The Duffers cut a fake trailer to sell their concept. The trailer was composed of clips from classic horror and adventure movies (plus more recent fare like Super 8) and had a John Carpenter score as a backdrop. A pitch booklet for Montauk was made to look like a dog-eared eighties Stephen King paperback. The booklet was laced with stills of the classic movies Montauk was inspired by - everything from E.T. to Hellraiser. While the booklet included a general synopsis of the plot the actual show had yet to be written.
FAMILY FEUD
Family Feud is a famous game show that started in 1976 on ABC. We see Family Feud on television in Stranger Things 2. The host is Richard Dawson. Dawson hosted the show until 1985. There is a Stephen King connection here because Dawson played the evil game show host Damon Killian in the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger action thriller The Running Man. The Running Man was based on the dystopian 1982 Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman) novella of the same name. The book is very different from the film and well worth reading.
FAMILY TIES
Steve refers to Michael J Fox/Marty McFly as "Alex P. Keaton" in Stranger Things 3. Alex P. Keaton is the character Michael J Fox played in the 1982/1989 NBC sitcom Family Ties. At the time of the release of Back to the Future, Family Ties was what Michael J Fox was best known for.
FAMILY VIDEO
The video store where Steve and Robin work in Stranger Things 4. We saw them asking for a job there at the end of season three. Family Video was launched in 1978 and was still operational until fairly recently. Sadly, the pandemic forced the company to close its last remaining stores. In the 1980s, long before the internet and streaming, people rented films on video cassette from their local video store. After you'd watched the film you took the tape back. If you brought the tape back late you incurred an extra charge. Those who remember video stores are often quite nostalgic about them. Going through films on a streaming site is much more convenient but it isn't nearly as much fun as browsing a real video store. In season four, Steve refers to Doctor Zhivago being a 'double-tape' at Family Video. This is because the film is well over three hours long.
FAR CRY
The video game Far Cry 6 got a special Stranger Things themed mission to play titled The Vanishing. This was a ramping up of the promotion for season four. The show had already had a video game tie-in with Dead by Daylight before. The Far Cry franchise was one of the biggest brands in gaming and did no harm in increasing the profile of Stranger Things (which hardly need its profile boosted anyway - the show is still huge years on from its debut).
FARRAH FAWCETT
Farrah Fawcett was a famous actress and model - best known for her role as Jill Munroe in the television show Charlie's Angels (1976-1981). Faberge Inc used Fawcett's name on a range of hair care products in the early eighties - including the Farrah Fawcett hairspray that Steve confides to Dustin is an integral part of the routine for keeping his luxurious locks looking good.
FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH
Fast Times at Ridgemont High is a 1982 teen comedy film. Steve and Robin's sailor suits at Scoops Ahoy owe much to the Captain Hook Fish & Chip scenes in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Nancy Wheeler's clothes in season one where inspired by Jennifer Jason Leigh's character in the movie. At the end of season three, Steve encounters a cut-out of Phoebe Cates from Fast Times at Ridgemont High at the video store.
A Camaro is destroyed in the movie too and this is the model of car that Billy Hargrove owned in Stranger Things. Steve even makes reference to Fast Times in his first scene in season four when he suggests (not unreasonably you suspect) that its famous Phoebe Cates nudity scene makes it a very freeze framed rental. It transpires that Vickie - Robin's crush - rented this film and left the tape at this exact Phoebe Cates moment. This makes Steve suspect that Vicki is gay - which would be good news for Robin.
A FEASIBILITY STUDY
This black and white Outer Limits episode was directed Byron Haskin and written by Joseph Stefano. The plot has the inhabitants of a suburban street wake up one morning and slowly beginning to suspect that something strange has happened. Something doesn't feel right. Their suspicions prove to be correct and the nature of the event they are part of is most extraordinary. It eventually transpires that the whole street has been transported to the planet Luminos where they are being observed by aliens. The disease ravaged aliens have teleported the street and its residents to Luminos for an experiment and 'feasibility' study. They want to see if human beings make good slaves!
