Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Film

Also opening: Studio shrouds 'Fog'

By STEVE PERSALL
Published October 13, 2005

John Carpenter's 1980 ghost yarn, The Fog, is one to remember, if not remake. Carpenter was on a roll after his first Halloween flick and before Escape to New York. The casting was a screamer's dream: Jamie Lee Curtis and her Psycho mother, Janet Leigh, plus Adrienne Barbeau, who turned tight T-shirts into high art. Toss in John Houseman as a campfire storyteller and Hal Holbrook as a worried priest, and The Fog seems inimitable.

That didn't stop music video director Rupert Wainwright from trying. His version of The Fog is PG-13 instead of Carpenter's R-level terror, and a lineup of Selma Blair, Maggie Grace and Tom Welling doesn't have the same allure. The plot remains the same: A fishing village was built on a former leper colony, and a century later the ghosts of those displaced souls are back for revenge.

Usually I must contact studio publicists to learn which movies won't be screened for critics, most often because they're bad. The nice folks at Sony informed me well in advance that The Fog would creep into theaters without any chance for reviews. Now that's scary.

- STEVE PERSALL, Times film critic

[Last modified October 12, 2005, 10:19:03]