The Fog | 1979

John Carpenter wanted to follow the runaway success of Halloween with a good, old-fashioned ghost story, but audience expectations led to the last minute addition of extra gore.

The director triumphs over the minuscule budget with imagination and widescreen bravura, as the long-drowned crew of a wrecked ship return to the California coastal town of ‘Port Antonio’ wreak whatever it is the undead wreak best. Usually havoc.

It was filmed on the damp and, yes, misty northern California coast and – surprisingly – also around Los Angeles.

The town of ‘Port Antonio’ itself is Point Reyes Station in Marin County, on Highway 1 north of San Francisco. The unveiling of the statue of the town’s founders is at Olema Farm House Restaurant, 10005 Highway One, Olema (which used to be Jerry’s Farm House restaurant), a couple of miles south of Point Reyes Station. It’s on Bear Valley Road, running north from Olema, that Elizabeth Solley (Jamie Lee Curtis) hitches a lift into town.

The beachfront house is a little to the north, on the coast of Tomales Bay at Inverness.

The lighthouse home of radio station KAB, in ‘Spivey Point’, is the 1870 Point Reyes Lighthouse, down a long and narrow road from the town of Port Reyes Station. And once you arrive, there are 300 precipitous steps down to the light itself (so remember the return journey). My visit was way back in 1998 which is why my photo is not the hi-res quality I would expect today.

The dockside is alongside the Tides Inn at Bodega Bay, the famous location for Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.

John Carpenter's 1995 remake of Village Of The Damned returned to Inverness and Point Reyes Station.

Many interiors for The Fog, though, (including John Houseman’s beach prologue) were filmed at Raleigh Studios, 5300 Melrose Avenue, in Hollywood, where parts of Carpenter's Assault On Precinct 13 had been filmed. It’s a modest little studio, but it’s had its share of memorable productions, including What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? and In The Heat Of The Night.

So naturally, some of the locations were filmed around Los Angeles too.

To find the church of Father Malone (Hal Holbrook), you need to head east of Los Angeles to Sierra Madre. It’s the Episcopal Church of the Ascension, 25 East Laurel Avenue at North Baldwin Avenue, just north of Sierra Madre Boulevard.

The prologue, at ‘Antonio Bay Gift Corner’ was a late addition when Carpenter felt the film needed a stronger opening, so he filmed this not far from where he was living. The store is none other than the famed Laurel Canyon Country Store, 108 Laurel Canyon Boulevard, just north of Riverside Drive in North Hollywood. This was the hub of the Laurel Canyon rock community of the Sixties.

With growing fame, it's changed a bit over the years. There's plenty of memorabilia and touristy stuff but it remains a local grocery store. I admit, I didn't expect the interior to be remotely recognisable so I stupidly neglected to get a perfect match-up shot.

Yes, that's "the store where the creatures meet" in The Doors' Love Street. I wonder what they do in there? Well, if they're like me, they take lots of photos and buy a souvenir T-shirt.

Indeed, alongside the store stands the home Jim Morrison shared with girlfriend Pamela Courson in the late Sixties (8021 Rothdell Trail) and the sign commemorating 'Love Street'.

 

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