The Fog

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For 2005 film see, The Fog (2005 film).

The Fog
Directed by	John Carpenter
Produced by	Charles B. Bloch Debra Hill Barry Bernardi Pegi Brotman
Written by	John Carpenter Debra Hill
Starring	Adrienne Barbeau Jamie Lee Curtis Janet Leigh John Houseman
Music by	John Carpenter
Cinematography	Dean Cundey
Editing by	Charles Bornstein Tommy Lee Wallace
Distributed by	AVCO Embassy Pictures
Release date(s)	February 8, 1980
Running time	89 min.
Language	English
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

The Fog is a 1980 horror movie directed by John Carpenter, who also wrote the screenplay and composed the music of the film. It stars Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Atkins and Janet Leigh. It was released by Avco Embassy and distributed by AVCO Embassy Pictures.

Taglines:

• What you can't see won't hurt you... it'll kill you!
• Lock your doors. Bolt your windows. There's something in THE FOG!
• When the fog rolls in... the terror begins!
• It is night. It is cold. It is coming.
• JOHN CARPENTER, who startled the world with "Halloween," now brings you the ultimate experience in terror.
• What In The Living Hell Is Out There?

Contents 1 Plot 2 Cast 3 Re-shoots 4 Critical reception 5 2005 remake 6 Trivia 7 References 8 External links

[edit] Plot

The movie is a classic ghost story that takes place in a Northern California fishing town called Antonio Bay (real location Inverness, California and Pt. Reyes lighthouse). The town is about to celebrate its centennial when mysterious events, including the gruesome murders of three fishermen, accompany a strange, glowing fog that spreads over land and sea. The local minister, Father Malone, discovers the diary of his grandfather (who was also the town's minister), which contains a dark secret unknown to the town's current inhabitants.

The diary reveals that, in 1880, six of the founders of Antonio Bay (including Malone's grandfather) deliberately sunk and plundered the Elizabeth Dane, a clipper ship owned by Blake, a wealthy man with leprosy who wanted to establish a colony near Antonio Bay. The six conspirators lit a fire on the beach near treacherous rocks, and the crew of the clipper, deceived by the false beacon, crashed into the rocks. Everyone aboard the ship perished. The six conspirators were motivated both by greed and by disgust at the notion of having a leper colony nearby. Antonio Bay and its church were then founded with the gold plundered from the ship.

The mysterious fog contains the vengeful ghosts of Blake and the clipper's crew, who have come back on the hundredth anniversary of the shipwreck and the founding of the town to take the lives of six people (symbolic substitutes for the six conspirators).

[edit] Cast

Actor	Role
Adrienne Barbeau	Stevie Wayne
Jamie Lee Curtis	Elizabeth Solley
Janet Leigh	Kathy Williams
John Houseman	Mr. Machen
Tom Atkins	Nick Castle
James Canning	Dick Baxter
Charles Cyphers	Dan O'Bannon
Nancy Loomis	Sandy Fadel
Ty Mitchell	Andy Wayne
Hal Holbrook	Father Malone
John F. Goff	Al Williams
George 'Buck' Flower	Tommy Wallace
Darwin Joston	Dr. Phibes

[edit] Re-shoots

After viewing a rough cut of the film, John Carpenter was dissatisfied with the results. Consequently, he added several new scenes and re-shot others in order to make the film more comprehensible, more frightening, and more gory. Carpenter and Debra Hill have said that the necessity for a re-shoot became especially clear to them after they saw David Cronenberg's Scanners in the theater and realized that The Fog would have to compete with horror films that had high gore content.^[1]

Approximately one-third of the finished film is comprised of the newer footage. This includes the introductory "storytelling" scene, the morgue scene, Stevie Wayne's battle with the ghosts on top of the lighthouse, and graphic inserts into the death scenes.

[edit] Critical reception

The film did not get good critical reviews when it was initially released, but it was a commercial success. It is now generally considered to be, as Carpenter once called it, "a minor horror classic". Carpenter himself stated that this is not his overall favorite film due to re-shoots and low production values. This is one of the reasons he agreed to the 2005 remake (see below).

[edit] 2005 remake

Main article: The Fog (2005 film)

The film was remade under the direction of Rupert Wainwright with a screenplay by Cooper Layne and starring Tom Welling and Maggie Grace. Though based on the concept of Carpenter and Hill's original screenplay, the remake was a "teen horror film." Green-lit by Revolution Studios with just eighteen pages of script written, the film was nearly universally panned for the shallow plot and poor acting. As of January 2006, the film has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 5%.

[edit] Trivia

• Bennett, the assistant to Father Malone in the opening scenes, is played by an uncredited John Carpenter.
• Characters Nick Castle, Dan O'Bannon, Tommy Wallace are named after John Carpenter's real-life collaborators from previous films.
• The band mentioned on the radio in an early scene, "The Coupe DeVilles", is a real band featuring director John Carpenter. Their only "notable" song was Big Trouble in Little China from the film of the same name, also directed by Carpenter.
• The name of the character played by Darwin Joston, the coroner "Dr. Phibes", is a reference to the character Dr. Anton Phibes played by Vincent Price in two cult horror favorites (The Abominable Dr. Phibes and Dr. Phibes Rises Again).
• Some of the place names mentioned early in the film, including "Whately" (the main character of "The Dunwich Horror") and "Arkham" are references to the works of H.P. Lovecraft.
• After a rough cut, the movie appeared to be much too short for a theatrical release (about 80 minutes). John Carpenter subsequently added the prologue with Mr. Machen (John Houseman) telling ghost stories to fascinated children by a campfire. The name "Machen" is a reference to British horror fantasist Arthur Machen.
• The plot of the film is parodied (and also as to whether the correct phrasing is 'pirate ghosts' or 'ghost pirates') in a South Park episode called Korn's Groovy Pirate Ghost Mystery which also more notably spoofs Scooby Doo.
• Although this was essentially a low budget independent film, John Carpenter chose to shoot the movie in the anamorphic format. This gave the film a grander feel for the viewer so it did not seem like a low budget horror film.
• John Carpenter admitted that some of the inspiration for the story was drawn from the British film The Trollenberg Terror (1958), which dealt with monsters hiding in the clouds. He has also said that he was inspired by a visit to Stonehenge with his co-writer/producer (and then-girlfriend), Debra Hill. While in England promoting Assault on Precinct 13, Carpenter and Hill visited the site in the late afternoon one day and saw an eerie fog in the distance.
• In the DVD audio commentary for the film, Carpenter noted that the story of the deliberate wreckage of a ship and its subsequent plundering was based on an actual event that took place in the 19th century near Goleta, California.
• Blake, the lead ghost, was played by makeup specialist Rob Bottin. When Bottin asked for the job, John Carpenter asked him to "stand up". Bottin then expected Carpenter to say, "...and get out!" When Carpenter saw that Bottin was a very large man, which was needed for the Blake character, he was hired.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• The Fog at the Internet Movie Database
• Surfindead.com review of The Fog
• Filming locations used for The Fog on Dreadcentral.com