The folks at the B-horror blog can proudly state that they have engaged in five horror ultimate movie marathons and lived to blog about them. They have Final Destination, Friday the 13th, Hellraiser, Nightmare on Elm Street, and…Twilight? Wait, say what? Well, at least they admit that was a bad idea.
Sadly, according to the blog’s latest post, working for a living has claimed another victim. We’ll just have to revel in the blog’s past glory I suppose.
Nothing inspires movie marathons quite like the horror genre. Seriously, the movie marathon landscape is littered with them! (for example, see the Ohio 24-hour horror movie marathon, Brookline horror, etc.)
Why is that? There are lots of psychological theories on why we like to watch horror films. Most of them sound like utter malarkey. I like the theory that we enjoy the jolt of adrenaline experienced in a safe environment.
Regardless of the reason, if you want to have a horror movie marathon, you have a lot of material to choose from. Horror movies are cheap, and there are a lot of them. IMDB lists 53,915 entries in the “horror” category (this includes both film and TV) and there are almost 25 horror subgenres out there according to this authoritative-looking infographic. So where do you start?
How about viewing the entire history of horror films in one day? By that, I mean watching the most ground-breaking, influential horror films ever made. The movies that spawned a thousand imitators. At least it gives you a good, horrible foundation of classics to start with. I have a sample schedule for you below. Enjoy 24 hours of sheer terror!
My take: The very first monster movie as we think of them today. This silent movie relies on creepy, dreamlike visuals instead of LOUD NOISE! scares.
My take: The first and one of the best classic Universal studios monster movies. Features heady subjects for the 1930s – like mad scientists, grave robbing, reanimation of life, child killing, etc.
My take: One of the first and best of the 1950’s “giant monster” / “nuclear threat” movies.
My take: The horror movie that deconstructed horror movies by being so violent, sexual, and shocking that it smashed all audience expectations.
My take: The movie that invented zombies as we know them today, plus a gleeful abandonment of good taste and some social satire to boot.
My take: So scary and controversial, it caused moviegoers to faint and ruined Linda Blair’s career for no logical reason.
My take: A template for slasher movies to come, shot in realistic-looking documentary style.
My take: The movie that defined the “summer blockbuster”.
My take: The wildly successful independent film that set off the 1980s trend of “mindless killer slasher” films.
My take: A perfect mixture of science fiction and realistic horror.
My take: The horror movie like no other horror movie. So out there, it was nominated for two Razzie awards, but now is considered one of the best horror films ever.
My take: One of the first independent horror films on VHS, and the inspiration of many famous directors today.
My take: The horror film that started the”found footage” and “shakey cam” style.
| Start Time | Title |
| 12:00 PM | Nosferatu |
| 01:45 PM | Frankenstein |
| 03:00 PM | Godzilla |
| 04:45 PM | Psycho |
| 07:00 PM | Night of the Living Dead |
| 08:45 PM | The Exorcist |
| 11:00 PM | Texas Chainsaw Massacre |
| 12:30 AM | Jaws |
| 02:45 AM | Halloween |
| 04:20 AM | Alien |
| 06:30 AM | The Shining |
| 09:00 AM | The Evil Dead |
| 10:30 AM | The Blair Witch Project |
I had a great time at my first 24 hour movie marathon in a real theater. But you know what would have helped? A movie marathon scheduler. When you have 18 different movies playing throughout the day at various times, any tool that help you schedule out your own personal marathon sure would have been helpful.
I recently found TheaterTag.com. Its interface is slick and simple – you enter in your zip code, pick a theater, pick what movies you want to see – and bang – a fill-in-the-blanks schedule is created for you. You just slide around the movies you want to see until you create a schedule that works for you. Here is a screenshot.
The only drawback is that TheaterTag does not automatically generate working schedules for you. This was a feature of the Movie Madness movie marathon scheduler. Movie Madness automatically generates a large list of possible movie schedules, based on your search criteria. Well, it did anyway – it apparently hasn’t been updated since 2007 and doesn’t work these days.
Regardless, I don’t miss this feature much. I think it is more fun to manually create your own schedule. It helps build the anticipation!
So next time I have a movie marathon in a theater, I’ll be using this tool to plan it all out. I might even use it to plan an extended visit to the theater. I’ve never actually seen more than one movie at a time in a theater before (excluding the one 24-hour marathon)! I think it would be fun to just take a day off sometime and just watch movies all day. No work, no chores, no obligations – just entertainment!
One disclaimer though – I do not endorse theater hopping. If I spend a day at the movies, I’m paying for the experience. Cheating the theater out of money just isn’t my cup of tea.
So what is the longest film series ever? It all depends on how and what you count. Do you count only English-speaking films? Or do you throw in a least a few foreign-made films? Do you fully consider all foreign-made and foreign-language films? What about series that have at least some entries that are direct-to-video? And how do you define a film series vs a film franchise anyway? And how do you define “longest”? Is longest defined by the number of films or in minutes of running time?
Whew. This all sounds very complicated, so let’s start by boiling all this down to three facts:
Ok – the basic facts are out of the way now. What are the longest film series that you might actually want to watch, and have a decent chance of actually getting your hands on? I’ve put together my top twenty long film series list below and sorted it by total runtime (not the number of movies).
The result was interesting. Despite having 28 films, Godzilla is not the king of the movie marathon as I’ve previously reported! It’s actually James Bond, who has a 6 hour lead over Godzilla. In the nerd wars, Star Trek handily beats both Harry Potter and Star Wars, with time to spare.
Did I leave some film series out? Definitely. But the real question is: did I leave out any series you might actually want to watch from beginning to end? Comment if I did!
| Film Series | Movies | Hours |
| James Bond | 24 | 50.6 |
| Godzilla | 29 | 44.3 |
| Star Trek | 13 | 25.3 |
| X-Men | 10 | 21 |
| Harry Potter | 8 | 20.0 |
| Batman | 8 | 19.0 |
| Pink Panther | 11 | 18.6 |
| Friday the 13th | 12 | 18.4 |
| The Lord of the Rings / The Hobbit | 6 | 17.2 |
| Planet of the Apes | 9 | 16.3 |
| Fast & Furious | 8 | 16 |
| Halloween | 10 | 15.7 |
| Star Wars | 7 | 15.5 |
| A Nightmare on Elm Street | 9 | 14.2 |
| Superman | 6 | 13.0 |
| The Muppets | 8 | 12.9 |
| Saw | 7 | 11.2 |
| Rocky | 6 | 10.7 |
| Police Academy | 7 | 10.5 |
| Night of the Living Dead | 6 | 9.9 |
I usually focus on the food for movie marathons. Pizza, popcorn, chips, desserts, yum! But what about drinks? Everyone has had every type of carbonated colas before. Isn’t there anything special you can serve up for the perfect movie marathon drink? There is one iconic movie theater beverage I can think of: ICEEs!
Don’t have an a ICEE machine? Well good – you shouldn’t – they don’t even rent them for home use! Instead, check out this recipe for homemade ICEEs. Since it only involves Kool Aid, ice, and some seltzer water, I think even I could handle it.
Still not convinced? Take the 40-second YouTube tutorial on how to make an ICEE.
