The International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival used to be a sister festival to The Phoenix Film Festival, run in genre season in October. It was shorter, cheaper and more fun, as well as being restricted to genre film. However it effectively ceased to be as a separate entity after the sixth event in 2010.In 2011, the genre festival was subsumed by the main festival. It moved to the Harkins Cine Capri and effectively became the late night programming for the Phoenix Film Festival in April. Special guest slots dropped to one.
The 2011 festival was a notable failure, though, to be fair, the shift meant that it came only six months after the previous one. Very little was shown and mostly at the same time on different screens, so it was impossible to see much of anything. I managed to see a total of four films. In previous years I'd seen that much before the weekend arrived and everything got busy. What's more, the presentations were consistently mangled with bad introductions and broken sound and video. A large part of me wasn't looking forward to 2012 at all.
Fortunately, 2012 turned out to be a vast improvement. While scheduling was still erratic and there was only one selection of horror shorts, all the technical issues were solved and the number and range of films shown was far more expansive. Also, quite a few of the Phoenix Film Festival movies turned out to sit well with the horror/sci-fi vibe, meaning that it was possible to fill most of the scheduling gaps with films that could easily have been part of the International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival programming.
This year's special guest was Michael Biehn, presenting The Victim. Many other pictures had cast and crew present, not just the local films, so there were plenty of Q&As and many new friendships were forged.
The people running this festival stayed consistent. Check them all out if you're into film in Arizona, beginning with Chris and Jason and the folks at the The Phoenix Film Foundation. Andrea, the Midnite Movie Mamacita handled the horror/sci-fi programming. Program directors remained Danny and Brandon from I Can Smell Your Brains for horror; and science fiction writer Mike Stackpole for sci-fi.
Here are all the films showing this year, with film titles linking to my reviews and the IMDb pages added for reference. I've also included the Phoenix Film Festival films that I saw.
Rating System
1 - Abysmal | 2 - Bad | 3 - Poor | 4 - OK | 5 - Good | 6 - Excellent | 7 - Classic
| Horror Competition Features | |||||
| Title | Year | H | D | Director(s) | IMDb |
| Below Zero | 2011 | 4 | 4 | Justin Thomas Ostensen | IMDb |
| It's in the Blood | 2012 | 6 | 6 | Scooter Downey | IMDb |
| Sci-Fi Competition Features | |||||
| Title | Year | H | D | Director(s) | IMDb |
| Folklore | 2012 | 6 | 6 | Justin Calen Chenn | IMDb |
| Pig | 2011 | 5 | 5 | Henry Barrial | IMDb |
| Showcase Features | |||||
| Title | Year | H | D | Director(s) | IMDb |
| Beyond the Black Rainbow | 2010 | 5 | 4 | Panos Cosmatos | IMDb |
| The Brain That Wouldn't Die | 1962 | 3 | 3 | Joseph Green | IMDb |
| FDR: American Badass! | 2012 | 6 | 6 | Garrett Brawith | IMDb |
