In our effort to not become too distressed by Paul Blart: Mall Cop’s extremely wide release (3,144 theaters nationwide!) and huge box office returns ($33.8 million from Friday to Sunday), we kept ourselves busy over the weekend with Vulture’s mall movie listicle. Though we never think of malls as the setting for high art – or even good pop art – there’s evidence to the contrary in Vulture’s 13 Best Mall-Movie Moments.

13. Marked For Death (1990)

Proof that you just can’t take Steven Seagal anywhere.

12. “Let’s Go To The Mall” (How I Met Your Mother episode, 2007)

Were mall montages to the eighties as boutique-hopping sequences are to the naughts?

11. Minority Report (2002)

In the future, malls will brain rape you in your eye.

10. Night of the Comet (1984)

A mall all to themselves.

9. Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge (1991)

Yes, as its title suggests, this is an adaptation of Phantom of the Opera into the world of teenage mall employees.

8. The Blues Brothers (1980)

Though this scene seemed prophetic at the time, drive-thru malls never really caught on.

7. Can’t Buy Me Love (1987)

Going to malls always felt a little icky, like we were prostituting ourselves to lowest-common-denominator consumerism, a metaphor taken to its next literal level in this clip.

6. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)

How would great historical figures behave in a mall? Like wild teenagers, duh.

5. Chopping Mall (1986)

Reckless kids meet even more reckless robots in this campy mall thriler.

4. Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)

Lessons in manhood by way of mall display cardboard stand-ups.

3. Mallrats (1995)

One boy raises escalator security threats here, but in this next clip about 20 stuntmen take escalator plunges.

2. Police Story (1985)

We’re beginning to think that what makes malls such great movie fodder is the amazing variety of things to be found in one place. It offers so many opportunities for gags, set pieces, massive and intimate scenes. Malls are kind of like film studios, really.

1. Dawn of the Dead (1978)

Movie mall philosophy in this deserving top seed (the remake is pretty great too).

Strangely Absent: Bad Santa (2003)

Though nearly the whole movie takes place in a mall, this scene wherein mall shoppers are confronted with everything that malls are supposed to protect them from is especially telling.

Also Strangely Absent: South Park’s Mall Cops

Since we’re including TV shows (a little), this episode in which the kids embark on a quest to become a successful boyband with a concert at the local mall has everything we’ve come to expect from this genre: cheesy music, petty politics, awful shopping, casual violence and – long before Paul Blart – mall cops: