More fun in-jokes and cameos from the silver screen.

CHARLIE’S ANGELS (2000)

I Spy…E.T.’s living room
Where to Find It: Wearing nothing but a plastic blow-up swimming-pool toy, Dylan (Drew Barrymore) bursts into a house where two boys are playing a video game. It’s the same house in Tujunga, California, that was used for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the film that launched Barrymore’s career in 1982. (To hammer the point home, the kids are eating Reese’s Pieces and there’s an E.T. poster on the wall.)

HALLOWEEN H20: 20 YEARS LATER (1998)

I Spy…several nods to Psycho
Where to Find Them: John Carpenter cast Jamie Lee Curtis in the original Halloween (1978) in part because she is Janet Leigh’s daughter. Leigh, of course, appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 thriller Psycho. In this sixth sequel to Halloween, Carpenter cast Curtis along with Leigh herself, who plays Norma (a nod to Norman Bates) and drives the same 1957 Ford that she drove to the Bates Motel. The license plate on the car reads “NFB 418” (Bates’s initials and birthday). When Norma drives away, you can hear a faint rendition of the screeching music from Psycho.

LAND OF THE DEAD (2005)

I Spy…Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright
Where to Find Them: In a photo booth. Director George A. Romero, who began the modern zombie craze with 1968’s Night of the Living Dead, was so impressed with Pegg and Wright’s 2004 zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead that he invited the British funny men to make a cameo appearance as zombies in his latest movie. Pegg and Wright eagerly accepted.