This week malls, department stores, and discount stores will be inundated with customers busting down the hatches to get at Black Friday sales, risking life and limb for cheap plasma television sets, digital cameras, shotguns, PlayStation systems. You can use at least one of those to guard your precious cargo from unlucky shoppers who didn't make the sales in time.

We have already entered the busy holiday shopping season, which more than likely began right after Independence Day, and even in our down economy, people show no signs of curbing spending. The malls are as packed as ever, with shoppers parking hundreds of yards away just to get inside.

The mall, that great all-American icon, a symbol for all things sanitized, trendy, and convenient. A meeting place for teens to meet, make out, and maybe shoplift. Somewhere indoors for old people to walk, get exercise, and scowl at the aforementioned teenagers.

Of course the movies have have gone to the mall plenty of times, with most every teen comedy cast at least taking one trip to the mall, or at least spending half their time there. Time was the local malt-shop, burger joint, or drive-in theater would be the teen hotspot, but sometime in the '80s, director John Hughes and corporate America rolled all of those things into one building, and included clothing stores to add to the adolescent torture.

And remember department stores and malls are two different but sometimes connected animals, so Mannequin, A Christmas Story, Elf, and Vice Versa don't count here, though they all live in our hearts.

Chopping Mall (1986)

Scenes From A Mall (1991)

Mallrats (1995)