The Fog was the first John Carpenter movie I would be hyper-focused on and obsessed with seeing after getting the top of my head blown off by Halloween. I believed there was no way this would not be another classic from the man (i.e. creative team) responsible for Halloween.
While fog banks might not be as iconic as, say, the holiday of Halloween. They do serve as a vital backdrop, or set dressing, in the creation of an ominous, threatening, or mysterious mood. What could go wrong with letting a ghost-laden fog take center stage?
Although the end result was just a "tad" unfocused, underdeveloped, and uneven, thanks in very large part to Carpenter's eleventh hour reshoots to ramp the film's scare factor way, way up, I still loved it.
The days of my thinking The Fog to be another flawless classic are long past, but The Fog remains one of my personal favorite Carpenter films.
The holiday may have come and gone, but the first ever theatrical release of John Carpenter's Halloween was just around the corner in the San Francisco Bay Area. Here we have a handful of sneak preview screenings hoping to generate some positive word of mouth for the film's opening on Wednesday, November 15th.
I believe I saw Halloween II on Saturday, October 31st, at the Hayward Festival Cinemas. Two things stand out in my memory. When we arrived at the multiplex there was a line around the theatre, but no line at the ticket window. Turns out the line was for Halloween II ticket holders. I was both shocked and delighted.
My second memory is of the moment Carpenter's 'chase music' started pounding and the packed house erupted with enthusiastic cheers.
While this first sequel to Halloween does not warrant a spot on my exalted Favorite Movies of All-Time List, I cannot say that I dislike all that much. While it does suffer from a certain lack of imagination and energy, I do not think it is the abomination John Carpenter himself has dismissed it as. So it goes.
Met with critical and audience derision, Halloween III Season of the Witch failed to launch the planned anthology format producers John Carpenter and Debra Hill hoped to follow their commercial success of Halloween II (1981) with. So it goes.
Although a modest money maker in its own right, Halloween III did nowhere near the business of the previous films and, for a few years, was perceived as something of a franchise killer. Which is too bad, as the movie is undeserving of that reputation.
Being a John Carpenter fanatic at that time, I saw Halloween III on the big screen and, during the end credits, my father, who was sitting beside me, muttered, "No wonder this was no good, Dino De Laurentiis had something to do with it." Ouch.
I liked it, though... Still do. It has become one of my perennial Halloween season viewings.
The listing box in the lower right hand corner, next to the See Theatre Guide for Policy, is where I saw this re-release double-bill of The Fog (1980) and Phantasm (1979). The Century, at that particular time, was a two-screen dome theater. It was where I first saw The Swarm (1978), Orca (1977), The Thing (1982), Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), The Enforcer (1976), An American Werewolf in London (1981), and many, many more.
It was also where I would first see Phantasm. We had already seen The Fog, which had been released earlier that same year, at the Coliseum Drive-In. There it had been paired with a reissue of House By the Lake (1976). A movie that my father refused to sit through.
My dad did sit through Phantasm and, because he would jerk and jump in his seat, I legit thought it was because he was scared. Turns out he had been writhing in utter agony at having to be forced to sit through what he considered to be a rancid and godawful hunk of cinematic junk. At least he held back his raging contempt for the film until it was over, so my brother and I could enjoy it in peace.
The Fog had been well underway when we had arrived, so dad let us stay and watch the film until it reached the scene we had entered at. That is when he snapped, "We are not sitting through the rest of this thing for a second time, let's go." Which we did.
I also remember the TV spots for this re-release:
Spot 1 -
Spot 2 -
These spots may have gotten a generous amount play during the commercial breaks for the Captain Cosmic show, as well as those for Chiller Diller and/or Creature Features, on KTVU. Which is probably why I remember them with such clarity and fondness.
I was so stoked to see this. Sure, it was not a horror movie, but it was a new John Carpenter movie and Debra Hill Production. The dynamic duo responsible for Halloween and The Fog. Adrienne Barbeau was in it, too! And Lee Van Cleef! And Ernest Borgnine! And Harry Dean Stanton!
Man, what a cast. What a concept. What a fun movie it turned out to be. I loved it then and still do today.
On October 25th my Facebook feed was peppered with posts celebrating the fact that John Carpenter's Halloween opened in theaters and drive-ins for the very first time on October 25, 1978. Because, more than likely, that is the earliest date that is listed on its IMDB page.
While this might be true, the number of theaters it played in was quite small. I was surprised to learn that Halloween never had a wide theatrical release. That it never played in more than 200 theaters at any given time. It would open in a market, play for a week or two, then move on to the next.
Which explains how and why Halloween first opened at a theater or drive-in near me on November 15, 1978. NOVEMBER!?! The celebration of Halloween would already have been a distant memory to 11-year-old me. My heart would be focused on Thanksgiving and, even better, Christmas.
So it should come as no surprise that I have no memory of this release, at all.
Halloween would first ping my blossoming horror geek radar when this issue of Newsweek arrived in the family mail.
Newsweek - June 18, 1979
This is where, buried amongst the coverage of the looming releases of Alien, Prophecy, and Dawn of the Dead, that I learned that a movie called Halloween existed. I am pretty sure that Phantasm, The Brood, and maybe even The Dark were also mentioned in the cover article.
Although the positive word of mouth of audiences, and the acclaim of critics, was beginning to grow around Halloween, the article's coverage was pretty basic. It stated that Halloween, a scary sleeper hit, would be getting another release in the fall and offered a single image from the film. That of a sheeted figure standing in a doorway. But it was enough to get me interested and excited about seeing this movie called Halloween.
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