John Houseman | Scott's Film Reviews-1,529 Reviews posted!!! RECENTLY LAUNCHED-MY TOP 250 FAVORITE FILMS AND TOP 40 HORROR FILMS!!!

The Fog-1980

Director John Carpenter

Starring Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Atkins

Scott’s Review #1,523

Reviewed March 9, 2026

Grade: A-

Ghost stories can be tough for a filmmaker to make interesting, let alone be successful. So much depends on atmosphere, mood, and good storytelling.

The most memorable ghost films are The Innocents (1961), The Shining (1980), and The Sixth Sense (1999), but there are bound to be others I can’t think of.

The key is to make the unbelievable believable and to make the subject matter realistic and spooky enough to avoid a mediocre or worse yet, hokey experience.

The Fog (1980) is one of the top-tier ghost stories, often mistaken for a slasher film, undoubtedly because it stars scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis and is directed by John Carpenter, who, two years earlier, had created one of the greatest slasher films, Halloween (1978).

It also stars slasher stalwarts Charles Cyphers and Nancy Loomis, and includes Halloween producer Debra Hill and Halloween editor Tommy Lee Wallace, who was once married to Loomis.

Additionally, Curtis’s mother, Janet Leigh (Psycho, 1960), is also in the cast, making the entire film an incestuous horror experience.

But it’s hardly Halloween lite.

Instead of making a patterned carbon copy, Carpenter pivots to a spooky, original story filled with exceptional jump scares, a foreboding musical score, and iridescent fog; a character in itself is so prominent.

The keyboard-tinged sounds are highly effective at delivering a downright scary mood.

One midnight hour, cleverly billed the ‘witching hour’ by sultry radio announcer Stevie (Adrienne Barbeau), strange things begin to occur as a tiny California coastal town prepares to commemorate its centenary.

Reverend Malone (Hal Holbrook) stumbles upon a dark secret about the town’s past while reading his grandfather’s diary, and town resident Nick Castle (Tom Atkins) and hitchhiker Elizabeth (Curtis) try to save others from death as the body count begins to climb.

Savvy Halloween fans know that Nick Castle was a stuntman who played the Shape in the film. And, Carpenter makes a cameo as Bennett Tramer, a character in the Halloween franchise.

At a quick ninety minutes of running time, The Fog hardly has time to lag and almost feels like a short anthology. The brevity is to its advantage despite the many characters featured.

A common theme in horror, the film opens with a campfire story told around a campfire by an older man, Mr. Machen (John Houseman), to a group of startled kids about a doomed clipper ship that crashed into rocks a hundred years ago.

With the stage perfectly set, the killings ensue in rapid form first aboard a fisher boat and subsequently when deadly lepor beings rap loudly on their victim’s doors in the hopes of being answered.

The casting is an exceptional part of the fun. Atkins joins Holbrook, Curtis, Leigh, Loomis, Cyphers, and Barbeau to round out a phenomenal cast. I only wish mother and daughter, Curtis and Leigh, shared more screentime.

The special effects need to be seen in light of the 1980s cheesiness. Yes, in 2026, more CGI would be used, but the misty rolling fog and the shimmering light are quite impressive.

Unsure if Curtis or Barbeau is considered the lead (Barbeau gets my vote, but Curtis gets the cover shot), Curtis was a bankable horror film star, so perhaps an attempt to grab the younger demographic was the motivation.

Jump out of the seat, moments like a falling dead body, a hand on a shoulder, and a gruesome-looking hand smashing through glass are highly effective moments aided by perfectly placed synthesizer sounds.

A well-crafted, intelligent, though underappreciated horror effort, The Fog (1980) is more of a cult classic than a bona fide classic, which is a shame because it’s a very good film.

A dismal remake followed in 2005 and should be avoided.

Three Days of the Condor-1975

Director Sydney Pollack

Starring Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, Max von Sydow

Top 250 Films #246

Scott’s Review #1,206

Reviewed December 11, 2021

Grade: B+

Three Days of the Condor (1975) is an edge-of-your-seat thriller starring Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway, two big stars of the 1970s.

The film is directed by the respected Sydney Pollack, most famous for Out of Africa (1985) and Tootsie (1982).

He knows how to entertain while providing a good, juicy romance.

The quick pace and frenetic editing make the film move along, and the frequent exteriors of Manhattan and Brooklyn are great. Good-looking stars and a dangerous European bad guy played by Max von Sydow certainly help.

My only criticism is that Three Days of the Condor is quite similar and familiar to other espionage or political thrillers like All the President’s Men (1976) or Chinatown (1974) that emerged during the 1970s.

This is small potatoes by comparison with the compelling and action-oriented theme, though.

On a seemingly ordinary day, Joe Turner (Redford), a bookish CIA codebreaker, is tasked with fetching lunch for his colleagues. When he returns, he finds that they have all been murdered. Horrified, Joe flees the scene and tries to tell his supervisors about the tragedy, but quickly learns that CIA higher-ups were involved in the murders.

With no one to trust and a determined hitman named Joubert (Max von Sydow) on his tail, Joe must somehow survive long enough to figure out why his agency wants him dead. He kidnaps Kathy Hale (Dunaway), who he hopes will assist him in his peril.

The opening segment is the best part of Three Days of the Condor. The massacre of the entire office is shocking and bloody, and Pollack infuses the necessary elements of suspense in this key scene.

The scolding, chainsmoking receptionist who keeps a gun in her desk drawer is the first to die and no match for her assassins. As they go about the office, kicking down doors and wreaking havoc, it’s a hope that someone is spared.

We also wonder about their motivation.

And the tense elevator scene involving Turner and Joubert is fabulous.

Particularly worth mentioning is the inclusion of a female Asian character, hinted at as a possible love interest of Turner’s. Tina Chen’s character, Janice, is intelligent and sexy.

Her flirtations with Turner, unfortunately, never go anywhere, as she is part of the lunchtime slaughter, but some Asian representation in mainstream film during this time is a positive.

I fell in love with Kathy’s cozy and stylish Brooklyn apartment. Assumed to be very close to the Lower Manhattan financial district, the set is beautifully dressed. It provides depth and texture to her character, whom we barely know at first.

She has good taste and sophistication and sees something in Turner, although he has just accosted her at random.

It was a stretch to buy Robert Redford as nerdy or anything other than a platinum blonde hunk, but the actor does a satisfactory job leading the film. I couldn’t stop comparing Redford and Brad Pitt at that age, as the two stars look similar.

The chemistry between Redford and Dunaway is palpable and key to the film. If little or none existed, it would have detracted from the believability when they become lovers, it feels natural, a satisfying culminating moment for the audience, and proper to the story.

Providing enough action to enthrall viewers in the thriller genre, Three Days of the Condor (1975) is slick yet believable. Capitalizing on the paranoia that the fresh Watergate scandal had resulted in when the film was made, it still holds up well as a film decades later.

Oscar Nominations: Best Film Editing