What about mini marathons?
Some days I’m in the mood for themed episodes and watch two to four episode mini marathons. It can range from the Coleman Francis episodes to spy movies (Danger! Death Ray!, Code Name: Diamond Head, and Secret Agent, Super Dragon) or “70s Guy Turns into Something” movies (It Lives by Night and Track of the Moon Beast). I’m always trying to figure out new combinations and would love to hear other people’s suggestions!
As painful as it sounds, I’ve actually had fun with a Coleman Francis trifecta: “Red Zone Cuba,” then “Beast of Yucca Flats,” then I end with the comparatively upbeat “The Skydivers.”
What’s your pick?
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Lately, mine have been totally random- like the one from yesterday:
First Spaceship on Venus
Blood Waters of Dr. Z
Beast of Yucca Flats
Operation Double 007
I have no clue what connects them- but, in retrospect, they fit together well.
A perfect riff for that moment: “The Three Stooges just got better!”
A ‘Stock Footage’ marathon where they re-use the same stock footage:
Robot Monster
King Dinosaur
Gypsy in the theater marathon:
Untamed Youth
Wild Rebels
Hercules and the Captive Women
Gilligan’s Island Marathon:
Giant Spider Invasion (Alan Hale, Jr.)
Angels Revenge (Jim Backus and Alan Hale, Jr.)
MST The Movie (Russel Johnson)
Tor Johnson Marathon:
Beast of Yucca Flats
Bride of the Monster
The Unearthly
Batman Vs Superman Preview Marathon:
Zombie Nightmare (Adam West)
Jungle Goddess (George Reeves)
Allison Hayes Marathon:
The Gunslinger
The Unearthly
The Undead
The Crawling Hand
@ 13 and 27- Such a great idea! I have always felt that those milestone episodes brought out the best of the MST crew. Each episode is great.
@ 24 – Great idea for a rocketship marathon, I love those cheesy rocketship movies.
What,no Arachnophobia night? Earth vs.The Spider. Attack of the Giant Spiders and Horror of Spider Island!! What would GARRRRY think????
When I want to get ‘high’, I`ll go for the Aviation Trio of ‘San Francisco International’…’The Starfighters’… and ‘The SkyDivers’.
Should anyone choose to follow suit; Engage in PLENTY of Re-Fueling during your flight (but be sure you pack your ‘chute’, just in case!)… and Wear your Poofie Suit….
Remember, you`re doing My Marathon, My Way….you`ll feel a dense Smug coming on!
(removes spectacles, then puts them back on, gazing upwards)
“Oh my god …you’re huge.”
hums Bonanza theme in slo-mo …it’s the blind leading the bland
The Batman 1966 Marathon:
Lost Continent (The Joker)
Zombie Nightmare (Bruce Wayne/Batman)
The Mole People (Alfred)
Another great topic……
I’ll go with:
The Alison Hayes marathon
-The Unearthy
-The Undead
-The Gunslinger (with Beverly as an added bonus)!
The foreign film marathon
-The Final Sacrifice
-Werewolf
-Pod People
The stupid looking monster marathon
-The Creeping Terror
-The Horror of Party Beach
-Terror from the year 5000
There are just too many more to list…….
Lots of GREAT ideas here, folks.
Not quite on topic, but I put all 4 Rifftrax “Norman” shorts together on one disk — a perfect companion for that holiday season depression!
Oh, man, yeah, absolutely.
I’ve got a metric buttload of “mixes” set up in VLC Player based on all sorts of themes, or featuring films by one specific director: Space movies, going-to-the-moon movies, secret agents, caper flicks, post-apocalyptic/dystopian, Gamera, Ed Wood, Coleman Francis, Corman, Lippert, Lugosi, the Biker Trilogy, and double features with the two Rocky Jones episodes and the Fugitive Alien episodes. I even have a “Dreary Rainy Day Mix” which includes episodes with kind of dreary, gray movies: Tormented, Rebel Set, Red Zone Cuba. I also have a separate playlist for the General Hospital shorts — which were three segments of a single GH episode — along with some of the ad-parody host segments interspersed in between: SPACOM, Mighty Jack dog food, Mystos Mints, Cowboy Mike’s Own Original Red-Hot Ricochet Barbeque Sauce.
Between MST3K, Cinematic Titanic and RiffTrax, they’ve done enough Corman and Ed Wood movies for me to do a “festival” playlist for either of those directors.
I’ve also downloaded copies of the original theatrical trailers for almost all the movies in my MST3K collection, which I include in my “mixes” to spice things up a bit.
Oh, wow, yeah. I almost forgot that one.
I have a “Juvenile Delinquents” mix that includes Teenage Strangler, The Violent Years, and Teenage Crime Wave, along with the short What About Juvenile Delinquency and including one non-MSTied movie, a gritty little stinker called Teenage Gang Debs, which is available on DVD from Something Weird Video and really should’ve been on MST3K. Here’s the original theatrical trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_w6HCw3p5c
I have a double-feature playlist with Frank’s first and last episodes — Rocketship XM and Samson Vs The Vampire Women, along with a “mix” I’ve entitled “Viva Mexico!” featuring The Robot Vs The Aztec Mummy, The Black Scorpion, and Samson Vs The Vampire Women.
I have a VLC Player “mix” entitled “It’s All Greek To Me” featuring Hercules, Hercules Unchained, and Hercules And The Captive Women, topped off with the Film Crew’s presentation of The Giant Of Marathon which, while not “officially” a Hercules movie, is still set in Classical Greece and stars Steve Reeves as a big, muscled-up demigod-like hero. Colossus And The Headhunters isn’t in it, though, as while that episode is hilarious, the movie had absolutely nothing at all related even tenuously to ancient Classical Greek or Roman history or mythology. I’m kind of a stickler for that.
I have a “mix” entitled “TorFest” which features all the episodes Tor Johnson appears in: The Unearthly, Bride Of The Monster, Beast Of Yucca Flats, and finishing with RiffTrax’ Plan 9 From Outer Space.
I also like to enjoy my Alan Hale Double Feature, featuring two episodes with Alan Hale in them, playing a sheriff both times: playing it straight and serious (pre-Gilligan) in The Crawling Hand, and playing it tongue-in-cheek (post-Gilligan) in The Giant Spider Invasion (almost like Hale playing the Skipper playing a sheriff). It’s kind of interesting to watch two Alan Hale performances in movies made twenty years apart, playing the same kind of character, at both ends of his career arc — as an up-and-coming character actor in the late ’50s, and as a doughy has-been in the mid ’70s.
And while I’m on the subject, I also often enjoy a Bill Rebane double feature of Monster A Go-Go and Giant Spider Invasion, just to see how much Rebane’s work evolved and matured over the years.
Oh, yeah, right on. I’ve got that covered, too. Actually, along with those, I also have RiffTrax’ Mesa Of Lost Women in my “Spider Mix” as a giant mutated spider figures prominently in the “plot”.
But, how can you have a marathon with the theme of Thoroughly Unlikeable Heroes without Warrior Of The Lost World and Deathstalker?
I have a marathon “mix” entitled “Third-Rate Festival” containing episodes whose films are just rock-bottom piss-poor both in terms of technical competence (photography, editing, sound, effects, continuity) and artistically (plot, writing, acting, directing):
-Monster A Go-Go
-The Creeping Terror
-The Incredibly Strange Creatures Etc.
-Manos
Don’t forget that Russell Johnson was also in The Space Children — “Can you imagine getting your butt kicked by ‘and the rest’?” — and that Alan Hale also played a sheriff in The Crawling Hand.
I’ve done that one, too, now and again. I also like to include SST Death Flight from Season 0 as a companion piece for the slab of made-for-TV cheese that is San Francisco International.