Cold Fusion Video Reviews

• Directed by John Carpenter
• Written by John Carpenter and Debra Hilli
• Starring
  • Adrienne Barbeau
  • Jamie Lee Curtis
  • Janet Leigh
  • John Houseman
  • Tom Atkins
• Produced by Debra Hill

It’s a problem we should all have: How do you follow up a hit movie?

It’s apparently a pretty tough question. I mean, look how James Cameron dealt with that very problem after Titanic — puttered around with a few movie projects that never happened, then finally turned to producing a TV show (I believe the technical term for that is “stalling”).

John Carpenter had very much an analogous problem in 1980. Two years previous, Halloween had become the top-grossing independent film of all time (a title it finally surrender to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles — oh, the ignominy). Carpenter was the hot kid on the block, and his tale of a inexplicable boogeyman, a truly senseless killer, had already jump-started the slasher genre. So what could he possibly do as a follow-up?

“Get me the President! Nah, just kidding.”

You have to admire the instinct to back off the “killing for the sense of killing” idea behind Halloween and instead play with the basic ghost story, the idea of a supernaturally-avenged wrong. After all, a basic plot that’s played well for thousands of years probably still has some gas in the tank.

Note that I said you have to admire the instinct behind the movie; you are not similarly required to admire the finished product.

Our opening effectively sets the tone, as an old fisherman John Houseman) tells the children of Antonio Bay a ghost story around the campfire on the beach at midnight. A hundred years ago, a fog-bound ship ran into the rocks outside town, mistaking a campfire for a signal fire. A hundred years ago… today.

And as the midnight hour tolls out, strange things start happening all over town. Car alarms go off. Gas pumps itselves. Dogs bark frantically. And, in the study of Father Malone (Hal Holbrook), a piece of the stone wall tumbles, revealing the hidden journal of the Father’s granddad, himself a priest in Antonio Bay a century ago. (Father Malone, quite naturally, is a drinker. According to the movies, the question one should as upon meeting a priest is, “Are you a drunk, a pedophile, or a secret Satanist?”)

“Wow! And I get how many free weekend minutes with this plan?”

Meanwhile, local Nick Castle (Tom Atkins, always beloved around these parts for his role in Night of the Creeps) picks up hitchhiker Elizabeth (Jamie Lee Curtis), but only have a couple of minutes for slightly suggestive repartee before the truck windows are blown in by forces unknown.

Also meanwhile, we meet the voice of KAB, Antonio Bay’s one radio station, Stevie Wayne (Adrienne Barbeau, Carpenter’s then-wife), in her studio atop a lighthouse on the shore. Now, I may be showing my monumental ignorance here, but this all seems a little screwy to me. See, Stevie is not only the owner, she’s the one-and-only DJ. So the station only operates between the hours of 6pm and 1am. Hello? I’ve lived in some one-horse towns in my time, but I’ve never heard of anyone being able to maintain a radio station that didn’t operate continuously. And this isn’t some measly pirate operation, like Pump Up the Volume; everyone in town, it seems, listens to KAB continuously during its meager hours of operation. This despite the fact that the playlist is all instrumentals that could charitably be described as “elevator music.”

Even the boats in and around the bay listen to her, which is why the weather office calls her to report a fog bank moving in; we then meet our final “meanwhile,” a trio of fishermen getting shitfaced on a trawler. I wouldn’t get too attached to them if I were you; they watch as a mysterious glowing fog bank rolls in, and from it comes an old clipper ship — to be followed by mysterious ragged figures on their own deck, who do in the trio in various unsavory ways (cutlasses, boat hooks, etc.).

So much for that whole “sanctury on holy ground” plan.

So. We’ve got our set-up, we’ve got our foreshadowing, we’ve got the presumed dirty lil town secret in Grandpa Malone’s journal, and we’ve got our characters. So what happens next?

Well, between now and the climax, basically a whole bunch of stuff happens. Not stuff that advances the plot, not stuff that makes much sense, but at least some spooky stuff that’s pretty neat to watch if you’re not paying attention to the storyline.

