ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - February 8th
"THE FOG" released in 1980
MINI BLOG
A strange, glowing fog sweeps in over a small coastal town in California, bringing with it the vengeful ghosts of mariners who were killed in a shipwreck there exactly 100 years before, in John carpenter's cult classic, The Fog!
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As the Californian coastal town of Antonio Bay is about to celebrate its centenary, an old fishing captain, Mr. Machen (John Houseman), recounts the story of the doomed clipper ship, The Elizabeth Dane, to the local children on the beach; the clipper was owned by Blake (Rob Bottin), a wealthy man with leprosy who wanted to establish a leper colony nearby, but the ship carrying Blake and his people sank upon the rocks after losing their bearings in a mysterious fog. Meanwhile, other strange events occur at the time of Machen's story - a piece of masonry comes loose in the local church where Father Malone (Hal Holbrook) finds the private diary of his descendant (and one of the four founding fathers of Antonio Bay); local fisherman Nick Castle (Tom Atkins) picks up a mysterious hitchhiker Elizabeth Solley (jamie Lee Curtis) on the highway just before all the windows in his pick-up explode; and three fisherman out at sea encounter a ghostly clipper ship in a glowing fog - before they are all brutually murdered. The next day, Nick and Elizabeth discover the bodies of the fisherman, while Malone confides in councilwoman Kathy Williams (Janet Leigh) and her assistant Sandy (Nancy Loomis) the truth buried in the pages of the diary he found. One century ago, Antonio Bay was another struggling fishing community before Blake appeared offering them gold for a parcel of land on the other side of the island. The town's founders instead betrayed Blake and and lured his ship onto the rocks and stole the gold from the wreck, using the spoils to build the town. As night descends on Antonio Bay, local radio DJ Stevie Wayne (Adrienne Barbeau) watches as the same glowing fog approaches landfall, bringing with it the vengeful spirits of Blake and his crew, bringing a horrifying reckoning to the descendants of the very men who betrayed them!
TRIVIA: John Carpenter originally intended to secure the film with a PG rating but ended up with an R rating instead. Interestingly, the 2005 remake did secure a PG-13 rating, but was almost universally panned by the critics.
Top: The survivors gather in the church and are confronted by Blake and his ghostly crew!
Above: DJ Stevie Wayne (Adrienne Barbeau) watches from her lighthouse/radio station as the glowing fog relentlessly rolls inland.
After the success of his 1978 horror film Halloween, director John carpenter began working on the first of his two picture deal with AVCO-Embassy, The Fog. Partly inspired by the films The Trollenberg Terror (1958) (also released as The Crawling Eye, that tells the story of monsters hiding in the clouds), The Master Gunfighter
(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), and the haunting poem, The Wreck of
the Palatine (about the wreck of the ship Princess Augusta in 1738, at
Block Island), Carpenter and screenwriter/producing partner Debra Hill
were also heavily influenced by a trip they once took to Stonehedge
while in England promoting Assault on Precinct 13. The
pair (who were also dating at the time) visited the site in the late
afternoon one day and saw an eerie fog in the distance, that slowly
engulfed the entire site.
Carpenter quickly approached his Halloween star, Jamie Lee Curtis to play the role of hitchhiker Elizabeth Solley, and cast his then-wife Adrienne Barbeau as local DJ Stevie Wayne. Carpenter specifically wrote the part for Barbeau, who patterned her voice after Alison Steele, who was a female disc jockey from the 1960s who was known as the Nightbird. Ironically, although both actresses were the main stars of the movie, neither of them share a scene together in the entire movie! Carpenter approached Christopher Lee to play Father Malone, but Lee was not available (similar to Halloween, when Lee was offered the role of Dr Loomis, but declined the role), and the character was played by Hal Holbrook. Additions to the cast included, Tom Atkins as fisherman Nick Castle, fellow-Halloween alumnus Nancy Loomis as Sandy Fadel, Psycho star Janet Leigh (and star Curtis' mother) as Kathy Williams, and Ty Mitchell as Andy Wayne. Blake, the lead ghost, was played by makeup specialist Rob Bottin. When Bottin asked for the job, Carpenter asked him to "stand up". Bottin then expected Carpenter to say, "...and get out!", but instead Carpenter saw that Bottin was a very large man, which was needed for the Blake character, and he was hired (the two would later work together again on The Thing in 1984, with Bottin designing the creature effects).
