I wanna thank all the faithful readers out there for making this current month the most popular in the three years since the inception of "Wopsploitation",my ugly little bastard child seems to be catching on big time.You guys and gals are truly as tits as a Russ Meyer movie.And sexier,at that.I promise you,I've got no shortage of titles to give the once over,and I've also been thinking about bringing in a guest reviewer or two on occasion,just to add a little spice to the mix.We're gonna look at some real classics this week,and a forgotten gem or three while we're at it.So,pack one up,sit back,and get yourself a piece of the Wop.
In the late seventies and early to mid eighties,John Carpenter could do no wrong.He had an impressive streak of classic films,running from "Assault on Precinct 13" to about "Prince of Darkness" or so,the endpoint of his brilliance is arguable.Today's entry,often referred to as a "minor classic", is one of my favorite Carpenter films of all,and a stellar example of the director at his very best.Shot anamorphically to hide the low-end budget,the film boasts of an excellent cast of characters,sparse but effective makeup work by Rob Bottin(who plays pissed-off leper-ghost,Captain Blake in the film),and yet another memorably creepy Carpenter soundtrack.Though about a third of the film stands as reshoots and new scenes,as the director hated the first cut,the finished product is a surprisingly effective ghost story.I remember the way the audience freaked the fuck out in the theater during the trick ending,and thinking to myself,"Goddamn!That was cool!",and saying it repeatedly after shelling out 92 samoleans for the Magnetic Video VHS release afterwards.Looking back,it's painful what a guy had to pay for quality horror entertainment back in the early eighties...
John Houseman earns money the old fashioned way...in CAMEOS.
The night before Antonio Bay's centennial celebration,old Mr. Machen(Houseman)tells the local boys the lurid history of the town over a crackling campfire.At the same time,Father Malone(Hal Holbrook)has discovered the town's shameful secret hidden away in his church's walls,in the form of a huge gold cross,and the revealing diary of his grandfather.Do priests write diaries a lot?If so I'd imagine most of 'em would be pretty lurid and shameful...It seems a hundred years earlier,Malone's grandfather and five other conspiritors shit in the collective mouths of a leper colony led by the captain of a clipper ship called the Elizabeth Dane,named Blake who was looking to establish a settlement nearby.The six men lit a campfire on the rocky coast to simulate a lighthouse's beacon,and during a foggy evening,sent the ship full of lepers to an icy premature death.The town was then settled using the stolen gold and the incident hiden away from the light.That night,three fishermen are engulfed by an unearthly,glowing fog on the ocean,and when the men on deck see a ghostly clipper pull alongside their own boat,they are dispatched by shadowy killers.Meanwhile,Nick Castle(Atkins) picks up a hitchiker named Elizabeth(Curtis),and the two manage to get a horizontal bop in amidst the town coming unglued from midnight 'til one in the morning.Back at the church,Malone drunkenly tries to convince Kathy and her assistant(Leigh,Nancy Loomis)to cancel the celebration,telling them of the bloodshed Antonio Bay was founded on.At the old lighthouse where deejay Stevie Wayne(Barbeau) broadcasts her sleepy jazz show from,things are getting weirder.A piece of driftwood her son brings her begins to drip water before catching fire,and changing from reading DANE to 6 MUST DIE.And you thought jazz was boring.
Stevie Wayne(Adrienne Barbeau)can deejay into my microphone all night long,baby.
The next day Nick and Elizabeth charter a boat to search for his three missing fishing buddies,stumbling across an unresponsive boat housing the eyeless cadaver of one of the men,who at the morgue,momentarily springs to life,grabs a scalpel and carves a number 3 in the floor tiles.That night as the centennial begins,Stevie hears the death of her weatherman,as he investigates outside his post and is overtaken by hooks that dig into him out of the glowing fog.She frantically calls the babysitter,who is enveloped by the fog,and dispatched by the leper-ghosts.Just as they're about to add Wayne's son to their bodycount,Nick and Elizabeth rescue the boy in his pickup,and speed away from the swirling bank of death.The pillowchested deejay warns her listeners to stay out of the fog,leading Kathy and assistant,Nick,Elizabeth,and young Danny to the safety of the church,just as the unearthly fog creeps down upon the lighthouse where she's broadcasting.The group fends off the ghostly attack at the church,while the deejay corners herself on the lighthouse roof,battling back the vengeful lepers with their own crusty weapons.Malone brings the hulking gold cross out to Captain Blake,and offers himself as the final conspiritor,but the crew and the fog disappear in thin air with their stolen treasure returned.Wayne,still in one piece,warns her listeners to watch out for the fog,which reappears,sliding back under the church doors,and surrounds the priest who is abruptly beheaded by the leper captain.
"Roll the window up and hit the gas,he's just gonna squeegee the windshield and ask for change!"
Many of the character names are movie and book-related inside jokes(Nick Castle,Dr. Phibes,Dan O'Bannon,Mr. Machen)you'll be able to notice as the credits roll.Carpenter drew his inspiration for this project from a British horror film from the 50's that dealt with monsters that hid in cloud-cover.His next film would be the excellent "Escape From New York" a year later,which we'll look at at a later date.His marriage to the the lovely Barbeau came to an end in 1984,his credibility stuck around quite a bit longer,at least until he helmed the god-awful Ghosts of Mars in 2001.Still one of my favorite directors of all-time,without question.Coincidentally,tonight's entry stands at the sixth highest box office gross of all his films,which probably explains why they'd rape his cult classic with an unneccessary and overwhelmingly panned remake in 2005.Ironically,his own remake of The Thing(1982) is probably the greatest ever made.The Fog breaks through the stained glass with an ectoplasmic fist holding three wops under the cover of vengeful mist on the ratings scale...
Insert obligatory vengeful leperous apparition with glowing eyes and an itchy scabbard finger joke here.
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