Editorials
Black Friday Chopping List: Movies
Black Friday is fast approaching, and that means that stores everywhere will be flooded with people looking for the best deals! We’ve taken the liberty of seeking out the best movie* deals from major retailers and sharing them with you! Unfortunately most retailers don’t release all of their deals in their paper ads (and in the case of Wal-Mart, you can barely see which movies are discounted). Nevertheless, we tried to sort through the major retailers’ Black Friday ads and decided to share our findings with all of you. You don’t want to miss out!
*All movies listed below are in Blu-Ray format.
AMAZON
Unfortunately Amazon doesn’t really post their Black Friday deals ahead of time, but here are the best horror movie deals the site is offering at the time of this writing (Amazon changes prices constantly so some of these may already be out of date). I use Blu-Ray.com as my source since it syncs up with Amazon in real time and you can sort deals by genre (which is incredibly useful).
$5.00 or Less
Pitch Black – $5.00
Friday the 13th (1980) – $5.00
$10.00 or Less
Crimson Peak – $6.96
The Purge: Anarchy – $6.96
The Purge: Election Year – $6.99
Predator Triple Feature – $9.99
$15.00 or Less
Jurassic World 3D – $13.49
Krampus – $12.96
$20.00 or Less
Jack Frost – $17.99 (I’m not sure why you would pay that much for this film, but apparently it’s a steal.)
Alien Anthology – $19.99
Great Deals
Universal Classic Monsters: The Essential Collection – $45.00
Hellraiser: The Scarlet Box – $78.99
Again, some of these may already be out of date, but you can keep up to date on the best horror Blu-Ray deals here and the lowest price horror Blu-Rays here. Blu-Ray.com is a godsend for movie buffs everywhere.
BEST BUY
John Squires already did a fantastic job covering Best Buy’s Black Friday deals here, but just in case you missed it:
$3.99
It Follows
Ex Machina
The Evil Dead (1981)
Godzilla (2014)
$5.99
Pride & Prejudice & Zombies
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Witch
Poltergeist (2015)
Underworld
$6.99
The Conjuring 2
Lights Out
Krampus
The Forest
Annabelle
The Visit
$9.99
Jurassic World (Limited Edition)
Ghostbusters (2016)
10 Cloverfield Lane
TARGET
It’s slim-pickin’s over at Target (at least for horror movies). Maybe give this one a pass.
$4
Mad Mad: Fury Road
$9
Ghostbusters (2016)
WALMART
Again, Walmart’s ad was so difficult to read that there are probably many more deals than these at the store, but you’ll have to go there to actually find out what they are.
$5.96
Jurassic World
$9.96
The Purge: Election Year
Ghostbusters (2016)
10 Cloverfield Lane
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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