Horror Movie Marathon 2016!

October brings us crisp fall air, freshly harvested apples, and flickering images of unspeakable horror piped directly into our quivering eyeballs! Graphic eh? My high-school advanced english class did not go to waste. Anyway – want to know the best options for your very own 24-hour horror movie marathon 2016? Then read on…if you dare!!!

If you live in Ohio, you are in luck. The 8th Annual Ohio 24-Hour Horror Marathon “Shock Around the Clock” starts at noon on October 15th and goes until noon on October 16th. It plays at the Drexel Theater, and you can find the event on Facebook. Advanced tickets are $40. That is a mere $1.60 for each hour of horror! You would be stupid not to go! You can see the schedule of movies here.

If you live in Chicago instead of Columbus, you could try The Massacre 24-Hour Movie Marathon. It starts at noon on October 22nd and goes until noon(?) on October 23rd. It plays at the Patio theater. A detailed schedule doesn’t seem to be available, but advance tickets are $20. That is a mere $0.83 per horror hour! You’d be even stupider not to go!

Don’t live in the Chicago or Columbus. but you have cable? Then your next best bet is American Movie Classics Fear Fest. It starts on Thursday October 13th at 9 AM and runs until the wee hours of Tuesday, November 1st. That’s 19 days and over 80 movies. At a going rate of about $80 a month for cable TV, prorated for those 19 days, that’s $49 dollars for 19 days, or a mere $0.10 an hour! You’d be…well, you know.

Don’t have a good cable TV package? There’s still hope. You can stitch together your own horror movie / TV show marathon via this handy schedule of horror movies and shows playing on TV this month. The one nice thing about The Simpsons running for the last 26 years is we always get an annual Treehouse of Horror Episode.

Don’t watch cable or broadcast TV? Thankfully, we live in the 21st century where Netflix has done away with the need for such things. Paste magazine has put together an excellent article of the 60 best horror movies streaming on Netflix in 2016. Your choices range from The Exorcist to Zombeavers. Yes. Zombeavers. What? Zombeavers got a 69% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Is it unclear what the movie is about? (Hint: It’s about zombie beavers).

None of these sound good? I’ve got your back. 24hourmoviemarathon.com has some excellent recommendations for 24-hour horror movie marathons, if I do say so myself.

This season is truly an embarrassment of riches when it comes to opportunities for movie marathons. If you can’t find something to scare the pants off of you this season, then you make my head explode. Happy Halloween!

Photo by Alexas_Fotos

Support A 24-Hour Movie Marathon for Charity!

There is only one 24-hour movie marathon for charity out there, and I’m going to it! Support children with leukemia by visiting my fundraising page at FirstGiving.com. Don’t worry – I won’t let you down. I am a battle-hardened veteran of thirteen movie marathons. I take personal pride in never having fallen asleep for any of them. I will obliterate 1,440 minutes of pop culture and then write all about it on this weblog. And it is all for a good cause!

In case you were wondering, Children’s Leukemia foundation of Michigan has a good charity navigator score of 3 out of 4 stars. About $0.80 of every dollar donated goes to the kids. You can check CLF out at facebook here, and see a short video about them below.

Movie Marathon Scorecard

Keeping score is the best. Everyone needs to know that they are the best at something, no matter how meaningless or stupid that activity is. Take golf, for example. Grown men obsess over statistics reflecting their ability to whack a ball with a stick into a little hole. They spend hundreds of dollars just to gain a slight bump in their ball-whacking metrics. Golf and movie marathons involve about the same amount of athletic prowess. Isn’t it time we similarly obsess over who is best at movie marathons?  I say “Yes!”. And if you say “No!”, you are visiting the wrong website.

That is why I am proud to announce that I have created the world’s first movie marathon scorecard! No longer do you have to wonder: “Do I really measure up in my movie marathon skills?” or “Is this movie marathon really helping me meet my life goal of a movie-watching perfection?” or “How can I brag to my friends about how many movies I’ve watched without sounding like a total dork?”. This scorecard provides you the answer.