No, I take that back. One big chunk-o-plot comes down the pipeline, the contents of the Malone journal. Seems that the shipwreck wasn’t a random accident; the passengers had paid the locals a large sum of gold to be allowed to establish a leper colony just outside Antonio Bay, and the locals (including Old Father Malone) had purposely run them aground so that they could keep the gold without having to put up with icky leprosy. So, as the living Father Malone intones, the town is now under a curse, and the dead are coming for their due.

He intones this, by the way, to Kathy Williams (Janet Leigh) and her assistant. Kathy is the chairwoman of the centennial committee — since Antonio Bay always counted its official founding from the date of the shipwreck, tonight is also supposed to be a commemorative ceremony. Sounds like a setup for mass pandemonium, doesn’t it? Don’t get your hopes up; it never happens.

Other stuff that kinda happens:

“Zombies, vampires — this thing’s warding something off, dammit!”

Nick helps the Coast Guard look for the missing trawler, with Elizabeth in tow. Thus she’s on hand when they discover the ship, with salt water all sloshed around, and the single corpse of one fisherman which has had its eyes gouged out, and which is in the appropriate condition for having been drifting around the ocean bottom for months on end. Why this is is never explained, nor why we’re supposed to think it’s terribly important, but Carpenter apparently wanted us to, because he has a five-minute scene in which the coroner (”Dr. Phibes” — ha!) tells Nick about the condition of the body — allowing the body, in the other room, to revive momentarily and attack Elizabeth with a scalpel. Frankly, that makes no sense, and we never get to see another victim zombify and attack the living. (An intentional homage to one of the inexplicable bits in Tombs of the Blind Dead? Probably not, but the parallel is there, nonetheless.)

If you’re wondering what Elizabeth’s point in the plot is, you’re not alone. She doesn’t really contribute anything; it’s more like Carpenter wanted to give Curtis some work for being such a sport during the shooting of Halloween. Same goes for her mother, Janet Leigh; the character of Kathy is, if anything, more inconsequential. She shows up a couple of times as the chairwoman, and worries about her husband (one of the missing fisherman, though not the one who becomes an eyeless zombie), and basically sticks around long enough to be one of the warm bodies in the climactic mad dash away from the waterlogged zombies.

Other scenes that make no sense include Stevie’s little boy finding a piece of driftwood which bears part of the name of the ship that went down, the Elizabeth Dane; Stevie takes it to the studio, where it inexplicably leaks water onto the electrical equipment, causing a short-out and shower of sparks. Sure, it’s a nifty little scene, but it doesn’t accomplish anything.

And this time I’ve got an ironbound excuse for murky screencaps.

There is, of course, a twist and a solution to a mystery in the climax, and I’ll not spoil one of the better parts of the movie for your by telling you exactly what it is, but let me just say this: If I were to find an ancestor’s journal which led me to believe, because of the events related therein, that the entire town was under a curse and that I personally shouldn’t expect to survive the night, I’d probably make it a point to read the damned journal to the end just to see if there’s any helpful information in the last couple of pages.

Like I said, there are nifty scenes spread all through. The zombies themselves are appropriately spooky, rather than gory; except for a single shot of worms wriggling in the side of a rotting head, the unlucky lepers are consistently seen in silhouette against the glowing fog (a conceit which at least allows for adequate lighting), clumping and sloshing silently forward.

But there’s too much going on, and not enough connecting the goings-on into a coherent plot. There are too many characters for each to get any more than a few minutes; in fact, I felt like I was watching a TV miniseries edited down to feature length (a la Salem’s Lot).

Between the ghostly imagery and the Carpenter-composed soundtrack (which frankly sounds like more of the same from Halloween), there’s certainly a respectable ambience here. But this movie might belong in the “Best Seen When Stoned” category, so that each scene can be appreciated alone, without trying to make it relate to what comes before or after.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 6
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 2
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actor who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 1
  • Adrienne Barbeau (Stevie Wayne) played “Senator Cretak” on the DS9 episode “Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges”