The Art of the Movie Marathon
When you hear the words ‘Movie Marathon’ these days, it usually means a franchise binge: Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars. A night at the multiplex packed with popcorn-chomping superfans who’ve signed up for an evening of big-budget boredom.
But the real Movie Marathon is a different beast entirely. It still involves nerds – just a very specific subspecies. These are the true devotees of cinema – fans of the trashy, the deranged, the forgotten. It’s the inmates taking over the asylum, or in our case, the movie theatre, for one night of cinematic anarchy.
For our little group of nerds, the Movie Marathon first arrived in Wellington in 2000 as an extension of Ant Timpson’s Incredibly Strange Film Festival. The 2000 guidebook proudly declared: “Nine hours plus. That’s all it’s going to take to turn your brain into jelly. This year, after years of wanting to do it, we’re finally going to. A Movie Marathon.”
The guide recalled that movie marathons have a precedent in New Zealand, going back to some crazed programmers at Auckland suburban cinemas in the late 1970s and early 80s. Just take a look at some of these newspaper clippings:
I know these are hard to read, but read on!
The Hollywood in Avondale has a ‘Ghoularama Spook Show’ consisting of Creepshow, Dawn of the Dead, The Thing and Night of the Living Dead. Some unhinged person at the Pacific in Kingsland has organised a line-up of movies starting at midnight including The Exorcist, a Cheech and Chong movie, Mad Max 2, and plenty of kung fu.
The Sunday Late Show at The Astor in Balmoral includes gang flicks, and a few sword and sorcery movies, while The Tudor in Takapuna is playing Fritz the Cat and Kentucky Fried Movie, along with two movies by George A. Romero. Meanwhile, The Mayfair in Sandringham has an adult movie marathon, playing a selection of ‘Black Emanuelle’ films including the notorious Emanuelle in America, along with some British smut like The Ups and Downs of a Handyman.
Who on earth would show up to a movie theatre at midnight in suburban New Zealand in the early 80s and watch seven sex flicks in a row?
The 2000 guidebook continues, “We vividly remember sitting in the Astor in Dominion Road with friends wolfing down junk food and watching films like The Ultimate Warrior, Last Cannibal World and Sex World for hours on end. The cinema had people drifting in, smoking outside, walking about in a daze and some snoring in their seats. It was all very Roman…”
Ant Timpson had his work cut out for him, but he delivered on this legacy, pulling title after title, often scratchy 35mm prints, out of the vault. Those early marathons were both incredibly strange and incredibly fun. They didn’t just include movies – there were trashy trailers, plenty of V for sale, and many hilarious hijinks. I can vividly recall the demonic freak-out contest in 2005, when marathoners channelled their inner Linda Blair in honour of one of the movies of the night.
That’s the other thing about the Movie Marathon: you do not reveal the lineup. The secrecy is part of the ritual. It’s sacred – possibly bypassing the Classification Office every now and then – and it’s church for us movie nerds, a place to worship the God of Sinema in all His questionable glory.
Some of the strangest films I’ve ever seen are seared into my brain because of those nights. They shaped my love of cult and exploitation cinema. But one marathon a year? Not nearly enough. So, we started our own home-made version.
There are very few photos from our movie marathons – but here’s one.
It turns out, there’s a real art to programming your own Movie Marathon. You can’t just throw random oddities into a blender and hope for the best.
It’s fun to start with a trashy actioner – Deadly Prey, Hard Ticket to Hawaii, Cruel Jaws – anything with mullets and rocket launchers. People are awake, excited, and ready to laugh at nonsense.
Then, there’s a classic spot, the chance to play a much-loved gem, or maybe a forgotten classic. We’ve played Hardcore, Mandingo and one of our all-time favourites, Who Can Kill a Child?
At this point, the descent begins – third position is perfect for horror. Something like Beyond the Darkness, Pieces, and Poltergeist III has worked for us. Dinner usually lands somewhere around here, which feels appropriate.
After dinner, it’s every man for himself. And yes, it has always been men – but only five of us, tops. Not by design, just by the strange gravitational pull of male friendship. In interpersonal communication, men rely on events to stay in touch. We’re not great at phone calls or catch-ups but give us a stack of questionable films and a long night ahead, and suddenly we’re the Algonquin Round Table of trash cinema.
For good measure, we do often play a dirty movie somewhere in the middle of the marathon, too. Not an X-rated flick, just one of those pink-tinged prints featuring big breasted women once enjoyed by trench‑coated patrons on 42nd Street. The best sexploitation films are a lot of fun – like Score and Confessions of a Young American Housewife. Others are insufferable – like Deadly Weapons and Six Swedes at a Pump. I once played Daughters of Lesbos, and everyone fell asleep to the endless sound of bongo drums.
As the night wears on, you become hardened. We like to play the odd shocker, which might be why Tenement, House on the Edge of the Park and Island of Death didn’t really faze us. But in 2008 we pushed it too far with the uncut version of Cannibal Holocaust. None of us have eaten monkey brains since.
Movie number seven is the danger zone: witching hour has begun. The room feels and smells fetid, and it doesn’t really matter what we play. Everyone is getting the dry horrors, half asleep, half hallucinating. This is a good spot for something truly bizarre. You nod off, then jolt awake to The Apple, The Manitou, or Mystics in Bali. Did I really just see a disembodied head fly into a room and devour an unborn baby from a mother’s womb?
We haven’t played most of these at our home-made marathons, but exploitation posters are just so cool.
Next up is, oddly enough, not a bad spot for something nicer. Something easy on the brain, maybe a lovely piece of cheese. Sci-fi hokum works wonders here – something like It Conquered the World, The Giant Spider Invasion or The Wild, Wild Planet. It’s surprisingly easy to stay awake with a nostalgic movie. But coffee is also in order right about now.
Every Movie Marathon needs a big closer, something to wake everyone up. You need explosions. You need energy. You need something that slaps you awake. We’ve closed with Dead Heat, Demons, Judgment Night, They Live, Death Wish 3 – all bangers.
Meanwhile, the official Movie Marathon went 24 hours in 2004 and never looked back. It’s still going strong at The Hollywood in Avondale. Sometimes it’s the only place I can see certain films. In 2018 they screened The House That Jack Built (announced in advance, so I’m not giving anything away) – a movie I’d sworn never to watch from a director I hate. But in the wee small hours, surrounded by fellow lunatics, it worked. Once your brain turns to mashed potato, even Lars von Trier becomes digestible.
If you are a bona fide movie fan, you owe yourself a Movie Marathon at The Hollywood, at least once in your life.
But if you want to try this at home, check out my Letterboxd list of some of the films we’ve played at our home-made Movie Marathon over the years. Some of these landed better than others.
My advice: Build your own lineup. Rope in a few like‑minded movie gluttons. Because a Movie Marathon isn’t just an endurance test. It’s a delirious, sleep-deprived communion with the wildest corners of cinema. And when you finally stumble out into the daylight, eyes bleary, you realise: I feel like shit, but my heart is strangely full.
MATTHEW MAWKES & JUSTIN YOUNG