Category: Movie Marathon Ideas

Suggested movie marathon movies

Halloween Movie Marathon Ideas from The A.V. Club

Halloween is the closest thing to an annual horror movie marathon holiday. You can’t swing a dead cat during Halloween without hitting a horror movie or a horde of people lunging to consume it. So – if you want to have your own Halloween movie marathon, what the fastest way to conjure up a 24-hour unholy vision of the gaping maw of hell?

If you are a do-it-yourselfer like myself, you probably just want a great list of horror movies to start from. I wrote a Horror Movie Marathon Where-to-Start article a while back.

However, I was surprised to find out the A.V. Club (affiliated with The Onion) are big fans of 24-hour movie marathons – and a 24-hour Halloween movie marathon is one of their annual traditions. Even better, the A.V. Club is well-connected enough to have celebrities put together Halloween movie marathon schedules for them! Check out their Halloween movie marathons from years past:

If assembling one of these schedules sounds like work, maybe channel surfing is more your style. So what’s on TV this Halloween? American Movie Classics seems to be throwing themselves most enthusiastically into the horror fray with their AMC Fearfest. But if you need more options, there are other Halloween Movie Marathons on TV too. Or you can assemble your own marathon from the list of Halloween movies on the Huffington Post. There are a lot.

If bothering to look up showtimes of horror movies on cable TV sounds like work to you, dang, are you one lazy bum! There is yet still a way to stream images of violence and depravity on-demand directly into your ocular receptors. Check out Reel Life with Jane’s 31-day Netflix Halloween Movie Marathon.

I hope one of these horrible options works well for you. Happy Halloween! Don’t turn off the light!

Update 22 July 2017: Updated list of links for mid-2017. All of the other TV schedule references are still from 2014.

Highest Body Count Movie Marathon

Sure – plot, character development, and beautiful cinematography are important factors for movies, but what about sheer on-screen body count? In fact, I think the real question we should be asking ourselves is: what is the highest body count movie marathon possible?Mushroom cloudOf course there are tools available on the internet to assist us with answering this question (you doubted it for a second?). I was first alerted to this fact by Randal Olson’s blog, which has a handy infographic of the deadliest films of all time – as measured by on-screen deaths.

After some investigative work (i.e. I read the article), I discovered Randal’s source was moviebodycounts.com. This site does all the exhaustive work of cataloging on-screen deaths in popular movies – so you don’t have to! Their counting methodology is described in the FAQ. Since they have a website, clearly they are the most scientific source on the subject of on-screen movie deaths.

They have the 101 highest body count movies in a convenient list (they also have a deadliest character list). If you simply took the top entries, and jammed them into a 24-hour period, you would come up with a movie marathon schedule like the following.

Top Body Count Movie Marathon

Start TimeTitleYearRuntimeBody Count
12:00 PMLoTR: Return of the King2003201 min.836
03:21 PMKingdom of Heaven2005144 min.610
05:45 PM3002007117 min.600
07:42 PMTroy2004163 min.572
10:25 PMThe Last Samurai2003154 min.558
12:59 AMLoTR: The Two Towers2002179 min.468
03:58 AMGrindhouse2007191 min.310
07:09 AMHard Boiled1992128 min.307
09:17 AMTitanic1997194 min.307
12:31 PMFinish

That’s 4,568 on-screen deaths spread across nine movies over 24.5 hours. That’s not bad, but the schedule is a little over the 24-hour time limit and, well, the schedule includes Titanic. Is that really the best that you can do?

Since time in any movie marathon is limited (to, you know, 24 hours), I thought that a better way at looking at the problem is the efficiency of the movies – as measured in average bodies per minute. When you look at things that way, you get a schedule like this.

Top Bodies Per Minute Movie Marathon

Start TimeTitleYearRuntimeBody CountBodies /  Minute
12:00 PM3002007117 minutes6005.1
01:57 PMKingdom of Heaven2005144 min.6104.2
04:21 PMLoTR: The Two Towers2002179 min.4682.6
07:20 PMLoTR: Return of the King2003201 min.8364.2
10:41 PMThe Last Samurai2003154 min.5583.6
01:15 AMTroy2004163 min.5723.5
03:58 AMRambo200892 min.2472.7
05:30 AMHard Boiled1992128 min.3072.4
07:38 AMWe Were Soldiers2002138 min.3052.2
09:56 AMEquilibrium2002107 min.2362.2
11:43 AMFinish

This schedule has 4,739 on-screen deaths spread across ten movies over 23.5 hours. That’s 171 more kills, one extra movie, accomplished in one less hour, with exactly one less Titanic movie! Now we’re talking! Also, this schedule delivers an impressive average of 2.5 bodies per minute. This will dull your sense of empathy for your fellow man in no time!

