The Fog (1980)★★★★☆

So I apparently made a mistake watching the remake of this one before watching this one. More on that remake tomorrow, but basically I found it so boring that I never bothered to watch the original. I guess I figured there was no way that a movie from 1980 was going to be that much better than its remake.

I should have given John Carpenter the benefit of the doubt, of course. This one was pretty good. Not like The Thing good, but good. And while I think the remake suffers from taking itself too seriously, this one doesn’t have the same problem. John Carpenter knows exactly how seriously to take his movies, but no further.

Jamie Lee Curtis was a nice familiar face to see and she helped round out an otherwise great cast. In particular, Adrienne Barbeau did a great job as Stevie Wayne and I really liked Tom Atkins as Nick Castle.

I was really impressed by the background music in this one, and even more so when I looked it up and realized John Carpenter does the music for many of his own movies (including this one)! I don’t know whether to be impressed by his music skills or unimpressed by his clear lack of delegation skills.

Anyway, this movie isn’t too graphic and a definitely entertaining. Definitely worth a watch.