John Carpenter's Halloween has been called a Argento homage, and this has been considered his tribute to Fulci. Distinctive and keeps the audience on the same page as the characters, it's part ghost story and part zombie thriller.
A group of children are sitting on a beach listening to Mr. Machen (John Houseman) spin ghostly yarns by the light of a dying fire. As it is 11:55 PM, one more tale will do. Machen tells them of the founding of their town Antonio Bay. Exactly one hundred years ago at the stroke of midnight, the clipper ship the Elizabeth Dane sank near Spivey Point. A thick onset of fog rolled in, blinding the crew of the ship. Spotting a campfire on the beach, the crew mistook it for a signal and ran their ship into the unseen shoals. It went down with all hands. Now, so the old timers say, the crew waits for the fog's return so they can get their revenge...
At midnight, Father Malone (Hal Holbrook) sits in his church office. The building is hit with a sudden tremor, knocking loose a stone in the wall. Malone finds a journal hidden in the wall, belonging to his grandfather Patrick, Antonio Bay's original priest. Over the next hour things happen; bottles in a store shake themselves off the self, gas pumps turn themselves on and flood the tarmac, alarms go off, and something knocks on doors. The windows in Nick Castle's (Tom Atkins) truck explode shortly after he picks up hitchhiker Elizabeth Solley (Jamie Lee Curtis).
At 12:15, meteorologist Dan O'Bannon (Charles Cyphers) notices a particularly dense fog bank rolling in, on course to intercept the fishing ship the Sea Grass. He calls it in to radio DJ Stevie Wayne (Adrienne Barbeau), who relays the warning to the ship's crew.
Captain Al Williams (John Goff) notices the fog, and tells his crew (James Canning and George "Buck" Flower) to bring the ship in and go home. As the fog envelops the ship, the crew notice a clipper ship running by. Before they can wonder about that, they are boarded by a group of several silent figures. The crew is torn to pieces by said figures.
At 12:45 the fog begins to drift away from the town and against the wind. A few minutes before 1:00, Nick is dragged out of bed by something knocking on his front door, but the knocking stops at exactly 1:00 when Nick opens the door.
The next day, Stevie's son Andy (Ty Mitchell) is walking along the beach when he spots something shiny in the surf. It appears to be a coin, but before he can grab it, the waves wash over it. The coin is gone, although he does see a old piece of wood with the word Dane written on it. Disappointed, he takes the wood with him anyway.
Nick, meanwhile, has been called on to help search for the Sea Grass which never came in last night. Taking Elizabeth with him, the two find the ship some twenty miles away. The deck is dry, but everything below is rusted and covered in salt. There's only one body on board, but it's so rotted and covered in algae one would think the poor devil had been dead for weeks instead of hours.
The strangeness increases once they take the body back to shore. At the corner's office, while Elizabeth is alone with the corpse, the body suddenly springs back to life. It stays alive long enough to scrawl a message on the floor before dying again. A similar thing occurs later with the driftwood Andy brought back. Steve takes it with her to the radio station. Water begins to flow out of it, sparking off a fire. The strangeness continues as a voice seems to take over a nearby speaker, swearing revenge.
Back in town, Kathy Williams (Janet Leigh) and her assistant Sandy Fadel (Nancy Loomis) are trying to organize the town's centennial. They have hit a snag; Father Malone explains that, thanks to reading his grandfather's journal he knows the secret of the town. One hundred years ago, the Elizabeth Dane was wrecked off the coast of Antonio Bay, but it was no accident. A man named Blake wished to establish a leper colony a few miles from the town. Malone's grandfather and five others deliberately set the fire to wreck the ship and steal Blake's gold. Malone declares the celebration a travesty. He's right, as when the sun sets the fog starts rolling back into town...
Dream-like story and impressive visuals. The story doesn't make a whole lot of sense if you seriously think about it, but that's the advantage of dreams. The narrative bounces around quite a bit, but I think that works to the story's advantage.
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