Editorials
What if “Stranger Things” Was Based on the Nostalgia of Other Decades?
The third season of Stranger Things debuted on Netflix on the 4th of July, and, wow, is it more ’80s than ever. The neon colors, the loud hairdos, and the mall-bound settings all evoke a time that Gen-Xers recall with fondness and that Millennials can absorb vicariously. The show’s creators, The Duffer Bros., were born in 1984, and they drew from their experiences watching 1980s properties like Poltergeist, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, The Goonies, Ghostbusters, and a host of others. 1980s nostalgia is, of course, very hip in 2019, and the decade’s media is, generally speaking experiencing a glorious resurgence in the horror marketplace (how many recent indie horror films have John Carpenter-like musical scores? More than a few).
But the culture’s current focus on the pop media of the 1980s must be, by its very nature, ephemeral, and our nostalgia will most certainly reset after a certain number of years. This naturally makes the curious mind wander over what Stranger Things might look like were it based in horror nostalgia from other decades. Each decade, after all, is rife with its own rich horror traditions, and each one could easily make for a Stranger Things-like series unto itself. Since we’re all curious here, let’s go ahead and conduct that thought experiment, shall we?
We begin with Stranger Things in the 1930s…
Stranger Things of the 1930s would have to look like it was produced by Carl Laemmle, Jr., and directed by James Whale. It would be a 65-minute film version of Stranger Things, and would star a group of young people; college students but played by actors in their early 40s. The characters, all square and bland, would stumble into a castle-like government lab – a spooky edifice made of stone and lit by torches – looking for their vanished friend Will. Will’s mother would be played by a hysterical Una O’Connor. Instead, they would find Eleven (a Zita Johann from The Mummy-type) lurking therein. Eleven would be taken back to the local European duchy, learn about the way’s of humanity from a wise old scientist (a Boris Karloff type), fall in love with a slick-haired society man, but end up going on a psychic killing spree nonetheless. Stranger Things would climax back in the lab where Eleven was found, and she would be killed by a rogue bolt of lightning that came down from a hole in the roof. The force of the lightning would cause Will to reappear.
Stranger Things in the 1940s…
The horror trends of the 1940s were based heavily in classic literature, as they were imitating a lot of the success of 1930s horror films (Dracula, et al). As such, the 1940s Stranger Things would pay homage to producer Val Lewton, and appear to come out of RKO. It would be inspired very directly by, say, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. Set in Haiti, Eleven (a Simone Simon type), is a local psychic who runs her own business reading minds and floating objects for wealthy travelers. She is the analogue for Catherine. Will, a bitter local raised in luxury and suffering from lung ailments, is the stand-in for Heathcliff. Will’s mother is, in this version of things, an embittered Miss Havisham type (who, I know, is from Great Expectations; don’t @ me). When Will is sucked into The Upside Down by an ancient local curse, Catherine is destitute and flees into the arms of Dustin (a Dwight Frye-in-his-final-role-type). Fast-forward a generation, and Eleven’s young daughter, also psychic, makes good with Will’s less bitter son. Will returns just in time to see the inter-generational reconciliation. The last shot is a Demogorgon eating Will.
Stranger Things in the 1950s…
The supreme shock sensation of our time! Teens in trouble! Girls caving to temptation! The nuclear threat producing monsters never seen before in cinema history! The 1950s Stranger Things would be made on a shoestring budget and evoke the work of Tarantula! director Jack Arnold. Set in a small town, the lead kids would definitely be high schoolers (played by actors in their 30s) who go to drive-ins and race around town in their hot rods. One of their races causes Will to crash into a large nuclear facility, causing him to vanish. Radiation from the accident causes their friend Florence to develop psychic powers, and she is kidnapped and held in a facility. It’s up to Mike to lead the gang into the facility. They have a Demogorgon as a guard dog, and it’s played by a crewman in an unconvincing rubber suit. The film ends with a large explosion and lots of stock footage of the military. A lot happens in Stranger Things, but it’s boring nonetheless. Several generations later, in an epilogue, hipsters will find it on a 50-in-one DVD box set at a closing Best Buy.
Stranger Things in the 1960s…
Inspired by Mario Bava, the 1960s version of Stranger Things would be ultra-colorful, feature a hip electric jazz soundtrack, take place in Europe, and be dubbed into English. The psychic powers would be represented by extended hallucinatory sequences set at an underground rave. The rave would be the Upside Down, and the lead kids all visit there on the regular. Will takes acid and finds he cannot leave. The Demogorgon is a mute human man played by a Joe Dallessandro type who occasionally appears in monster makeup. A vampire woman occasionally appears in dream sequences. This is Eleven. All the scenes outside of the Upside Down would take place in libraries and dorm rooms where the kids would be wearing turtlenecks and smoking cigarettes. The theme song would evoke the work of The Cyrkle or some other 1960s psychedelic rock band.
