Yet another hole in my metaphorical library that needed to be filled. Yeah… I said what I said.
In the sleepy little town on the coast of Antonio Bay, CA. things are quiet and peaceful. It’s a typical seafarers town. Small, everyone knows everyone else and it has a secret. On the night of April 21st, the radio DJ that does her show out of the lighthouse on the point gets a call saying that there is a fog moving in, strangely against the wind. Weird things start to occur that no one has an answer for. The local preacher about to retire for the evening is startled when part of a wall in the church crumbles and reveals a book. A man [Nick Castle] driving down the road picks up a hitchhiker [Elizabeth], and as they chat driving down the road all the windows explode, seemingly for no reason at all.
The next morning Nick and Elizabeth go to look for Nick’s friend that was on a boat that didn’t come back from an evening fishing trip. What they find is an abandoned boat and one body where there should have been at least three. When the body is taken back to shore the coroner examines it and says that it appears it has been underwater for months if not longer, though it was a living person less than 24hrs ago. It’s at this point that the body on the slab gets up and walks across the floor carving the number 3 on the floor when it collapses.
As I said this is one of those “classic horror movies” that I never seemed to have gotten around to watching. Honestly, I knew nothing about the film prior to turning it on other than I should probably see it. I didn’t know it was a John Carpenter movie. I didn’t know it had Jamie Lee Curtis in it fresh off the success of the first Halloween. I didn’t know that it also stared Tom Atkins from Halloween 3, as well as a slew of other well-known movie actors including Adrienne Barbeau, Hal Houlbrook, even the late John Houseman. I’ve seen it now, obviously, and I get it. It was a great old movie.
For a movie almost as old as I am, it still holds up quite well. Sure the special effects are as cheesy as the acting, but it’s still just as creepy. Ghost stories from the past coming to life are always a fun style of movie when done well. It was interesting that the plot here absolutely HAD to be the seed that lead to the story of the Pirates of the Caribbean “Curse of the Black Pearl”. Like… it just had to be. I would recommend anyone see this especially those, like me, that had never done so in the past.
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