Movies
Halloween Horror Nights Hosts ‘The Thing’ Maze!
One of my favorite nights of the year is when Universal Studios Hollywood opens the gates for their annual Halloween Horror Nights, an epic night at the theme park loaded with rides and genre-themed mazes.
A few years back the Orlando branch carries a maze that had me jealous beyond belief, and now it has be thawed here in California. The Thing is creeping its way into Universal’s theme parks in time for Halloween. Unfortunately, it will be based on Uni’s forthcoming prequel and not John Carpenter’s classic ’80s remake. It will also be at Orlando Horror Nights.
In addition, we’ve confirmed that “Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses: In 3D ZombieVision” will also be returning. While you may scoff, this was one of the coolest mazes they’ve had in years.
Halloween Horror Nights begins Sept. 23 and continues on select nights through Oct. 31.
The Thing is a reboot of John Carpenter’s 1982 original, in which a group of researchers in an abandoned scientific research facility in Antarctica find themselves infected by an alien creature that can transform itself into an exact replica of any living being.
Theme park designers partnered with the film’s producers, Strike Entertainment’s Marc Abraham and Eric Newman to replicate the sets, audio, musical score, creature and characters referenced in the new pic.
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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