| Monster Brawl | 2011 | 2 | 2 | Jesse T Cook | IMDb |
| Slumber Party Slaughter | 2012 | 4 | 4 | Rebekah Chaney | IMDb |
| The Theatre Bizarre | 2011 | 3 | 3 | Douglas Buck, Buddy Giovinazzo, David Gregory, Karim Hussain, Jeremy Kasten, Tom Savini & Richard Stanley | IMDb |
| The Victim | 2011 | 5 | 5 | Michael Biehn | IMDb |
| With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story | 2010 | 4 | 5 | Terry Dougas, Nikki Frakes & William Lawrence Hess | IMDb |
| Horror Shorts | |||||
| Title | Year | H | D | Director(s) | IMDb |
| Ambush | 2011 | 5 | 5 | Joe Bauer | IMDb |
| Bad Moon Rising | 2009 | 5 | 5 | Scott Hamilton | IMDb |
| Brutal Relax | 2010 | 5 | 5 | Adrián Cardona, Rafa Dengrá & David Muñoz | IMDb |
| Employee of the Month | 2011 | 4 | 5 | Olivier Beguin | IMDb |
| Follow the Sun! | 2011 | 5 | 5 | MK12 | IMDb |
| Roid Rage | 2011 | 4 | 4 | Ryan Lightbourn | IMDb |
| Shoreditch Slayer | 2011 | 5 | 5 | Simon Levene | IMDb |
| The Table | 2011 | 4 | 4 | Shane Free | IMDb |
| The Waking | 2010 | 5 | 5 | John Stead | IMDb |
| Sci-Fi Shorts A | |||||
| Title | Year | H | D | Director(s) | IMDb |
| 20th Century Man | 2012 | 5 | 5 | Dustin Lee | IMDb |
| Doctor Glamour | 2011 | 5 | 6 | Andrew W Jones | IMDb |
| Hollywood Forever | 2011 | 5 | 5 | Amy Ludwig | IMDb |
| Secret Identity | 2011 | 6 | 6 | Tyler MacIntyre | IMDb |
| Solaria | 2011 | 5 | 5 | John Hoey | IMDb |
| The Uncanny Valley | 2011 | 5 | 5 | Dean Law | IMDb |
| Sci-Fi Shorts B | |||||
| Title | Year | H | D | Director(s) | IMDb |
| Alchemy and Other Imperfections | 2011 | 5 | 5 | Zachary Rothman | IMDb |
| Anaphora | 2011 | 5 | 6 | André Albrecht | IMDb |
| Dream Cleaners | 2011 | 4 | 5 | Craig Phillips | IMDb |
| How to Kill Your Clone | 2011 | 4 | 5 | Jack McWilliams | IMDb |
| Mirage | 2011 | 5 | 5 | Miao Yu | IMDb |
| Outsight | 2011 | 5 | 5 | A R Madabushi | IMDb |
| Y Sci Fi | 2011 | 4 | 5 | Martin Doyle | IMDb |
| Phoenix Film Festival: Features | |||||
| Title | Year | H | D | Director(s) | IMDb |
| Andrew Bird: Fever Year | 2011 | 4 | 4 | Xan Aranda | IMDb |
| Into the Wake | 2012 | 6 | 6 | John Mossman | IMDb |
| Paranoia | 2011 | 5 | 5 | Bivás Biswas | IMDb |
| Queens of Country | 2011 | 6 | 6 | Ryan Page & Christopher Pomerenke | IMDb |
| Shuffle | 2011 | 7 | 7 | Kurt Kuenne | IMDb |
| The Woman in the Fifth | 2011 | 5 | 5 | Pawel Pawlikowski | IMDb |
| Phoenix Film Festival: Arizona Shorts | |||||
| Title | Year | H | D | Director(s) | IMDb |
| Awesome Guy: A New Identity | 2011 | 5 | 5 | Bob Marquis | IMDb |
| BlamBlamBlam, ClickClickClick | 2011 | 5 | 5 | Jaz Garewal | IMDb |
| Come Follow Me | 2011 | 5 | 5 | Devon Dresback | IMDb |
| The Fall | 2012 | 6 | 5 | Ryan Thomas Andersen | n/a |
| Granted | 2011 | 5 | 5 | The Kennedy Brothers | IMDb |
| Leviticus: God's Law | 2011 | 5 | 5 | Chris Redish | IMDb |
| Parallax | 2011 | 6 | 6 | Paul DeNigris | IMDb |
| Shine Like Gold | 2011 | 5 | 6 | Travis Mills | IMDb |
| Should've Been an Engineer | 2011 | 5 | 5 | Jason Smart | IMDb |
| Turning a Page | 2011 | 4 | 5 | Randal Lee Smith | IMDb |
| Wish Inc | 2011 | 5 | 5 | Diane M Dresback | IMDb |
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