Smile on disc will make horror fans merry and Pulp Fiction gets a 4K debut: December’s best Blu-ray and 4K UHD releases

While streaming services continue to remove titles from their libraries and generally devalue legacy content (read: any movie released before 2000), physical media increasingly becomes a reliable source for people to watch what they want, when they want. As collectors ourselves, The A.V. Club is committed to providing a monthly look at the best new home video releases—from the biggest blockbusters to must-see obscurities—as companies from Warner Bros. and Sony Pictures to Vinegar Syndrome and Criterion Collection keep cinephiles’ shelves full of DVD, Blu-ray, and UHD discs.

What’s spinning in December, you ask? Highlights include the 4K UHD debuts of the original Black Christmas and Pulp Fiction, a Better Call Saul box set, another Shawscope box set, plus the horror hit Smile and Jamie Lee Curtis’ final turn as survivor Laurie Strode in Halloween Ends.

Black Christmas (1974)

Available December 13The 1974 horror film is set at a college sorority house over Christmas break and stars Olivia Hussey and Margot Kidder. Although not often credited with kicking off the holiday-themed slasher genre, Black Christmas predates John Carpenter’s Halloween by four years. If you own the previous DVD or Blu-ray presentations of Black Christmas, you know that the crummy transfers are akin to getting coal in your stocking. Scream Factory hopes to correct this with of the movie from the original camera negative, presented with Dolby Vision HDR. The second Black Christmas miracle is a new restoration of the audio that restores missing dialogue, music and sound effects for this Collector’s Edition.