Movies
London 1888 Releases Awesome ‘Dream Warriors’ Prints
As I’m sure a lot of you have gathered over the years, I’m really big into screen prints. I barely have any room left on my walls between Mondo, Lure and, more recently, London 1888.
On February 27, 1987, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors was released in theaters. To celebrate the film’s 25th Anniversary and just in time for Monster-Mania 21, the folks over at London 1888 have released a limited edition screen-printed poster. The print measures 18×24, and is available in a standard edition of 200, or a Glow-In-The-Dark variant version that is limited to 75 prints. Both are available now at London-1888.com.
The really cool thing about this print is that if you’re attending the con, you can pre-pay and pick it up at London’s booth and get Robert Englund to sign it. If the variant strikes your fancy (and is the version I prefer), it comes signed by Englund already, which is great if you can’t make it up to Cherry Hill, NJ next weekend.
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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