Stranger Things in the 1970s…
In the 1970s, horror trends were all over the place. There were early slashers, a lot of Satanic panic, drug-inspired freak-outs, experimental art house fare, and enormous horror blockbusters like The Exorcist and Jaws. It follows logically, then, that the 1970s Stranger Things would pay homage to it all. The leads kids would be, essentially, all Tommy Doyle from Halloween, helpless as they watch their teenage counterparts get murdered by various things. The Upside Down is indeed a dark dimension of monsters, but also the source of demons that can possess your body. When Will is there, it’s black-and-white, industrial, and very Eraserhead-inspired. Barb, meanwhile, is being stalked by a masked killer. Eleven lives out the story of Carrie White almost identically, until her mom calls an exorcist. The whole season takes place at Christmas, and in a German dance studio run by witches. The lead witch is a transvestite alien.
Stranger Things in the 1990s…
When the 1980s drew to a close, the slasher genre was staling, a general cultural cynicism was reigning supreme, and the wonderment of Spielberg’s hits crashed into the ground with misfires like Hook. Horror started to skew away from fantastical undying supervillains, and toward serial killers and crime thrillers. Metatext also became the word of the day, and the decade saw a slew of self-aware horror films like Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, In the Mouth of Madness, and of course Scream. As such the 1990s Stranger Things would have to be about the writers of Stranger Things locked in a room, trying to come up with as many ’80s references as they can. We see the characters enacting the story of Stranger Things as it appears on Netflix, but with interjections and commentary as to what’s being referenced. In place of the last episode, however, the writers are attacked and killed by the Demogorgon.
Stranger Things in the 2000s…
It would be a found footage film, natch. Also in Japanese. And there would be at least eight horrendously grisly torture scenes. Lots of blood, viscera, and bone marrow. And, because the horror films of the 2000s were so aggressively nihilistic, none of the characters would survive. But the photography would be painterly and slick and gorgeous.
College kids, strippers and vampires—those were Donald P. Borchers’ only requirements when he approached Richard Wenk about writing and directing a movie for New World Pictures. As requested, Wenk cooked up Vamp (1986), a tailor-made blend of the decade’s teen movie craze as well as its horror boom.
Grim and earnest stories were still very much a part of the ’80s horror landscape, yet Vamp is something of a comedy. One difference between it and, say, Saturday the 14th, though, is the former avoids using schtick. Wenk’s movie proves that horror comedies also don’t have to subtract thrills from their recipes. Of course, it takes a minute before reaching that point; college antics and culture shocks preface this one macabre misadventure.
Vamp‘s initial setup is apt for a typical college-set, sex-driven comedy; to bribe their way into a fraternity house, two pledges (Chris Makepeace, Robert Rusler) go looking for some adult entertainment. Without wasting time on any further exposition, the characters embark on an all-in-one-night trip that quickly detours into terror.
To procure their elusive MacGuffin—a stripper willing to gyrate for some frat boys—Keith (Makepeace) and AJ (Rusler), plus a third wheel named Duncan (Gedee Watanabe), trade the safety of their remote college campus for the seediness of some unnamed city. The setting is recognizably L.A. by day, but as soon as night falls, downtown, along with the characters, slips into a kind of surreal universe. Director of photography Elliot Davis gave this early entry on his prolific résumé an unusual yet distinctive look; that Mario Bava-esque, magenta-green lighting is omnipresent, so much so that it’s almost its own character.
Chris Makepeace and Robert Rusler in Vamp
The faint comparisons to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours are merited, although not just because of Vamp’s distinguishing nighttime aesthetic. Save for the primary characters, the supporting roles in Wenk’s movie are also quite colorful and transactional in their behavior. The difference here, though, is the additional urge to ruin Keith and his friends at every turn. Some of that harm is humorous and tolerable enough, whereas the moment Vamp dishes out its first fatality, it’s abundantly clear how this movie qualifies as horror.
Vamp falls into that category of horror movie that reveals its genre with a scream rather than a series of whispers. The opening scene can function as a hint of what lies ahead—things are not at all what they appear to be—but otherwise, Wenk is more than happy to hold off on the horror. When that time does come, though, it catches the viewer off guard. In addition to the pure shock value is that sudden decision to upend the movie’s foremost feature. Or so it would seem.
If afraid of major spoilage, those new to Vamp would be wise to stop reading here. There’s just no skirting around the fact that the central fellowship in this buddy movie hits a serious snag when AJ is killed. That development causes the story to become more of a “long, bad night” journey for Keith and his romantic interest. So while Wenk scores points for subverting expectations, there is also a touch of sadness in his decision. Because if Vamp does anything well, it’s making the characters likable.