What do you think? Can you improve on this schedule? Or is it truly the pinnacle of cinematic carnage?

Photo by The Official CTBTO Photostream

Video Game Movie Marathon

Video games don’t seem to translate very well to movies. Rotten Tomatoes’ list of the 25 “best” movies adapted from video games has exactly zero movies rated “fresh”. And boy oh boy, some of the “best” are also some of the absolute worst cinema has to offer.

For this reason, a video game movie marathon may be ill-advised. The funny thing is, some video games are so rich in story, character, and special effects, it’s a shame they need to be “adapted” to a movie format in the first place. The first video games that come to mind are the Final Fantasy series of games.
Nintendo Power - Final Fantasy GuideWith completion times of 40 hours and up, players spend a lot of time in just a single Final Fantasy game. A lot of this time is fighting monsters, but a lot of this time is also getting to know the characters and driving forward the storyline. While monster-fighting is fun, it always seemed like a shame to me that the story couldn’t be replayed on “auto-pilot”, so to speak, to relive some of the plot.

Thanks to YouTube, it looks like I need not worry any longer. People out there with a lot of time and video editing skills have composed “movie” versions of video game play-throughs. They are called Let’s Play, and there are entire archives of them.

So, getting back to Final Fantasy, a quick search reveals three YouTube movies playing through Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XIII-2, and Final Fantasy XIII-3 (as an example – there are others). Even edited down to remove all monster-fight scenes, these movies are about eight, seven, and nine hours long, respectively. Collectively, they total 24 hours and 47 minutes of content. It’s a movie marathon in just three YouTube videos!

I’ve embedded each movie below for your convenience. The next time you have 24 hours to spare, and don’t want to invest brain cells in learning how to control characters, manage items, or defeat monsters, this is the movie marathon for you!

Final Fantasy XIII


Final Fantasy XIII-2

Final Fantasy XIII-3

Photo by bochalla

Scott’s Sci-fi Movie Marathon Recommendations

Scott Riblet sent me an excellent list of sci-fi movie marathon recommendations. They are below for your viewing pleasure. If you want to get picky, not all of them are technically sci-fi (i.e. Desk Set), but they are all arguably at least sci-fi adjacent (i.e. a big computer is involved in Desk set).

Lego sci-fiForbidden Planet (1956)

Action | Adventure | Family – Rotten Tomatoes score 98%

A starship crew goes to investigate the silence of a planet’s colony only to find two survivors and a deadly secret that one of them has.

Blast from the past (1999)

Comedy | Drama | Romance – Rotten Tomatoes score: 58%

A romantic comedy about a naive man who comes out into the world after being in a nuclear fallout shelter for 35 years.

Desk Set (1957)

Comedy | Romance – Rotten Tomatoes score: 100%

Two extremely strong personalities clash over the computerization of a TV network’s research department.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

Drama | Sci-fi | Thriller – Rotten Tomatoes score: 94%

An alien lands and tells the people of Earth that they must live peacefully or be destroyed as a danger to other planets.

Exam (2009)

Mystery | Thriller – Rotten Tomatoes score: 63%

The final candidates for a highly desirable corporate job are locked together in an exam room and given a test so simple and confusing that tension begins to unravel.

Cube (1997)

Mystery | Sci-fi | Thriller – Rotten Tomatoes score: 62%

7 complete strangers of widely varying personality characteristics are involuntarily placed in an endless kafkaesque maze containing deadly traps.

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

Adventure | Horror | Sci-fi – Rotten Tomatoes score – 83%

A strange prehistoric beast lurks in the depths of the Amazonian jungle. A group of scientists try to capture the animal and bring it back to civilization for study.

The Mummy (1932)

Horror – Rotten Tomatoes score – 92%

A living mummy stalks the beautiful woman he believes is the reincarnation of his lover.

King Kong (1933)

Adventure | Fantasy | Horror – Rotten Tomatoes score – 98%

A film crew goes to a tropical island for an exotic location shoot and discovers a colossal giant gorilla who takes a shine to their female blonde star.

