The Fog
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- For the 2005 film, see The Fog (2005 film). For the unrelated James Herbert novel, see The Fog (1975 novel).
| The Fog | |
|---|---|
 Original theatrical poster |
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| 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 John Houseman Janet Leigh Hal Holbrook |
| Music by | John Carpenter |
| Cinematography | Dean Cundey |
| Editing by | Charles Bornstein Tommy Lee Wallace |
| Distributed by | AVCO Embassy Pictures International and TV Rights Columbia Pictures |
| Release date(s) | February 1, 1980 |
| Running time | 89 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $1,000,000 (estimate) |
| Gross revenue | $21,378,000 (domestic sub-total) |
| Allmovie 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 distributed by AVCO Embassy Pictures. The movie is a ghost story involving mysterious events, including gruesome murders, which accompany a strange, glowing fog that spreads over land and sea.
Writer and director, John Carpenter, was not happy with the first cut of the film and subsequently added several new scenes and re-shot others. Approximately one-third of the finished film is comprised of re-shoot footage. The film received mixed reviews when it was released, but was a commercial success. A remake was released in 2005, based on the original's concept.
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[edit] Plot
Set in a Northern California fishing town called Antonio Bay (real location Inverness, California, Point Reyes lighthouse, and the Episcopal Church of the Ascension in Sierra Madre, California). The town is about to celebrate its centennial when mysterious events, including the gruesome murders of three local fishermen, accompany a strange, glowing fog that spreads over land and sea. The local priest, Father Malone, discovers the diary of his grandfather (who was also the town's priest), 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 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] Production
The Fog was part of a two-picture deal with AVCO-Embassy, along with Escape From New York (1981), and was shot on a reported budget of $1 million. ".[1] Although this was essentially a low budget independent film, 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. The picture was filmed from April 1979 to May 1979 at Raleigh Studios in Hollywood, California (interior scenes) and at Point Reyes, California (lighthouse scenes).
After viewing a rough cut of the film, John Carpenter was dissatisfied with the results. Recalling the experience, Carpenter commented "it was terrible. I had a movie that didn't work, and I knew it in my heart".[2] 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. Carpenter added several other new scenes and re-shot others in order to make the film more comprehensible, more frightening, and gorier. Carpenter and Debra Hill have said the necessity of a re-shoot became especially clear to them after they realized that The Fog would have to compete with horror films that had high gore content.[3]
Approximately one-third of the finished film is 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] Casting
Cast as the female lead was Adrienne Barbeau, Carpenter's then-wife, who appeared in Someone's Watching Me. Tom Atkins, a friend of Barbeau's, was cast as Nick Castle, a character named after another of Carpenter's collaborators. The Fog was Atkins' first appearance in a Carpenter film. He would go on to appear in Carpenter's next film, Escape From New York and Halloween III: Season of the Witch, which was produced and scored by Carpenter.
Jamie Lee Curtis appeared as Elizabeth. Commenting on the role and on appearing in another of Carpenter's films, she said "That's what I love about John. He's letting me explore different aspects of myself. I'm spoiled rotten now. My next director is going to be almost a letdown".[4]
[edit] Inspiration
John Carpenter has 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.[5]
[edit] Analysis
Much like Halloween (1978), the film contains many intertextual references. Some of the places 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, while Bodega Bay, the setting for Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, is briefly mentioned in one scene. "Dr. Phibes", the name of the character played by Darwin Joston, 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).
[edit] Reception
The film was greeted with mixed reviews when it was initially released, but it was a commercial success. Roger Ebert commented in his review that "This isn't a great movie but it does show great promise from Carpenter". [6] 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] 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] Remake
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] References
- ^ Boulenger, pp. 115
- ^ Boulenger, pp. 118
- ^ Audio commentary by John Carpenter and Debra Hill in The Fog, 2002 special edition DVD.
- ^ Paul Scanlon, 'THE FOG': A SPOOK RIDE ON FILM[1]; last accessed November 17, 2007
- ^ Gilles Boulenger, John Carpenter Prince of Darkness, (Los Angeles, Silman-James Press, 2003), pp.116, ISBN 1-879505-67-3
- ^ Roger Ebert, review of The Fog[2]; last accessed November 17, 2007
[edit] External links
- Surfindead.com review of The Fog
- Filming locations used for The Fog
- The Fog at John carpenter's website
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