Something that comes easily to Vamp—and other teen horror movies from this same era—is its ability to invent young characters worth caring about, or at the very least, are interesting and not so immediately off-putting. More impressive is how Wenk did all this without actually fleshing out those characters. Still and all, Keith and his kind are a grade above cookie-cutter, and in some cases, aren’t completely devoid of growth.
Grace Jones in Vamp
Vamp appeals with an assorted cast of characters. No two are the same, nor are they operating on the same wavelength. The cinematically extroverted AJ, whose actor conveyed charm and vulnerability in near equal amounts, comes alive when he’s at his most undead. Makepeace then makes the chronically cautious Keith a sympathetic fellow, even as he’s more and more affected by the night’s bizarre events. Meanwhile, Duncan is indeed the designated loser of the whole bunch, but Watanabe still manages to humanize him. As a bonus, the role didn’t require him to pull a Long Duk Dong.
As for Dedee Pfeiffer, she is plain adorable as the mysterious After Dark server nicknamed “Amaretto”. She spends all night fixing her dress strap while at the same time trying to get Keith to remember how he knows her. As their offbeat romance grows, it becomes another highlight of this movie. Whether or not Pfeiffer’s character is really a vampire also creates some welcome tension in the story.
Like a lot of its contemporaries, Vamp went on to become a bit of a cult classic. That current status is determined by several factors, but without a doubt, the casting of Grace Jones is the most considerable. The image of her writhing on that unique-looking chair, a Keith Haring original, springs to mind whenever this movie is brought up.
Chris Makepeace, Billy Drago and Paunita Nichols in Vamp
Prior to that first display of unequivocal horror, local vampire queen Katrina (Jones) took to the stage and delivered a strip show like no other. One would expect nothing less from that renowned model and performance artist. By now reports of Jones’ tardiness on set are no secret, yet it’s also hard to deny her commitment to the part of Katrina. It was, in fact, Jones who took charge of her character’s appearance—on top of Haring painting her body and that now-iconic chair, she had Andy Warhol handle her costuming. And not too many actors could seize a room’s attention without saying a single line of dialogue.
In 2022, Vamp received a retrospective novelization from Encyclopocalypse. This literary union of preexisting source material—Wenk’s original screenplay—and new ideas from author Christian Francis amounts to a more comprehensive visit to the After Dark Club. The basic story there is no different than what’s shown on screen; however, Francis gets creative with the characters’ origins and designs, and he enhances a number of key scenes.
The novelization expands on the urban and social decay of the main setting, and supplies a background for the After Dark Club. Sandy Baron’s character, Katrina’s emcee and familiar, is given ample motivation for sticking around; up until the fiery end, he is loyal to his friend and former business partner “Squeak”, who looks like he was “fed through a combine harvester, and left as nothing more than a heap of mangled remains”. Then there is Billy Drago’s character Snow, the leader of a street gang called The Dragons. His reason for menacing Keith and AJ is more altruistic than in the movie; he and his peers act tough to scare off any potential food for the vampires.
Lisa Lyon in Vamp
If not for all the backstories, Francis’ Vamp would be a hell of a lot shorter. Instead, this tie-in read dives into how AJ met Keith—the orphaned Anthony Joseph hailed from a broken home back in Brooklyn—and how their friendship flourished over the years. Keith’s archership is no longer just an assumed part of his entire being; it’s a confidence-building extracurricular for a boy who got picked on before coming into the protection of the new kid in town. These supplemental, in-depth looks at the protagonists, plus their close connection, are maybe unnecessary. The movie already did a fair and concise job of addressing their platonic intimacy without the need for flashbacks and insights, specifically in that scene where AJ lays it all out as he sacrifices himself.
Where the novelization gets off course is its approach to the minor characters. Intermittently backstorying the likes of Katrina’s indentured servants, Seko (Leila Hee Olsen) and Vlad (Brad Logan), ends up disturbing the flow of the writing. Was it absolutely essential that readers know Vlad was the Grand Duke of the House of Romanov, or how Snow’s accomplice Maven (Paunita Nichols) became so dentally challenged? No, not really. However, one’s mileage with these random biographies may vary.
The novelization is a more substantial experience, but for a movie like Vamp, less is more. And as plentiful as they are, it never simply coasts on its campy charms, either. The character work sits comfortably in that realm between cursory and meticulous, the script is sharper than first realized, and Greg Cannom’s vampire makeup is straightforward yet effective. Most of all, the movie didn’t squander its out-of-the-box concept. Richard Wenk made his vision of a “comic nightmare in which just about anything that can go wrong does” come true, and it is very enjoyable.
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