Warning! Lots of spoilers for "Stranger Things" and other classic movies ahead!
Alien (Alien, 1979) and Alien 2 (Alien, 1986)
The faceless monster in Stranger Things synthesizes design elements from Iron Fist and the first two Alien films, such as the slime it leaves behind as it moves and hunts. Whenever the show's characters enter the horrific world this monster lives in, they have to crawl through the goo first. In episode 8 we see the monster using humans as living egg incubators, inserting a snake-like object into their mouths like the facehugger from Alien. The final dinner scene in the last episode was a parody of John Hurt's scene from Alien while setting the stage for the new season. Speaking of face-hugging bugs, they usually eject from an egg that opens up into four petals, as do the monsters in "Stranger Things.
Soul Searching (Altered States, 1980)
The young girl Eleven (also known as El, played by Millie Bobby Brown) can only use her psychic abilities to their fullest extent when she's immersed in a sensory-deprivation floating tank, which allows her to travel to a place where the "tableau" is inverted from reality. The Upside Down"), where her consciousness is inverted from reality. Floating tanks also played an important role in Ken Russell's "Soul Searching," allowing William Hunt's character to feel the effects of different psychiatric drugs.
Blow-up (1966)
The film's camera junkie Jonathan (played by Charlie Heaton), while secretly photographing Nancy's (Natalia Dyer) group, accidentally captures Nancy's friend Barbara (Shannon Purser) moments before being captured by the monster. When Nancy gets her hands on this photo, which has been torn apart, she notices the mysterious blurry shape on the far right of the frame. The series of exploits she and Jonathan go on thereafter are reminiscent of Michelangelo Antonioni's Magnification, which tells the story of a photographer who potentially accidentally captures a murder in a park. It's probably a bit flimsy to say that these plots are references to "Amplified," but any movie about blurred photographs, even one about blurred sound (such as the later "The Conversation" and "Blow Out"), is inevitably influenced by "Amplified.
Pink Killing Night (Body Double, 1984)
Brian De Palma's somewhat erotic film was inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954), and also centers on the twin themes of voyeurism and murder. Craig Watson plays a caretaker who spies on a beautiful woman through binoculars and witnesses a murder. In Stranger Things, Jonathan sweeps through the woods with his camera and while searching for his missing brother Will accidentally stops to spy on his favorite girl, Nancy, partying at her boyfriend's house. The image of Jonathan peering out of the woods at Nancy, who is about to lose her virginity behind the blinds, is also reminiscent of a poster from "Pink Killing Night".
John Carpenter's compositions
Carpenter's directorial work had a profound influence on Stranger Things, but his synthesizer-based melodies were also a major inspiration for the show's composers, Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein.Dixon and Stein, though they didn't write Carpenter's most iconic work, "Moonstruck Halloween (1978) and Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), but the overall atmosphere is quite similar.
Carrie the Witch (Carrie, 1976)
Eleven is an amalgamation of two of Stephen King's super-powered girls who can move things through space - Carrie from Carrie the Witch and Sharleen from Firestarter (1984). Eleven is a bit more like Carrie in comparison, as both have a wider range of superpowered skills and grew up with controlling parents: Piper Laurie's religiously obsessed mother and Matthew Modine's scientist who conducts crazy experiments don't allow their children to interact with the outside world, but Carrie's age is crucial to her eventual success as a woman with a powerful mind. Eleven and Carrie are both otherwise good-hearted kids who are capable of extreme violence when provoked, so watch out when they stare blankly at you.