The Blob (1958)

Horror | Sci-fi | Thriller – Rotten Tomatoes score – 66%

An alien lifeform consumes everything in its path as it grows and grows.

7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)

Family | Fantasy | Action – Rotten Tomatoes score – 100%

When a princess is shrunken by an evil wizard, Sinbad must undertake a quest to an island of monsters to cure her and prevent a war.

Thief of Bagdad (1940)

Adventure | Family | Fantasy – Rotten Tomatoes score – 100%

After being tricked and cast out of Bagdad by the evil Jaffar, King Ahmad joins forces with a thief named Abu to reclaim his throne, the city, and the Princess he loves.

Dracula (1931)

Horror – Rotten Tomatoes score – 91%

The ancient vampire Count Dracula arrives in England and begins to prey upon the virtuous young Mina.

Frankenstein (1931)

Horror | Sci-fi – Rotten Tomatoes score – 100%

An obsessed scientist assembles a living being from parts of exhumed corpses.

Photo by Masked Builder

Movie Marathon 2014 Planning Kickoff!

I’m kicking off planning for Movie Marathon 2014! This will be the sixth movie marathon my wife and I have hosted at our house (since 2009) and the tenth I’ve co-hosted in my lifetime (since 1999!). The working title is: Movie Marathon VI: The Undiscovered Country.

Movie Marathon 2014

First order of business – potential movies! I think I have a good starter list, but I need your help in getting more ideas! I’ve had great success in the past from suggestions from friends and family. The movies below are just what I’ve come up with on my own. Please comment in this post with your ideas!

We’ll be bringing back kid-friendly zones, so I’ve divided up the potential movie list into movies aimed at adults and those aimed at the kids. Enjoy!

Movies for the Adults

The Wicker Man (1973)

Horror | Mystery | Thriller – Rotten Tomatoes score: 100%

A police sergeant is sent to a Scottish island village in search of a missing girl whom the townsfolk claim never existed. Stranger still are the rites that take place there.

Bringing Up Baby (1938)

Comedy | Romance – Rotten Tomatoes score: 95%

While trying to secure a $1 million donation for his museum, a befuddled paleontologist is pursued by a flighty and often irritating heiress and her pet leopard “Baby.”

The French Connection (1971)

Action | Crime | Thriller – Rotten Tomatoes score: 98%

A pair of NYC cops in the Narcotics Bureau stumble onto a drug smuggling job with a French connection.

Notorious (1946)

Drama | Film-Noir | Romance – Rotten Tomatoes score: 94%

A woman is asked to spy on a group of Nazi friends in South America. How far will she have to go to ingratiate herself with them?

Hannah and her Sisters (1986)

Comedy | Drama – Rotten Tomatoes score: 91%

Between two Thanksgivings, Hannah’s husband falls in love with her sister Lee, while her hypochondriac ex-husband rekindles his relationship with her sister Holly.

Sunset Boulevard (1950)

Drama | Film-Noir – Rotten Tomatoes score: 98%

A hack screenwriter writes a screenplay for a former silent-film star who has faded into Hollywood obscurity.

The Crow (1994)

Action | Fantasy – Rotten Tomatoes score: 82%

A man brutally murdered comes back to life as an undead avenger of his and his fiancée’s murder.

Kid Friendly Zone

Bolt (2008)

Animation | Adventure | Comedy – Rotten Tomatoes score: 88%

The canine star of a fictional sci-fi/action show that believes his powers are real embarks on a cross country trek to save his co-star from a threat he believes is just as real.

Tarzan (1999)

Animation | Adventure | Drama – Rotten Tomatoes score: 88%

A man raised by gorillas must decide where he really belongs when he discovers he is a human.

Mulan (1998)


Animation | Adventure | Family – Rotten Tomatoes score: 86%

To save her father from death in the army, a young maiden secretly goes in his place and becomes one of China’s greatest heroines in the process.

Lilo and Stitch (2002)

Animation | Adventure | Comedy – Rotten Tomatoes score: 86%

A Hawaiian girl adopts an unusual pet who is actually a notorious extra-terrestrial fugitive from the law.

Ella Enchanted (2004)

Comedy | Family | Fantasy – Rotten Tomatoes score: 50%

Ella is under a spell to be constantly obedient, a fact she must hide from her new step-family in order to protect the prince of the land, her friend for whom she’s falling.