Trivia for
The Fog (1980) More at IMDbPro »

• The band mentioned on the radio near the beginning is "The Coupe DeVilles", which features director John Carpenter.
  
  
• Director Trademark: [John Carpenter] [names] Characters Nick Castle, Dan O'Bannon, Tommy Wallace are all named after Carpenter's real-life collaborators.
  
  
• Director Trademark: [John Carpenter] [names] characters named after cast and crew of Carpenter's previous film Halloween (1978).
  
  
• Bennett, the character, played by John Carpenter, is named after Carpenter's friend Bennett Tramer. They went to USC (University of Southern California) together.
  
  
• Dr. Phibes, the name of the coroner played by Darwin Joston, is an in-joke reference to Dr. Anton Phibes, the character played by Vincent Price in the horror film The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) and its sequel Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972).
  
  
• After a rough cut editing the movie appeared to be much too short for a theatrical release (about 80 minutes), John Carpenter subsequently added the prologue with the Old Captain telling ghost stories to fascinated children by a campfire.
  
  
• Although this was essentially a low budget independent film, John Carpenter chose to shoot the movie in anamorphic widescreen Panavision. This decision gave the film a grander feel for the viewer so it didn't seem like a low budget horror film.
  
  
• John Carpenter admitted that his inspiration for the story was the British film The Trollenberg Terror (1958) which dealt with monsters hiding in the clouds.
  
  
• The assistant to Father Malone shown in the beginning, known as Bennett, is played by an uncredited John Carpenter.
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• John Carpenter said that the inspiration for this movie came from a visit to Stonehenge with his co-writer/producer, Debra Hill.
  
  
• Adrienne Barbeau and Jamie Lee Curtis, the leads, do not appear together in any scenes.
  
  
• The Edgar Allan Poe quote at the beginning of the film is the final two lines of his poem "A Dream Within a Dream".
  
  
• The role of Father Malone was originally offered to Christopher Lee who believed the character to be the 'father of the community'. However Lee proved unavailable and Hal Holbrook was eventually cast.
  
  
• Kurt Russell was offered a role.
  
  
• While driving to the lighthouse, Stevie flips around the radio dial, and a broadcast confirming a search for the ship The Sea Grass is heard. The voice mentions "a sweep south of Waitely Point and Arkham Reef". Both Arkham Reef and the surname "Waitely" are references to writer H.P. Lovecraft, as he used both repeatedly in his stories. Carpenter is an admitted Lovecraft fan.
  
  
• As Stevie calls out the progress of the fog through town over the radio, she mentions Russelville road and Smallhouse road. These are two prominent streets in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where John Carpenter spent time growing up.
  
  
• At one point during the movie, Tom Atkins' character mentions Bodega Bay. That is the scene of another horror movie, The Birds (1963). When Tippi Hedren's character pulls into town, all hell starts to happen. In this movie, when Jamie Lee Curtis' character pulls into town, all hell starts to break loose.
  
  
• John Houseman's opening monologue, which is supposed to transpire over a course of five minutes (from 11:55 to 12:00 midnight) is, in fact, only 2 minutes and 25 seconds long from the moment he mentions it is 11:55 to the moment the bells ring in the background, signaling midnight. It has been incorrectly noted in the past that this opening monologue is exactly five minutes long.
  
  

• SPOILER: Adrienne Barbeau's last line, "...look for the fog...", echoes the last line from The Thing from Another World (1951), "Watch the skies." John Carpenter later remade that film as The Thing (1982).
  
  
• SPOILER: Extensive re-shoots were done after the first screening in only a couple months time, when director and studio executives decided that the movie wasn't scary enough by far. 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.
  
  
• SPOILER: Adrienne Barbeau receives top billing in the film. Her character, Stevie Wayne, has one scene with her son, and a climactic showdown with two of the ghosts. Other than that, she has no on-screen interaction with any other characters.
  
  
• SPOILER: In the last 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 Adrienne Barbeau do the scene in reverse.
  
  
• SPOILER: In the final scene at the church, Nick has Andy stand back and hide. On the wall behind Andy is a brick inscribed "H. Hawks." This is undoubtedly a reference to John Carpenter's favorite director Howard Hawks.
  
  

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