Editorials
What Was Your Best Horror Experience This Year?
So I’m trying this out as a little experimental post to see how it goes over. I thought it might be fun to start off my end of the year posts by sharing my best horror experience of the year. I thought it might be fun to just talk about something positive before I head into my worsts of the year. Also, I’m quite interested to know some of your best horror experiences in 2014. There are no rules for this. Your best experience can be seeing a particular movie (or showing someone a particular movie for the first time), meeting an actor/actress from one of your favorite shows or movies, going to a haunted house, etc. Anything is fair game for this. For me, it was attending Dallas’ annual horror convention: Texas Frightmare Weekend.
I live in Austin, and we do have a pretty large film industry here. Lots of festivals come around like South By Southwest, Fantastic Fest, Austin Film Festival, etc. Not a lot of events are geared toward us horror fans, though. We do have the Housecore Horror Film Festival, but I haven’t been able to make it to that one yet. A few years ago I discovered Texas Frightmare Weekend in Dallas and had an absolute blast. Next year will be my 4th year going (it’s their 10th anniversary!) and it’s become one of my new favorite traditions. If this article seems like a shameless plug, it’s not. I just had a blast this year!
Frightmare weekend is basically like any other convention you would go to (and if you’ve never been to one I highly recommend you try to go at least once in your life). Basically, there are some special screenings, panels featuring actors from certain movies (my first year there was a Carrie panel with PJ Soles, Nancy Allen and Piper Laurie) and of course all of the celebrities sit at booths for meet and greets with their fans. I use the word “celebrities” because they are celebrities to us, but if you ever try to explain to anyone not really into horror why you’re excited to meet some of these people, it can prove to be a challenge. Weekend passes are affordable, but pictures with the celebrities and getting autographed publicity stills will be where you spend all of your money. So if you ever get a chance to go make sure you save your money! I learned that the hard way my first year going.
I got to meet my 2 favorite Lindas: Blair and Hamilton. I got to sit at a Terminator panel and listen to Linda Hamilton, Robert Patrick, Michael Biehn, Thomas Dekker, Jenette Goldstein and Kristanna Loken. Biehn and Goldstein also did a panel on Aliens, which was a blast. I got to pee next to Tom Savini (for the second year in a row). I did miss out on Tobin Bell and Doug Bradley which bummed me out, but c’est la vie.
I would also like to point out that I got to see the original Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street 1 and 3 (two of my absolute faves) on the big screen (in 35mm!) for the first time ever this year. That gave Frightmare Weekend a run for its money as my best horror experience of the year.
So what about you all? What amazing things did you experience this year? Let me know in the comments below!
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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