The Fog (1980)

All aboard the clipper ship Elizabeth Dane perished when that vessel crashed upon the rocky cost of Antonio Bay, California one foggy night in the year 1880. A century later those lost souls return to wreak their vengeance, because the crash you see was not an accident. This early John Carpenter horror film does such a fantastic job of building a mounting sense of dread, and is just different enough in the particulars of its story elements that it proved irresistible to me. From the old man telling ghost stores to children on the beach at night, to the towns preparations for their evening centennial celebrations, sure to be ill-fated, to the casting of two generations of scream queens, Janet Leigh and her daughter Jamie Lee Curtis, the construction of this film as arch classic horror is fantastic. Good supporting parts as well for Hal Holbrook, and director Carpenters wife at the time Adrienne Barbeau. ***1/2