Census Bloodbath: I Haven't The Foggiest

Note: This movie was only available to me in unsubtitled Spanish. While I'm not half bad at Spanish, I'm full bad when it is rapidly spoken by people from Spain, so take my review with a grain of salt. Also, the copy doesn't come with proper credits, making it hard to determine who played who.

Year:
1982
Director:
Silvio F. Balbuena
Cast:
Terpy Ibir, Carla Celis, Antonio Mayans
Run Time:
1 hour 19 minutes

Plot: Written in the Fog (aka Escrito en la niebla) kicks off with a literal bang when young boy Victor shoots his mother's lover, Tomás, with a shotgun and pins the crime on her. Many years later, the adult Victor (Terpy Ibir, who also wrote the movie) is running the restaurant Bar Julia. As his guilt over his crime bubbles over, he monologues nonstop to his now catatonic mother while she stares into space in her wheelchair. 

For some reason, various men bring women to the bar to get them jobs. Victor kidnaps one of them and hides her in his basement. He is then driven to murder anybody who tries to investigate this, as well as anybody who tries to flirt with him. Dude's got problems.

Analysis: You know what other slasher movie came out of Spain in 1982? Goddamn Pieces. It's probably not fair of me to compare Written in the Fog with one of the all-time trashterpieces of slasher cinema, but it hurts knowing what we could have had here if anybody put their mind to it.

Written in the Fog is no Pieces. It is unfortunately more in the Atrapados en el miedo camp, though very few films could be worse than that mess, thankfully. What we get here is about an hour of tedium where Victor goes about the business of managing a restaurant while hiding a woman in the basement. For a little bit of variety, in between repetitive scenes of him trying and failing to feed his captive, they throw in plenty of repetitive scenes of him ranting to his mother.

Other than the vague Psycho stink that hangs in the air, there's nothing remotely slashery about this part of the movie. I think more people die than we actually see die onscreen (it would be helpful to have been able to understand the dialogue, yes), but if they're dying offscreen, why even bother making it a slasher movie?

Once it finally remembers what it's here to do, though, Written in the Fog perks up a bit. The first body count kill (which takes place about 25 minutes before the "Fin" title card) is a shocking burst of violence, and each of the kills that follow swiftly on its heels feel the same way. And while the gore effects aren't top notch, there's plenty of dripping blood to go around.

Hell, they even throw in a non-kill gore moment for good measure, in a scene where Victor attacks a goofy but perceptive detective (I took to calling him Puáro) by bonking him on the head with a sharp hoe. It's all very lively and reasonably dynamic in a way that the rest of this movie isn't. It's not enough for me to recommend Written in the Fog - not nearly enough - but at least it has redeeming qualities. Random regional slashers don't always even have the courtesy to pack a few of those in. (Here's looking at you, Blood Lake.)

Killer: Victor

Final Girl: N/A

Best Kill: The Inspector being beaten around the head with a poker is startlingly savage and quite bloody.

Sign of the Times: We see Victor lugging around a beautiful old-fashioned crate of 1980s Pepsi bottles.

Scariest Moment: That opening sequence with Victor being an evil little kid is pretty startling.

Weirdest Moment: Late in the game, it is revealed that Victor has an open-top fishbowl shaped like a giant wine glass.

Champion Dialogue: N/A

Body Count: 5; not including the short-haired waitress, who we don't see die, but who vanishes and whose offscreen death I'm sure must be mentioned in dialogue that I missed.

1. Tomás is shot with a shotgun.
2. Blonde Waitress is slashed in the neck.
3. Basement Lady is poisoned (I think?).
4. Inspector has his head beaten with a poker.
5. Dark-Haired Waitress is hit in the head with a rock.

TL;DR: Written in the Fog is mostly boring, but when it puts its energy into actually being a slasher, it's watchable.

Rating: 4/10