If the inhabitants of the street do as they are told and buckle down and survive the viral climate then the rest of the human race will be teleported up to be slaves on Luminos. Can these suburbanites find a way to resist and save the people of Earth from this terrible fate? The slow build up at the start of this episode is very effective as we are as intrigued by this mystery as the characters themselves.
A Feasibility Study has an enjoyably far out premise and the episode does a fine job of living up to the opening gambit as the street is transported away to another planet. There is a wonderfully strange atmosphere as they wake in their houses and begin to go about their daily routine but then slowly notice that something is very wrong. They attempt to drive to work in the morning and suddenly find themselves out of road in a fog bound desolation where shadowy figures are looming.
Is it just me or is this scene very reminiscent of the spectral pirates coming out of the mist in John Carpenter's The Fog? Perhaps John Carpenter watched A Feasibility Study in his youth and that scene always stuck with him. There are definitely some parallels between this Outer Limits episode and Stranger Things in the way that they both present a nightmare version of the world the characters live in. In Stranger Things we see a decayed Upside Down version of Hakins and in A Feasibility Study the characters are trapped in a mist shrouded nightmare version of their own street.
FINAL DESTINATION
Max's terrible feeling in Dear Billy that she can't cheat fate and is probably doomed owes something to the Final Destination horror franchise. In the Final Destination movies the formula has a group of teenagers escaping from some calamitous accident because of premonition but then dying one by one (in enjoyably elaborate and gruesome accidents) because you can't cheat death.
FINN WOLFHARD
Actor who plays Mike Wheeler. Finn Wolfhard was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, in 2002. Finn's father was a screenwriter and so Finn always had an interest in acting and films. Vancouver has a thriving film and television production industry so it was perhaps almost inevitable that Finn would become an actor. Finn made his television debut as Zoran in The 100. Another of his early roles was in the popular TV show Supernatural and he appeared in his first music video in 2012.
In 2015, Finn Wolfhard was cast as Richie Tozier in a film version of Stephen King's It. Finn was cast by Cary Fukunaga - who was slated to direct It at the time. Cary Fukunaga then left the production of It and had be replaced by another director. This meant there was a delay and during that period Finn took part in open auditions for Stranger Things. Had there not been a change of director and delay in the production of It then Finn would never have been cast as Mike Wheeler in Stranger Things because he simply wouldn't have been available.
Cary Fukunaga was eventually replaced by Andy Muschietti as the director of It. Finn actually had to audition again for Muschietti but it went well and for the second time he was given the part of Richie Tozier. Stephen King's It was a story the Duffer Brothers had always wanted to turn into a film themselves. It was a complete coincidence that Finn was cast in two such similar projects around the same time.
Wolfhard was cast as Mike Wheeler because of the fidgety nervous energy he projected. The casting director and the Duffers liked this quality. The Duffers said that, out of all the boys in season one, Mike Wheeler was the closest to what they were like at that age. Finn won the role of Mike Wheeler despite a heavy cold which forced him to record an out of focus audition from his bed. Finn does actually play Dungeons & Dragons in real life. He said he acted as the gamesmaster for his former band and also had some D&D sessions to pass the time during the lockdowns.
Finn was the lead singer for a Vancouver band named Calpurnia from 2017 to 2019. The band released an EP and did several famous covers. Finn is now in a band called The Aubreys which consists of him and his former Calpurnia colleague Malcom Craig. Finn said that because there are less people in The Aubreys this means there are less discussions about everything and so as a consequence the new band takes up less of his time. The Aubreys have released an EP.
Finn has been the busiest of the Stranger Things 'kids' when it comes to movies. His film roles include The Turning, The Goldfinch, and Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. Finn also lent his voice to the animated movie The Addams Family. It's probably fair to say that Finn has found it more difficult to adjust to fame than his young Stranger Things co-stars Millie Bobby Brown and Gaten Matarazzo. You get...