"Stranger Things" also pays homage to the scene at the end of "Carrie the Witch" where Carrie's hand is sticking out of the dirt of her grave - Nancy's hand also sticks out of the goo when she crawls out of the Tabletop World in Episode 6.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Both Stranger Things and Close Encounters of the Third Kind portrayed parents obsessed with the paranormal and seemingly insane to outsiders. Often forgotten in "Contact of the Third Kind" is the way Richard Dreyfuss' character prompts his family to listen to an alien omen through intimidation. When his character builds the Devil's Tower out of mashed potatoes and shovels dirt into the living room, his wife and children immediately run away from the house. In Stranger Things, when Joyce (played by Winona Ryder) realizes that her missing young son is sending her signals through the electrical currents in the house, she runs out and buys piles of Christmas bulbs, and divinely writes Ouija board-like letters on the walls, and even takes an axe to the wall in order to save her son. Her communication system of light bulbs even maps to the climactic sequence in "Contact of the Third Kind.
Star Wars 2: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Star Wars 2: The Empire Strikes Back was released three years before the plot of Stranger Things took place, and it's no wonder that the young boys in the show are so enamored with it. Little boy Mike (played by Finn Wolfhard) shows Eleven his Master Yoda toy and later says she has Jedi-like superpowers. Another boy, Dustin, frequently compares Eleven to "Lando Calrissian" from "Star 2" when he thinks she's betrayed the gang, though the traitor analogy doesn't come true until the end.
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial, 1982)
E.T. is undoubtedly the movie that influenced Stranger Things the most, whether it's the setting atmosphere, the themes explored, or the visual references made throughout, Stranger Things borrows liberally from this Steven Spielberg classic: the story of a lonely young boy from the suburbs who befriends an alien in need of help. The town of Hocking, Indiana, where Stranger Things takes place, isn't quite the same as the California neighborhood in E.T., but the actual form and emotional atmosphere is similar: a small town nestled sporadically on the edge of the forest, a group of boys who ride their bikes sideways, and chaotic families who can hide a super-powered person in their home without their parents finding out. Also a single mother barely making ends meet, Winona Ryder's character is reminiscent of Dee Warrens' character in E.T.; but it's the young boys, Mike and Eleven, who more closely resemble the relationship between Elliot and the aliens in E.T. Putting aside this generalized warm and fuzzy plot of the marvelous connection formed between two marginalized characters from different worlds, many details of Stranger Things are clear references to Spielberg, such as: the use of very low-end equipment to get in touch with another dimension, Eleven sitting on the back of Mike's bike and exercising her superpowers to move things through space, Eleven wandering around curiously when no one is home, wearing a costume that guards against hazardous materials, and the fact that the characters have a lot to say about their relationship with each other. Eleven wandering around with curiosity when no one is home, government agents in hazmat gear, Eleven in a wig, etc. (The romance element of this last entry is more like the plot of Vertigo (1958) in which Kim Novak's character dresses up for Jimmy Stewart's character.)
"The Evil Dead," 1981
Jonathan, the withdrawn camera man, has a poster for "Ghost Players" on the wall of his room - the niche 1981 cult movie by Sam Raimi that within two years had trickled down to a kid in a small Indiana town, a plot development that seems unlikely but makes perfect sense, thanks to the rise of home video recorders at the time. Stranger Things doesn't bring up Ghostbusters any further than this poster, but it's still quite ironic when Jonathan's asshole father orders him to take down this "inappropriate" poster, when there's another monster hiding behind the wall at the moment.
Firestarter (1984)
Weird Tales is overflowing with Stephen King's numinous stories, and if you were to pick one or two, some of the specific ideas in it are more from Firestarter than Carrie (1976 or 2013) ("The Witch"). The movie **** both versions, both adapted from Stephen King's novel Carrie the Witch - paraphrased). ), Eleven is about the same age as the nine-year-old girl Drew Barrymore played back in the day who could set things on fire with her mind, and Fierce Fire and Stranger Things don't tell adult stories like Carrie the Witch. Director Duffy Brothers also used another idea from Fierce Fire: linking supernatural abilities to nosebleeds, and they borrowed both the setting of an experimental trial to explain Eleven's paranormal abilities well. In the lab, a device set up to monitor Eleven's head resembles the brain sensors worn by Barrymore's character in "The Woodchip Experiment.
