"The Fog"

I NEVER REALLY KNEW WHY BUT when I was of tender age (like about eight or nine years old) I had always found myself watching horror movies---not by intention but by pure chance. Every now and then, I would be glued to some fearsome flick that an older cousin or an uncle was watching on TV. Of course I had no control of what to watch on the boob tube when I was just a skinny kid back then and I can't really remember if we had a VCR at that time but always it had seem, I had been watching a lot of those scary films when I was little. In fact, there was once this occasion where Uncle Mameng was watching a late night film on TV just by himself and for some reason I arose from my bed so late in the evening and went downstairs and sat beside him as we both watched the film adaptation of Stephen King's “Salem's Lot”. How could I forget that film? There was this one scene when a ghost-child was floating on the night wind trying to open the window of the house being haunted. The ghost was repeatedly saying “Open the window!” and I just got scared by that particular portion of the movie that I cried furiously and so suddenly that Uncle Mameng had to calm me down and make me go upstairs. He said that I shouldn't be watching horror movies again. But then, I still had to watch a lot of them.

And then I remember watching this movie titled “The Fog” from a nearby theater back then. I went alone in the early afternoon while the sun was blazing in the sky. The chairs inside the theater were all empty except for some few souls. I had wondered then that maybe I had just wasted my money on a not-so-palatable movie. But “The Fog” was one movie that I could not easily forget for it had seem to have a hypnotic spell on me that even to this day, I still retain stark images of the film I had seen so many, many years ago. The plot wasn't that original----about some zombie-like creatures using the cover of fogs in order to haunt a town that had been at some point, responsible for their damnation. But inspite of that, I bet it was so well-made that the ghost story was so compelling and powerful. This shouldn't be a surprise to me now knowing just recently that it was directed by the legendary John Carpenter himself.

Now, Sony Pictures brings back to the big screen that unforgettable horror film in a remake. “The Fog” topped the box office in America this week and this may be a sign, that perhaps it wasn't only me that got so frightened by the 1980's film; that a whole generation is now trooping back to the theater to relive once more the horror of mangled hands coming out of fogs. Maybe you'll want to watch it too...