Devil in the Fog

Recently, Talking Pictures, on its marvellous Cellar Club slot, relayed that John Carpenter evergreen The Fog (1980). And, oh, what a picture! A remote Californian town is sent into chaos by the ghosts of needlessly drowned sailors, returned and gift-wrapped in a supernatural mist. I cannot but believe the movie-making doyen was unaware of the numerous traditions surrounding a simple surfeit of water vapour. Because it so often rolls in from the sea, superstitions have proliferated in the places with much coastline, namely the Celtic fringes, the Nordic and Mediterranean countries. As it arises from that uncertain world where land meets sea, from over bogs, marshes, lakes and on mountainsides, fog carries much metaphor, itself an insubstantial, liminal substance. Often vanishing as swiftly as it has arisen, no wondering then at its associations with ghosts and omens and sorcery. Urban fog is a different, more insidious matter, born of and borne in the pollution of industrialization. Carpenter made his movie barely three decades following the deaths of thousands of London inhabitants in one of its infamous “pea souper” fogs: maybe this is what the director had in mind? And easy to create artificially, fog is a perennial meme in movies involving urban serial killers, lacing the streest as the screams ring out. Whether created by ghosts or chemistry, motorists dread it, movie makers and story spinners make great use of it and the remainder of us can revel occasionally in it. Just take care when it appears suddenly.
Happy Halloween.