The Fog (1980) on Netflix
A glowing fog drifts toward Antonio Bay, carrying the crew of a clipper ship wrecked a century earlier. Radio DJ Stevie Wayne broadcasts from the lighthouse as the centennial begins.
- Netflix3.3/5
- IMDb6.8/1092,883 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes76%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1880, six men on the California coast lit a fire on shore to lure the clipper Elizabeth Dane onto the rocks; its owner, Blake, and the people sailing with him drowned, and the plunder paid for the founding of Antonio Bay. On the eve of the town's centennial, Father Patrick Malone finds his grandfather's diary in a church wall and learns his ancestor was one of the six. A glowing fog swallows a fishing trawler at sea, and radio DJ Stevie Wayne, broadcasting from the lighthouse, warns her listeners as it moves toward shore. Hitchhiker Elizabeth Solley and local man Nick Castle find the trawler adrift with a dead man aboard.
Cast
- Ty Mitchellas Andy
- James Canningas Dick Baxter
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Fog (1980)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The initial inspiration came while Carpenter and his collaborator and then-girlfriend Debra Hill were in England promoting Assault on Precinct 13; they visited Stonehenge and saw an eerie fog rolling over the landscape, and Carpenter also drew on the British film The Trollenberg Terror.
- Carpenter said on the DVD commentary that the story of a ship deliberately wrecked and then plundered was based on a real 19th-century event near Fort Bragg, California, the wrecking of the Frolic.
- Carpenter named characters after people he had worked with before, among them screenwriter Dan O'Bannon from Dark Star and Nick Castle, who played Michael Myers in Halloween, while the babysitter Mrs. Kobritz is named after producer Richard Kobritz.
- Carpenter and Debra Hill reshot about a third of the finished film after realizing The Fog would have to compete with horror films with higher gore content, which pushed the budget from $900,000 to $1.1 million.
- Curtis said in a retrospective interview that her part was written into the film by Carpenter, who felt sympathy for her after the success of Halloween had failed to lead to her getting other roles.
- On top of the $1.1 million production budget, AVCO Embassy spent over $3 million on advertising alone, which included placing fog machines costing £350 each in the lobbies of selected cinemas showing the film.
