murphy is portrayed as an even bigger drunk than in the original, and in a much diminished role, and much more detail is dished out about the crew of the mysterious Elizabeth Dane and why her passengers and crew are so pissed off at the residents of Antonio Bay - which in the remake is an island in Oregon rather than a costal town in Norhern California. And there is a new twist at the end. It's not the same twist as at the end of the original, and in my opinion, it isn't nearly as good. It's just different.

Although this new version is a Debra Hill production (Debra Hill was the producer of the original as well) it doesn't have John Carpenter's direction, and it doesn't have Carpenter's musical score either. And one other thing Carpenter's original had going for it was the fact that it was a sort of reunion film of all of Carpenter's favorite players (nearly all the significant cast of "Halloween 1, 2 and 3" - with the exception of Donald Pleasance - were featured in "The Fog," with the additions of Vivian Lee - playing opposite her daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis - Adrienne Barbou and Hal Holbork) whereas the new version looks like it was drawn from the auditions for some new soap.

Now it's not that the players are bad. Just the opposite. Some of them are quite good. But this new version of "The Fog" is little more than a re-tread of the original, and let's face it, the original wasn't Carpenter's best horror flick to begin with. In fact, it's probably got a larger cult audience today than it had at the box office when it was first released.

This kind of make me wonder why anybody - especially the original producer - would bother remaking this film at all. It isn't as if they made a better film...they didn't. It isn't as if they took the original premise and made it more believable and more scary...because they didn't do that either. It kind of reminds me of a few years back when George Romero decided to remake "Night of the Living Dead." The original black and white version scared the crap out of everyone, and is generally considered a horror classic. The new version featured a change or two in the nature of the characters and a twist at the end that was different from the twist at the end of the original.

Yet, were you at the video store looking for flicks for Halloween night, which version of "Night of the Living Dead" would you chose? I'm thinking that new versus old "The Fog" will wind up as pretty much the same choice.

Thanks for the advice.....I thought John Carpenter'f version would be best....Originals usually are!!! I can't imagine the film with out the MUSIC!!! UGH! I can only think, that to remake the original, the producer must have had a dump-truck full of money that backed up to their office one day.....money is usually the motivator in these situations? I thank you for the review.....but I think I will save my money and watch the original....How could you ever improve on perfection?