Although this was essentially a low budget independent film, Carpenter chose to shoot the movie in anamorphic widescreen Panavision, giving the film a grander feel for the viewer so it didn't seem like a low budget horror film. Filming took place from April to May 1979 at Raleigh Studios in Hollywood, California (interior scenes) and on location at Point Reyes, California, Bolinas, California, Inverness, California, and the Episcopal Church of the Ascension in Sierra Madre, California.
Carpenter quickly approached his Halloween star, Jamie Lee Curtis to play the role of hitchhiker Elizabeth Solley, and cast his then-wife Adrienne Barbeau as local DJ Stevie Wayne. Carpenter specifically wrote the part for Barbeau, who patterned her voice after Alison Steele, who was a female disc jockey from the 1960s who was known as the Nightbird. Ironically, although both actresses were the main stars of the movie, neither of them share a scene together in the entire movie! Carpenter approached Christopher Lee to play Father Malone, but Lee was not available (similar to Halloween, when Lee was offered the role of Dr Loomis, but declined the role), and the character was played by Hal Holbrook. Additions to the cast included, Tom Atkins as fisherman Nick Castle, fellow-Halloween alumnus Nancy Loomis as Sandy Fadel, Psycho star Janet Leigh (and star Curtis' mother) as Kathy Williams, and Ty Mitchell as Andy Wayne. Blake, the lead ghost, was played by makeup specialist Rob Bottin. When Bottin asked for the job, Carpenter asked him to "stand up". Bottin then expected Carpenter to say, "...and get out!", but instead Carpenter saw that Bottin was a very large man, which was needed for the Blake character, and he was hired (the two would later work together again on The Thing in 1984, with Bottin designing the creature effects).
Although this was essentially a low budget independent film, Carpenter chose to shoot the movie in anamorphic widescreen Panavision, giving the film a grander feel for the viewer so it didn't seem like a low budget horror film. Filming took place from April to May 1979 at Raleigh Studios in Hollywood, California (interior scenes) and on location at Point Reyes, California, Bolinas, California, Inverness, California, and the Episcopal Church of the Ascension in Sierra Madre, California.
Top: Director John Carpenter with (L-R) Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Janet Leigh.
After a rough cut of the movie appeared to be much too short for a theatrical release (about 80 minutes), Carpenter subsequently added more scenes. Among these was the prologue with the Old Captain telling ghost stories to fascinated children by a campfire. John Houseman worked only for one day shooting this scene on a sound stage and was given a "special appearance" credit. Carpenter then added several other new scenes and re-shot others in order to make the film more comprehensible, more frightening, and gorier, after a test screening with the studio executives decided that the movie wasn't scary enough. Additional scenes shot include close-ups of death scenes (specifically stab wounds), the scene with Jamie Lee Curtis and the walking corpse in the morgue, and the finale with Adrienne Barbeau on top of the lighthouse. For that scene, where Stevie is on top of the lighthouse and the fog slowly disappears, the crew realized they wouldn't be able to get the fog to roll out, so they had Barbeau act the scene in reverse.
Although the film cost just over $1 million to make, Avco Embassy spent three times that amount on advertising and promotion, including TV ads, radio ads, and print ads. The studio even installed fog machines (at a cost of $350 each) in the lobbies of selected cinemas where the film was showing. Originally, the film was set for release during the 1979 Christmas season, but Avco Embassy president Bob Rehme opted to wait until February 1980 when there would be less major box office competition from other films and more theater screens available. The strategy paid off with The Fog grossing over $21 million at the US box office.
Despite being a commercial success, The Fog initially received mixed reviews when it was released. Roger Ebert gave the film two out of four stars, commenting, "This isn't a great movie but it does show great promise from Carpenter". Despite this, contemporary reviews have been far more positive with the film achieving a cult following in the years since its release. Although Carpenter himself still called it, "a minor horror classic" that was not his favorite film due to the re-shoots and low production values. This is one of the reasons Carpenter agreed to executive produce the 2005 remake of The Fog, starring Tom Welling, Maggie Grace and Selma Blair and directed by Rupert Wainwright. Green-lit by Revolution Studios with just eighteen pages of script written, the film was almost universally panned for its poor script and acting, with The Hollywood Reporter stating the remake "lack[ed] the scares necessary to satisfy its target audience", while Variety said that "interest lags between the grisly deaths, and, worse, none of the characters generates rooting interest."
ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE: 71%
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