The Fog (1980)
In John Carpenter's The Fog, a DJ (Adrienne Barbeau) from a small California coastal town accidentally broadcasts a centuries-old message that reveals a secret that will come back to haunt her listeners. Like the amateur radio station at the school in Stranger Things, the radio station acts as some sort of medium through which we can access another dimension where human broadcasts can inspire alien signals. Nightmare Killers and Strange Tales share the same concept of community: the inhabitants of a small town must band together to stop the forces of evil that pounce upon them.
The Goonies (The Goonies, 1985)
The camaraderie and supremely nerdy adventures between the young boys Mike, Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), and Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) would be considered a great complement to either The Goonies or Stand by me (1986), but the spirit of the show or this segment leans more toward the former. Things get a little more serious in Hawkins City, where Stranger Things takes place, as they search for a missing friend rather than lost treasure, though both are accompanied by delight as the children are asked to complete a task on an ad hoc basis without adult intervention to accomplish an impromptu task. There's no doubt that both groups would be excited to play Dungeons & Dragons together (Dungeons & Dragons was the world's first commercially-available tabletop role-playing game role-playing game)
Richard Greenberg
The Duffy Brothers cite Richard Greenberg's iconic title design, the influence of which can be seen in the title of Stranger Things. The font on the cover of Stephen King's Needful Things will remind you of the episode's woodblock print title, but the font Greenberg used in the adaptation of another of his works, The Dead Zone (1983), has the same connection.
"Jaws" (Jaws, 1975)
While Spielberg was more crucial to Stranger Things in the '80s, the Duffy Brothers did slip one detail from Jaws: these monsters are bloodthirsty hunters, including blood in the water, as Barbara tragically realizes to her BFF Nancy in the second episode.
The Last Starfighter (1984)
The episode doesn't really make any specific references to this extremely cheesy sci-fi flick about teenagers enlisted to fight in an intergalactic war, though both use a very geek-friendly idea: a group of people who spend their days sitting around reading comics and playing Dragon Warrior. A bunch of kids who sit around all day reading comics and playing Dungeons and Dragons or video games to a high degree can someday save the universe. For example, it's because they play Dungeons & Dragons that they were able to make the "world of tables" and "The Vale of Shadows" (a level in Dungeons & Dragons) similar in the role-playing game. --It's only in a game that you can connect the "world within the surface" with something like "The Vale of Shadows" (a level in Dungeons & Dragons).
The Manhattan Project (1986)
No one in Hawkins has access to the Energy Labs building on the edge of town, and there are no hints as to what's really going on there. The Manhattan Project featured a similar government building on the outskirts of the New York State city of Ithaca, a house that superficially appeared to be a medical facility but was actually a laboratory for refining plutonium.
Minority Report (2002)
When Eleven hides in the lab's sensory deprivation box, Stranger Things is paying homage to Soul Quest (Altered States, 1980). As our heroes improvise the same thing with toddler pools and paving salts, the image of her floating in a supernatural reverie vividly reminds us of Spielberg's Minority Report's "seer" figure - the one who has to be in a special bathtub in order to to see future events.
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Whenever Eleven uses sensory deprivation to enter the world of the Tableau, she is vulnerable to monsters with long, thin fingers; meanwhile, when the situation becomes dangerous, she needs someone she can trust to pull her out of the box. In short, it's brilliant art inspired by Mighty Streets - where a steel-jawed, glove-wearing Freddy Krueger attacks teenagers in their sleep. The strategies devised to stop the monsters in both works involve trust, and in Streets of Might and Magic, it also takes a fully awake person to rescue their sleeping companions whenever they're attacked; Dr. Brenner proves himself not to be trustworthy by helping Eleven inadvertently open the door to the world of monsters and Hawkins, and Joyce proves herself up to the task.
