A "terrible" early cut of his chilling ghost story The Fog convinced John Carpenter to reshoot a large portion of it, which ended up saving the movie. John Carpenter movies tended to underperform critically and commercially upon initial release, only to be recognized as classics years later. One notable exception to this rule was Halloween, the movie that made Carpenter's career and launched a major franchise. Carpenter aimed to do something very different for his next movie, with The Fog being an M.R. James-style ghost story. 1k3mh

After cementing himself in a more grounded kind of horror with Halloween, genre icon John Carpenter gradually began exploring the world of the supernatural, whether it was the assimilation terrors of The Thing or the Lovecraftian mind-bender that is In the Mouth of Madness. One of his earliest ventures into the supernatural was 1980's The Fog, a movie that served as his return to horror after helming the Kurt Russell-led Elvis and also stands out as one that has garnered a cult following in the 45 years since becoming a box office hit.

Jamie Lee Curtis is best known as Laurie Strode in the Halloween movies - but here's a ranking of all her horror movie appearances, worst to best. Curtis certainly didn't stay confined to the horror genre, becoming a mainstream star, and appearing in hits like A Fish Called Wanda, My Girl, and True Lies. She's still going strong too, having played a memorable part in director Rian Johnson's star-studded murder mystery Knives Out. The thing about Curtis is that unlike lots of big stars who started in horror, she's never been ashamed to return to the genre here and there.

Jamie Lee Curtis reminisces about her time working on John Carpenter's The Fog. After the success of Halloween in 1978, Carpenter directed The Fog, a ghost story about mariners who were killed 100 years ago in a shipwreck near the coast of California. Much like The Thing in 1982, The Fog wasn't well-received when it was released in 1980 but is now considered a horror classic. A remake came out in 2005 starring Tom Welling, Maggie Grace, and Selma Blair and got horrible reviews from fans and critics alike.

Director John Carpenter has made some legendary—and some lesser—horror movies over his decades-long career, but how do they rank in comparison to each other? Released in 1978, Halloween was an unexpected success at the box office that soon came to define one of horror's most famous subgenres. Although the likes of Psycho and Bob Clark’s original Black Christmas all featured elements of what would become slasher movies, Halloween was the first relentlessly effective scare machine to combine a stalking POV camera, a faceless knife-wielding villain, and a slew of teen victims for him to slice through.

John Carpenter says that a sequel to his 1980 horror film The Fog is in the early stages of development. The Fog came in between two of Carpenter's masterpieces, Halloween and The Thing, so it is widely overlooked despite being a popular entry in the director's repertoire. Carpenter brought back Halloween actress Jamie Lee Curtis for the film and convinced her mother, Janet Leigh, to sign on as well. It was the first time the scream queens were on screen together.

Horror and sci-fi director John Carpenter has always maintained a contentious relationship with critics and mainstream moviegoers - despite possessing one of the largest cult followings in cinematic history. After Carpenter erupted onto the scene with his slasher masterpiece Halloween in 1978, he quickly followed suit with two very different, but equally effective, scary films: 1980's The Fog and 1982's The Thing.

While horror master John Carpenter is most famous for helming the original Halloween, his 1980 follow-up The Fog is also among his most beloved works, albeit in a cult favorite kind of way. Starring Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, Janet Leigh, Tom Atkins, and Hal Holbrook, the story follows the inhabitants of a small coastal town on the centennial of a mysteriously sunken ship. As the town's anniversary arrives, so does a sinister supernatural fog that begins terrorizing the townsfolk.

John Carpenter is a prolific director most well-known in the horror space, but who has also contributed greatly to the action and science fiction genres. An American filmmaker, screenwriter, and composer, Carpenter directed 21 films in his career as a filmmaker, most of which he also composed or co-composed the score for.

Following the advent of Wes Craven's Scream, the new decade saw a resurgence in horror movies ideas. There was violence, viscera, and variety — something for everyone. However, not everything from the 2000s was as good as the best.