Editorials
John Carpenter’s ‘The Fog’ Brought Seafaring Ghosts to the Big Screen 40 Years Ago
After the success of Halloween, John Carpenter returned to horror once more with a traditional ghost story. Co-written with producer Debra Hill, The Fog opens with old Mr. Machen (John Houseman) telling a group of kids around a fire the eerie tale of the clipper ship Elizabeth Dane that sank off the coast of their town nearly a century ago. He doesn’t know it yet, but as the Antonio Bay centennial celebration is approaching, the ghosts from his tale are indeed returning to seek revenge.
Like the title implies, The Fog asks the question: what if something lurked within the blanket of fog that rolled into town? Something supernatural and hellbent on retribution.
Released wide in theaters on February 8, 1980, Carpenter’s spooky tale of seafaring ghosts turns 40 today.
In the days leading up to the town’s centennial celebration, strange things happen at night that coincide with the appearance of a dense fog bank. Nick Castle (Tom Atkins) has the windows of his truck blown out inexplicably shortly after picking up hitchhiker Elizabeth (Jamie Lee Curtis). The son of local radio DJ Stevie Wayne (Adrienne Barbeau, making her theatrical feature debut) finds a piece of driftwood marked “Dane” while exploring the shore. Town priest Father Malone (Hal Holbrook) discovers an old journal hidden within the church walls after a seismic anomaly, and its pages contain the awful truth about the town’s origins. The fishermen of the Sea Grass fall victim to the ghosts in grim fashion.
The town founders intentionally lured the Elizabeth Dane to its doom. Its owner, Blake, was a wealthy leper seeking to establish a colony a little too close to the town that would become Antonio Bay. The founders snuffed out the ship and its crew and stole the gold to establish their town and its church. A century later, Blake and his crew float in with the fog to claim six lives out of vengeance for the lives they lost.
In hindsight, it’s not surprising that Stevie Wayne became the fan-favorite breakout character. Aside from Wayne’s soothing voice and Barbeau’s spirited portrayal of her, Wayne is the most connected to the horror. Her radio station is nestled in the lighthouse, giving her a unique vantage point to the fog. Her role as a DJ means she’s the most connected to the townsfolk, too. Moreover, she has the highest personal stakes of the cast as the single mother trying to warn the town and keep her son safe from a distance.
Father Malone retreats in terror for most of the film after reading the diary, and town figure Kathy Williams (Janet Leigh) and her assistant Sandy (Nancy Loomis) have such basic motivation that they exist to allow Malone to recount exposition. Nick and his new lady love offer up more opportunities for scares as Nick seeks out answers on the missing crew of the Sea Grass. It’s this limited view of Antonio Bay that makes The Fog feel like the intimate ghost story that it is.
There tends to be a negative knee-jerk response to the idea of a film undergoing reshoots, and The Fog makes for a prime example of why reshoots aren’t necessarily a bad thing. Carpenter’s initial cut didn’t show the ghosts, at least not during their attack on the Sea Grass, and the deaths weren’t very violent. The climax didn’t seem as thrilling either, so all of this was punched up in the reshoots- gory deaths were added, as was Wayne’s suspenseful showdown with the ghosts, and seeing more of those ghosts fleshed out the feature.
The ghost of Blake was played by the film’s special makeup effects artist Rob Bottin, who would shortly after go on to work with Carpenter on The Thing. His ghostly crew was comprised of production designer and film editor Tommy Lee Wallace and various grips.
While Dean Cundey’s cinematography, Carpenter’s direction, and the scenic landscapes all make The Fog feel more luxurious than its meager budget, what makes the film so memorable isn’t the visuals, but the sound. The Fog is an aural ghost story conveyed through Carpenter’s score, the soothing sound of Wayne’s voice on the radio, and the sound design. Most important of all, though, is the recurring theme and tradition of telling ghost stories. From the opening tale by the fire, Father Malone’s recounting of a horrific town secret, Nick Castle telling Elizabeth of a ghost story his father once shared with him, and even to Wayne’s closing monologue, sharing stories is vital in The Fog. Stories have power, but they must be passed on so their lessons retain value.
It’s the emphasis of oral storytelling and reliance on sound to carry the horror that makes The Fog so different. Carpenter traded streamlined slasher suspense for atmosphere and aural-based terror. Inspired by the ghost stories he grew up with during his childhood, The Fog brought old-fashioned paranormal horror that still holds up four decades later.
I first heard about The Mandela Catalogue through a couple of nephews who were obsessed with the ARG’s sinister mythology. It was only after watching Wendigoon’s in-depth analysis of the series that I realized just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
In fact, I’d already been exposed to the nightmarish visuals of Alex Kister’s YouTube creation for years at that point without even realizing that it was the origin of several viral “cursed images” and spooky memes that had leaked into the wider internet – with this viral element actually being a part of the Catalogue’s overarching narrative.