Dan O'Bannon Dan O'Bannon
The name of the biker who discovers Will's body in the quarry is O'Bannon, out of Dan O'Bannon, the wizard of the sci-fi world, who originated Alien (Alien, 1979). While attending the University of Southern California, he also co-wrote his highly entertaining debut novel Dark Star (Dark Star, 1974) with fellow student Carpenter***.
The Noisy Ghost (Poltergeist, 1982)
Step into the hall of mirrors, and The Noisy Ghost is explicitly referenced in the universe in which it takes place, as Stranger Things borrows heavily from the movie. There's a flashback in the first episode where Joyce gives Will a surprise: movie tickets to Tobe Hooper's suburban ghost story, which excites him because Joyce hasn't been letting him see it. When Will disappears, Joyce can hear her son trying to connect with her in another space connected to the walls of her house, like a young Carol Anne in Noisy Ghost. Whether it's a mother or a child, such episodes look like déjà vu.
"Predator," 1987
The alien hunters in Arnold Schwarzenegger's sci-fi action movie share the same striding gestures as the creatures in "Stranger Things," but their real connection is actually sound. A clear, fear-inducing sound can be heard just before they attack.
Scanners (1981)
The powers of telepathy and telekinesis also appear in David Cronenberg's horror film about the Scanners, who conspire to take over the world. When Eleven stops a group of heavy government armed forces by squeezing their heads off, you get the feeling that Stranger Things and Cronenberg's movie look like they could be in the same series, albeit not quite as "explosive" as The Taking of the Dead (where the head explodes right off the ground), but pretty much the same thing.
Stand by Me (1986)
While casting for the four boy characters of Stranger Things-Mike, Lucas, Dustin, and Will-the Duffy brothers had the actors read Stand by Me (Rob Reiner's adaptation of the Rob Reiner's adaptation of Stephen King's short story "The story"). What's most similar about the two stories is their tone: boys who should be at a carefree age are suddenly plagued by real-life tragedy and loss, and the events that ensue test and ultimately strengthen their friendship. The fifth episode, in which Mike, Lucas, Dustin and Eleven follow their compass along the train tracks in search of Will, expresses the episode's homage to Stand By Me.
"Extreme Space" (They Live, 1989)
In the sixth episode of "Stranger Things," Jonathan meets Nancy's jealous boyfriend Steve, who thinks it's official that Steve has left graffiti of "Slutty Shameless" all over town. The two boys get into a heated fight in an alley, which pays homage to the long-lasting tussle between Roddy Piper and Keith David in Carpenter's Extreme Space. Police separated Steve and Jonathan before the scene became embarrassing, though by this point both men were covered in color.
The Thing (1982)
The fact that there's a poster of John Carpenter's gory horror remake in the basement of Mike's house suggests that his parents don't have the same concerns that Joyce had with The Noisy Ghost. When the kids' science teacher gets a call from Dustin at 10 p.m. on a weekend night asking him for details on building a sensory deprivation box, he's also watching the movie. What's disappointing is that the Duffy brothers didn't reprise the old-school stop-motion animation effects that made "Odd Shape" stand out in "Stranger Things.
Under The Skin (2013)
Under The Skin stars Scarlett Johansson as an alien who disguises herself as a human and lures Scottish men to their deaths with beauty tricks. Whenever she lures a man into his van, the movie cuts to an abstract "black room" where the victim is engulfed in fluid darkness. In "Stranger Things," when Eleven dips into a sensory deprivation tank, she travels to a similar otherworldly dimension, where she's supposed to be a weapon against men (and a Soviet Cold War target, to put it that way), but it doesn't work out that way.
Videodrome (1983)
David Cronenberg's horror movie that blends technology with human flesh doesn't bear much resemblance to Stranger Things, except for the belt-hole border between the real and fantasy worlds. But when Will connects with his mom, Joyce, through the house (where the two worlds of the surface and the inside connect) in the second episode, the walls of his bedroom swell like the skin-colored TVs in "Videodrome Murders. There are similar special effects when the monster tries to tear open the rift between the surface and inner worlds to launch an attack.