page_title: The Fog
section_title: Development
hierarchical_section_title: The Fog / Production / Development
caption_attribution_description: English: Point Reyes Lighthouse, Marin County, California. Nederlands: De vuurtoren van Point Reyes (Point Reyes Lighthouse) in Marin County (Californië). Deutsch: Leuchtturm Point Reyes, Marin County, Kalifornien.
context_page_description: The Fog is a 1980 American supernatural horror thriller film directed by John Carpenter, who also co-wrote the screenplay and created the music for the film. It stars Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Atkins, Janet Leigh and Hal Holbrook. It tells the story of a strange, glowing fog that sweeps over a small coastal town in California, bringing with it the vengeful ghosts of mariners who were killed in a shipwreck there 100 years before.
  The Fog received mixed reviews upon release but was a hit at the box office, making over $21 million domestically on a $1.1 million budget. Since release, it has received more positive retrospective reviews and has become a cult classic. A remake of the film was made in 2005 to very negative reviews.
context_section_description: John Carpenter stated that the inspiration for the story was partly 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 (this event was portrayed more directly in the 1975 Tom Laughlin film, The Master Gunfighter). The premise also bears strong resemblances to Massimo Pupillo's 1965 Terror-Creatures from the Grave as well as the John Greenleaf Whittier poem The Wreck of the Palatine which appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in 1867, about the wreck of the ship Princess Augusta in 1738, at Block Island, within Rhode Island.
  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. Although this was essentially a low-budget independent film, Carpenter chose to shoot in the anamorphic 2.35:1 format, preventing it from looking 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.
  After viewing a rough cut of the film, 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". Carpenter subsequently added the prologue with Mr. Machen (John Houseman) telling ghost stories to fascinated children by a campfire (Houseman played a similar role in the opening of the 1981 film Ghost Story). 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. Approximately one-third of the finished film is the newer footage, increasing the film's budget slightly to $1.1 million.
caption: Point Reyes Lighthouse, where many of Adrienne Barbeau's scenes were shot
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