FAQ

The small coastal town of Antonio Bay, California is preparing to celebrate its centennial to honor the six forefathers who founded the town 100 years ago. What they don't know, until Father Robert Malone (Hal Holbrook) happens upon his grandfather's diary, is that the town was founded with gold stolen from the Elizabeth Dane, a clipper ship deliberately sunk in order to prevent its owner, a wealthy leper named Blake, from founding a leper colony a mile up the coast. As the townsfolk begin their celebration, local radio DJ Stevie Wayne (Adrienne Barbeau) notices a mysterious, glowing fog bank rolling in, bringing with it the vengeful ghosts of the Elizabeth Dane.

Although many assume the film to be an adaptation of the 1975 James Herbert novel of the same name, the film is an original work written by American filmmakers Debra Hill and John Carpenter. However, a novelization of the film (written by Dennis Etchison) was also published in 1980. According to Carpenter, the inspiration came from two places: (1) a film called The Crawling Eye (1958), a story about alien creatures that live in a cloud at the base of Trollenberg Mountain in Switzerland, and (2) an eerie fog Carpenter and Hill saw during a visit to Stonehenge. The story of the shipwreck and its subsequent plundering was based on the SS Brother Jonathan, an actual shipwreck that took place in 1865 near Goleta, California. A remake, also titled The Fog (2005), was released.

While crossing a dense fog near Spivey Point, the Elizabeth Dane was misguided by a false campfire, deliberately set to lure them toward the light so that the ship would crash on the rocks.

It is either a reference to the fact that Baxter was the third Antonio Bay resident to have died or that three more must die, since Blake, in his message to Stevie, warned that "6 must die."

There are several homages, both literary and film, including: (1) The opening quote at the beginning of the film ("Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?") are the final two lines of Edgar Allan Poe's poem "A Dream Within a Dream" (1850). (2) In a broadcast about the search for the Seagrass, the announcer mentions "a sweep south of Waitely Point and Arkham Reef", nods to American fantasy writer H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937). The fictional city of Arkham appears in Lovecraft's Chthulu Mythos, and Waitely (spelled Whateley) appears as a surname in The Dunwich Horror (1970). (3) The coroner, Dr Phibes (Darwin Joston), was named after the character played by Vincent Price in The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) and Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972). (4) Nick Castle mentions Bodega Bay, an inlet on the California coast that was the scene of bird attack in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963). Similar to The Birds, in which the attacks seem to begin when Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) comes to town, the attacks in Antonio Bay coincide with the arrival of Elizabeth Solley (Jamie Lee Curtis). (5) Stevie's last broadcast, in which she warns ships at sea to "look for the fog," echoes the last line from The Thing from Another World (1951) in which the world is warned to "watch the skies." (6) In the shot in the souvenir shop where we see the town framed through a set of shark teeth is similar to a scene in Jaws (1975).