25 Films That Intentionally Spoil Other Films
16. The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015)
In an odd twist of fate, this one is actually real life as portrayed in a movie, spoiling another movie. And that’s because it’s the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment, brought to life on film by Kyle Patrick Alvarez in 2015.
The plot is built around the 1971 experiment of the same name, conducted at Stanford University in the United States under the supervision of psychology professor Dr. Philip Zimbardo (here, Billy Crudup). In the experiment, students were tasked with playing the roles of prisoners and correctional officers, and things swiftly got way out of hand.
The details from the real experiment form the plot and structure of the film, including key character details, one of which references the 1967 crime drama Cool Hand Luke, starring Paul Newman. Michael Angarano’s character Christopher Archer fashions himself after Strother Martin’s Captain in Cool Hand Luke, a cruel and insensitive warden who abuses and punishes his prisoners, and Zimbardo has Archer and his fellow ‘guards’ at Stanford wear depersonalising reflective sunglasses, inspired by Boss Godfrey (Morgan Woodward) from the same movie.
It may not spoil any twists, but it does tell us everything we need to (and may not already) know about Cool Hand Luke and what the guards put our hero through.