It happens every year. You wait to see which of your friends is throwing a Halloween party, only to discover too late that your friends were doing the exact same thing, and now no one has anything to do on October 31st. It’s time to pull up your pants and plan a gathering of your own, but you don’t have the time or money to pull of a real mother of a blowout.
Fortunately, Halloween parties can be as simple as watching a whole bunch of scary movies with your friends, but even that’s not as easy as it sounds. Sure, you can just throw on whatever horror movies you already have available, but the odds are good that you and your friends have seen them already, or that they’re going to get restless if you don’t show them in an order that keeps their attention throughout the night. There’s nothing lamer than a bad Halloween movie marathon, so here at CraveOnline we are presenting The Horror Movie Marathon of the Day.
Related: 10 Easy Halloween Costumes for Movie-Lovers
Every weekday from now until Halloween, CraveOnline will present a carefully planned horror movie marathon around a specific theme, so you can choose whichever one sounds best for you and your social circle. We do this every year and we’ve got the formula down to an exact science. Unless you’re ridiculous hardcore, most horror movie marathons only last one night, which gives you time to watch approximately six films. We’ll tell you which six films to watch (and provide you with plenty of alternates in case you’ve seen our #1 picks already), and in which order to maximize your socializing and compensate for the attention spans of your guest.
To start with, we’re tackling one of the most popular horror genres around: zombies. There are so many walking dead movies that picking a good one that you haven’t already seen can be a real hassle. Fortunately, we’ve seen them all, and have a ton of suggestions.
Related: 10 Hilarious Zombie Pranks
You’ll want to plan ahead for your zombie movie marathon. Get a playlist together featuring selections by The Zombies, Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” the Cranberries song “Zombie” and the theme song to “The Walking Dead.” You can play as your guests file in, or between movies. You’ll also want to stock up on foods that either zombies would eat – lots and lots of meat – or that survivors often subsist on in a zombie movie. Canned goods, Twinkies, anything with an expiration date that’s more than two years in the future.
But it’s important not to get too wrapped up in the festivities to forget about the movies, so set yourself a schedule. The first movie should begin at a specific time – we recommend 6pm or 7pm to get an early start – and there shouldn’t be more than 10 minutes between each movie. Plenty of time for a bathroom break, but not enough time to lose interest in why you’re all here… to watch awesome zombie movies on the scariest night of the year.
Slideshow: Let’s Plan Your Zombie Movie Marathon!
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
Let's Plan Your Zombie Movie Marathon
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1. The Duh
You don't want to blow anyone's brains out early, so you always want to start your movie marathon with the most obvious film imaginable. Edgar Wright's 2004 rom-zom-com Shaun of the Dead is a crowd-pleasing favorite that everyone has already seen, so they won't feel too bad if they show up late and miss the first half of it.
Alternates:
The Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Dawn of the Dead (1978)
28 Days Later... (2002)
Dawn of the Dead (2004) -
2. The Unknown Classic
You'll never have a more attentive audience than for your second film, so you'd better make it count. Pick a zombie movie that most people haven't heard of, but is secretly amazing. Michele Soavi's 1994 cult classic Cemetery Man is the perfect fit. It stars Rupert Everett (aka "That Guy from My Best Friend's Wedding") as a man who fights off zombies nightly at the cemetery where he works. But when he and his assistant fall in love with the corpses, doing what has to be done gets a lot harder. It's funny, it's violent, it's sexy, it's a classic... and most people have never even heard of it.
Alternates:
The Video Dead (1987)
Night of the Creeps (1986)
Rec 3: Genesis (2012) -
3. The Background Noise
Your guests are probably getting a little antsy by now, but you still want to keep the marathon going. Pick a film that's a little slow but has some memorable highlights, so you can direct your attention to the screen when something awesome happens but let them mingle the rest of the time. Lucio Fulci's 1979 Zombie (aka Zombi 2) is perfect for this: in between a zombie fighting a shark and one of the grossest eye-gougings in movie history, it's actually a little bit of a bore.
Alternates:
Shock Waves (1977)
The Dead Hate the Living! (2000)
Any of the Resident Evil Movies (2002-2012) -
4. The Jumpstarter
Alright, your guests have had their fun. It's time to get their attention again with the goriest, craziest zombie movie imaginable. And we can think of no better example than Peter Jackson's 1992 horror-comedy classic Dead Alive (aka Braindead), in which a mommy's boy winds up hiding his mother's zombification, leading to an infected community, a gross undead baby and the bloodiest finale in movie history. Just don't let your guests try the lawnmower bit without supervision.
Alternates:
Return of the Living Dead (1985)
Undead (2003)
Dead Snow (2009) -
5. The Oddball
And now your guests think they've seen everything, right? It's time to prove them wrong - and reward the stalwart guests who have been here all night - with the oddest zombie movie you can think of. It doesn't get much odder than Mark Goldblatt's 1988 buddy cop zombie-comedy-action thriller Dead Heat, which stars Joe Piscopo as a cop whose straight-laced partner, Treat Williams, becomes the living dead but still keeps showing up for work. It's one of the most mismatched cop movies around, and it explodes into monster-fighting nonsense by the end.
Alternates:
Ed and His Dead Mother (1993)
My Boyfriend's Back (1993)
House of the Dead 2 (2005) -
6. The Stinker
The party is winding down, everyone's going home, and only you and a couple of stragglers are left. You're probably all too sleepy to devote much attention to a good movie. So wind things down with a real piece of crap, like Ed Wood's 1959 Plan 9 from Outer Space, considered by many to be the worst movie ever made. It's slow, it's stupid, and it's a lot of fun to talk back to it as you doze off to dreamland on the couch, love seat or comfy, comfy carpet.
Alternates:
The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies (1964)
Flight of the Living Dead (2007)
Zombie Strippers (2008)