If you are wondering if this scorecard is legit, don’t worry – it’s science. The scorecard works by gathering up a master list of movies from four sources: Academy Award Best Picture Winners, the American Film Institute’s Top 100 Movies, the British Film Institute’s top 50 movies, and the Internet Movie Database’s top 100 movies. All you have to do is mark which movies you have seen, and the scorecard calculates your personal movie marathon score. Scoring comes in four categories:

  • Ultimate Movie Marathon Score – How many movies you’ve seen on the list, with movies appearing in more than one source list weighted more heavily.
  • American Film Buff Score – How many movies you’ve seen on the list that appear on the Academy Awards best picture list, the American Film Institute list, or both.
  • International Film Snob Score – How many movies you’ve seen on the British Film Institute list, which favors class European movies.
  • Pop Culture Hipster Score – How many movies you’ve seen in the top 100 list from the Internet Movie Database, which favors recently made or otherwise popular movies.

Conveniently, this scorecard serves as both a measurement of self-worth and a handy guide for movies that you might want to include in your next movie marathon. This master list of movies pushes you to movies the world agrees you need to go see. For example, The Godfather appears in all four source lists, and therefore contributes to your ultimate movie marathon score by 4 points. The Matrix, despite the fact that it has at least double the amount of Kung Fu than The Godfather, only counts for 1 point. Those who are serious about their movie marathon game know what they should watch next.

My Movie Marathon Scorecard Results

To get started, you need a benchmark to compare yourself against. I ran filled out the scorecard for myself, and the results are below. I’m laying down the gauntlet, world. Beat these stats!

That probably won’t be too hard! Especially for film majors! But no matter – as far as I know right this second, I am the king of all movie marathons!

Ultimate Movie Marathon Score145/33843%
American Film Buff Score75/18640%
International Film Snob Score13/5225%
Pop Culture Hipster Score57/10057%

The Movie Marathon Scorecard File Download

The movie marathon scorecard is presently available in Microsoft Excel format. I would like to make the scorecard available in other formats as well – such as a dynamic webpage page on this site. That will take a little more effort than just slapping web links and other data into Excel, so you’ll have to wait for that version. But, without further ado – the Excel files!

Photo by shorts and longs

The Iron Giant Now Available on Blu-Ray

I love The Iron Giant, and I think you will too. This movie was on my radar all the way back in 1999 when it was first released. I heard that it was a great movie that nobody saw. It took me 14 years, but I finally got to see it at my annual movie marathon of 2013. Watching this movie for the first time was a joy. Discovering this movie reminded me of other great discoveries from my past movie marathons like Casablanca, 12 Angry Men, and Goldfinger. Finding movies like this reminds me why I have movie marathons. My kids loved it too, and they still re-watch it as one of their favorites today.

The plot centers around a boy who discovers an alien giant robot who crash-landed on earth. The movie explores themes of heroism, life and death, and choosing who you want to be – even in the face of prejudice from others. It is set right in the middle of the Cold War and nails the paranoia and jittery snap-judgement of authority figures at the time. It also beautifully evokes 1950s era sci-fi design. You see it both in the cheesy films playing on TV during the movie, and with the Iron Giant himself. I can’t tell you how happy I was when the Iron Giant “transforms” later in the movie. I won’t spoil the surprise, but this sequence triggered fond memories of my own young days watching 1950s alien invasion movies.

The movie has heart too. Pixar is famous for evoking many emotions in its films. Brad Bird joined Pixar after directing The Iron Giant, and he must have fit right in. The Iron Giant runs the gamut from joy, to wonder, to sadness, and to bittersweet satisfaction.

The Blu-Ray release of The Iron Giant “Signature Edition” is now available on Amazon for $10. If you haven’t seen this movie yet, you need to buy this disc immediately. For that price, you don’t have much to lose. I have a feeling you’ll be as delighted as I was when you see it. Have fun!

The Top 100 Films of The 21st Century

Is it too early to start proclaiming the best films of the 21st century? After all, this century is only about 16% complete. Shouldn’t we wait until at least 51%? Of course not! Otherwise, the BBC would have to fill their website with boring content like world events and dry British humor. And I would have to write original content instead of just linking to better websites than mine. Do you think I have that sort of time (answer: yes)?

Anyway, as I’ve noted elsewhere, most of the “best 100 movies” lists from movie critics are suspiciously devoid of movies made since 1980. I like watching classic movies as much as the next film snob, but sometimes I want to see a good movie where iPods and YouTube could be reasonably expected to appear. Thankfully, the BBC and about 200 film critics have the answer, with a list of the top 100 films of the 21st century.

Looking through the list, I was surprised to see I’ve only seen 13 of the 100 films listed. This is despite me having a couple of decades to address this problem. It sounds as if I have a new list of movies to get into the annual movie marathon rotation.