The Fog: Still Terrifying After 40 years....

It's hard to tell what constitutes a good scary movie today. Now that technology has caught up with out imaginations, we can produce nearly any visual we choose, be it dinosaurs, on screen amputations, or whatever that jerky thing they do in The Ring and The Grudge is called.

With that technology, the genre evolves about every half hour. The aforementioned jerky movies, by way of example, dominated big and then small screens for a full couple of years. Found footage pulled the jerky thing into the camera itself and lasted a few years as well. Graphic gore fests like Saw ran the show for a time, and reboots of old movies where that technology can now be added have become a constant.

But what's been lost is a certain amount of pure imagination. Once upon a time there was a need for creativity. Some effects were just impossible then, and as such film makers had to depend on nuances like lighting, music, and subtlety. And sometimes... acting! And even basic tools like inference and insinuation. Not a lot of that in theaters anymore. More often than not now in the first ten minutes people are graphically dead and ghosts are already out in the open.

My choice for the best horror film comes from that era of creativity. It isn't a great movie, from all I've read, although it does have something of a cult following. Not surprising, being that one John Carpenter made the thing. Yes, that John Carpenter. And he built this movie from the floor up. Wrote it, directed it, even produced the music. This was a guy who understood my earlier point about using all of your resources to scare us.

Here's the irony of my choice; I've seen the thing once in my entire life, and I was eight years old when I did. And further, I will never watch it again.

I was home alone the night I watched it; just me and the family poodle. I was already into scary movies at 8; amazing new movie channels like HBO and Cinemax had opened that door for me already. But as yet, I had not found one that scared me. Most of them were stupid, and cheap special effects just annoyed and bored me.

The most terrifying movie of all time, for me, was The Fog. The original; 1980, with Adrienne Barbeau and a very young Jaime Lee Curtis.

This movie... this was the one. Some of it had to do with the fact that I was alone and it was actually foggy outside as I watched it. But I remember even now, 40 years later, how invested I was. How enveloped I was. The music, the mood, that damn fog... It was the first time that terror reached out and pulled me into it's world.

The story isn't all that original. Island off the coast of some American shore. I want to say Maine, or somewhere close. Fog rolls in every so many years, brings dead pirates looking for ancestors of people who killed them. As I say it, it sounds almost silly.

Looking back, I don't think you ever get a good look at the pirates. But you didn't need to. You know there were some dead ass pirates in that fog. You already knew exactly what they looked like, because halfway through the movie, your imagination had already done the work.

That was the creative genius that's fading today. You could produce perfect dead pirates... Hell, Pirates of the Caribbean has something like seven times. But there will never be a pirate more terrifying than the ones in The Fog... at least not to the eight year old that was me. When I had to let that dog out after that movie, it was literally the most terrifying moment of my life. I knew beyond certainty that it was not a coincidence that there was fog here as I watched it there. In a three minute span.... three minutes that took a week... I went through every possible horrible scenario I could imagine. My stupid poodle would, at any moment, be tossed on the porch, followed by those glowing eyes. Every rustle was them. Every wisp of fog was them.

I obviously made it in; the pirates didn't get me that night. But they have never left me. A part of me is still, to this day, afraid of the fog. Not overly so; I drive in fog often in the spring. But even now, 40 years later, the fog still has me. If I have to let my dog out... different dog, still somehow a stupid poodle... I am on edge. If a hear a crack, my head will jerk, and for just an instant, I will see those glowing eyes. Faint, almost impossible to see.. but there. And I will laugh at myself when I realize it's not. Remind myself that I'm not 8. And if i hear another snap, I will do it all again.

That's why I won't ever watch The Fog again. I don't know if it will scare me now. Being from 1980, I tend to think it will not. Whether we choose to or not, we have all, to some degree, been spoiled by the technology. In a world where illusion is not mostly in our minds any more, that brand of fear... the fear that creeps up on you, the fear that makes you believe, even in part, the irrational or impossible... is becoming a thing of the past.

For me, The Fog has kept that magic for 40 years. I would just as soon keep it that way.