Flash-forward to 2026 and the unprecedented success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has led to Hollywood betting on horrific internet properties with existing fanbases, which means that Kister’s unique hybrid of both religious and analog horror is finally headed to the big screen with a script written by Kister himself alongside Tyler Clifton.
While this news shouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing success of The Mandela Catalogue (both myself and Wendigoon having previously predicted that the series would inevitably make the jump to theaters one day), plenty of horror fans are likely confused as to why so many folks are excited for what appears to be a Hollywood adaptation of a series of creepy .jpeg images under a VHS filter.
With that in mind, today I’d like to invite fellow readers to accompany me as I explore the origins of Alex Kister’s viral hit and attempt to explain exactly why we should all be excited about the Mandela Catalogue adaptation!
From High School Writing Project to Internet Horror Phenomenon
The first seeds of The Mandela Catalogue were sown when Kister was still in high school and developed a writing project subverting religious tropes in a world where biblical history had been altered by demonic forces. A little while later, Kister came across an analog horror contest on Reddit and decided to adapt his ideas into a standalone video where he would edit a religious kids’ cartoon –The Beginner’s Bible: The Nativity, to be specific- into something far creepier. This is how the iconic Overthrone video was born, with this viral short film taking on a life of its own as fans demanded more eerie content from Kister.
Though the video was originally meant to be a one-and-done sort of affair, with Kister actually regretting some of its primitive visuals and considering the editing amateurish and “YouTube-Poop-like” when compared to his current standards, fan reaction and free time during the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged the (then) seventeen-year-old filmmaker to continue producing content set in this same world. The Mandela Catalogue name was inspired by the Mandela Effect conspiracy theory, as the series would slowly begin to explore the subtle horror of alternate histories.
Inspired by existential dread brought on by extended periods of quarantine as well as a personal crisis of faith, Kister continued to expand his alternate timeline where the rise of Christianity had been prevented by what was presumably the Devil disguised as the Archangel Gabriel. This alternate course of fictional events led to the existence of certain paranormal anomalies that had come to be accepted as “normal” by the 1990s, which is why most of the series’ supernatural horror is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Most of this background information and religious lore is delivered by increasingly cryptic broadcasts and in-universe PSAs, as well as the occasional found footage video, that often have to be decoded by clever viewers. Of course, it’s the consistently disturbing imagery that made the series so popular – much of which was originally created by Kister on a smartphone!
The Alternates: Horror’s Most Unsettling Modern Monsters
The show’s early episodes mostly take place within the fictional Mandela County in Wisconsin and depict life in a world where demonic entities are capable of using media to enter our reality. This process usually involves scaring victims into killing themselves and then repurposing their bodies as horrific doppelgangers referred to as “Alternates”. This terrifying phenomenon has become so common that local police already have specialized procedures in place to deal with the issue, though this usually consists of simply ignoring calls for help so as to avoid spreading so-called “Metaphysical Awareness Disorder” any further.
Over time, Kister would expand this mythology and incorporate different kinds of Alternates into the mix, though the story never stopped deconstructing religious concepts. The series’ second volume exponentially increased both video quality and the overall narrative scope as we began to follow the lives of characters who had already grown up in this dystopian hellscape where the government is forced to prohibit religion, television, and even mirrors in the hopes of mitigating the damage done by the ongoing invasion of otherworldly entities.
The really interesting part comes into play when you realize exactly how the Alternates make use of scary media in order to spread their demonic influence, with the analog horror of it all being a diegetic part of the story and something of a memetic trap orchestrated by the false Gabriel.
I particularly appreciate how some characters begin to suspect that there’s something wrong with their version of reality and that things weren’t meant to play out this way, especially when Mark utters the haunting line “who have I been praying to all this time?” That’s why I think The Mandela Catalogue is an effective piece of religious horror even if you don’t subscribe to the Christian worldview, as the mere idea of a world where evil has already won is a universally terrifying concept in and of itself. Not only that, but the series’ uncanny analog imagery alone is already worth the price of admission, as you’ve likely already noticed by looking at the pictures accompanying this article.
Why The Feature Adaptation Could Be Horror’s Next Big Success
It’s actually been a whole year since Kister first announced that he had been working on a feature-length screenplay for a Mandela Catalogue movie since 2022, with his proposed story following an ensemble of high-school graduates who uncover a supernatural conspiracy after the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student. This premise sounds similar to narrative elements present in the series’ second volume, but I’m pretty sure that Kister is going to go the Kane Parsons route and make the movie more of a spin-off than a re-imagining of its source material.
While notable Hollywood producers like Aaron B. Koontz, Scott Stuber, and Steven Spielberg himself are backing the upcoming project, I feel like there’s no one better to adapt this deeply personal exploration of faith and the dark side of communication than the person who first came up with it. That’s why I can’t wait to see Kister’s work on the big screen, as I have a feeling that this young filmmaker is the next one on the list about to make cinematic history – especially since this is clearly a passion project that has been in the works for years at this point!
That being said, there’s always a chance that the film could end up unleashing a fresh wave of Alternate incursions, but I guess that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.
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