International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival 2007

Back in 2007, I was googling around trying to find what cultural events were happening in the Phoenix area. My mistake was to assume that Phoenix and 'the Phoenix metropolitan area' were the same thing, as little happens in Phoenix itself but plenty happens in the towns around it, like Glendale, Tempe, Chandler, Mesa, Scottsdale and so on.

Somehow I managed to find some sort of publicity about the International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival, which was in Tempe rather than Phoenix, and it seemed like fun, so my better half and I drove over to see what it was all about. Neither of us had been to a film festival before, so it was an eye-opening event for us, but we found surprises before we even made it into the Harkins Centerpoint, the host theatre for the third year. Our first stop was to buy tickets, which was handled in a disused storefront nearby, and that's where we met Brian Pulido. My wife was a fan of Lady Death, Pulido's most famous creation as a comic book writer, and so we were happy to discover that he'd co-founded the festival.

There were no less than four special guests in attendance to present major films that they'd been in. Linda Blair presented The Exorcist, Michael Beck The Warriors, Ken Foree the original Dawn of the Dead and Claudia Christian an overlooked gem from the eighties called The Hidden. We managed to win a 27x40 event poster in the charity auction that was signed by three of the four. I wasn't able to finish that set until FearCon de la Muerte in 2015 when I had Foree add his signature.

While we didn't meet any of those special guests back then, we did experience the joys of meeting filmmakers for the first time, such as Chris Power & Nathan Hynes, whose film, Long Pigs, we didn't actually see. We merely bumped into them in the corridor after we left our respective screenings on neighbouring screens and chatted for a while. Their openness and passion rubbed off on us and is one of the chief reasons we became hooked on this event and film festivals in general.

The early years were great events for short film fans. In 2007, there were three sets of horror shorts all of which we caught, along with two sets of sci-fi shorts and one set of local horror films called Seven Deadly Films. This volume of short films has not been matched in any successive year. The six competition features and fourteen showcase features haven't been matched since either.

Here are all the films that screened in 2007, with titles linking to my reviews and the IMDb pages added for reference.

Rating System
1 - Abysmal | 2 - Bad | 3 - Poor | 4 - OK | 5 - Good | 6 - Excellent | 7 - Classic

Horror Features
Title	Year	H	D	Director	IMDb
Brain Dead	2007	5	5	Kevin Tenney	IMDb
Frayed	2007			Norbert Caoili & Rob Portmann	IMDb
Long Pigs	2007	5	5	Chris Power & Nathan Hynes	IMDb

Sci-Fi Features
Title	Year	H	D	Director	IMDb
11 Minutes Ago	2007			Bob Gebert	IMDb
Nobody	2007	5	4	Shawn Linden	IMDb
The Lost Princess	2005	2	3	Duncan Pace	IMDb

Showcase Features
Title	Year	H	D	Director	IMDb
Dark Places	2005	5	5	Guy Crawford	IMDb
Dawn of the Dead	1978	7	5	George A Romero	IMDb
Days of Darkness	2007	4	4	Jake Kennedy	IMDb
The Exorcist	1973	7	7	William Friedkin	IMDb
The Hidden	1987	6	5	Jack Sholder	IMDb
Malediction	2007	4	4	Kevin R Phipps	n/a
Monster Camp	2007			Cullen Hoback	IMDb
Murder Party	2007			Jeremy Saulnier	IMDb
Netherbeast Incorporated	2007	5	5	Dean Matthew Ronalds	IMDb
Southland Tales	2006			Richard Kelly	IMDb
The Terminator	1984	7	7	James Cameron	IMDb
Trapped Ashes	2006	4	5	Sean S Cunningham et al	IMDb
The Warriors	1979	5	7	Walter Hill	IMDb
Witches' Night	2007			Paul Traynor	IMDb

Seven Deadly Films
Title	Year	H	D	Director	IMDb
Asylum	2007			Austin Nordell	IMDb
Blood Moon Rising	2007			Brian Skiba	IMDb
Executioner	2007			Jason Bustard	IMDb
Figment	2007			Jay Lee	IMDb
Room 602	2007			Jon Bonnell	IMDb
Sweet Memory	2007			Kai Staats	IMDb
Twisted Soul	2007			Brenton Covington	IMDb

Horror Shorts A
Title	Year	H	D	Director	IMDb
Anesthesia	2006	4	4	Adam Kargman	IMDb
The Butcher	2006	4	4	Joseph A Garcia	IMDb
The Lycanthrope	2007	4	4	Lucas Peltonen	n/a
Nightmare	2007	5	5	Brent Nowak	IMDb
The Sitter	2007	3	5	Angel Ruiz	n/a
The First Vampire: Don't Fall for the Devil's Illusions	2004	5	5	Jason Todd Ipson	IMDb
Summer Job	2007	6	5	James Pounce	IMDb
Gay Zombie	2007	6	6	Michael Simon	IMDb

Horror Shorts B
Title	Year	H	D	Director	IMDb
Criticized	2006	5	5	Richard Gale	IMDb
Harbinger	2007	3	4	Walt Bost	IMDb
Revelation Nine	2007	2	4	Vance Null	n/a
Para-Normal	2007	5	4	Lauren Timmons	IMDb
Dara	2007	6	5	Kimo Stamboel & Timothy Tjahjanto	IMDb
Psycho Hillbilly Cabin Massacre!	2007	5	5	Robert F Cosnahan III	IMDb
Itsy Bitsy	2006	5	5	David May	IMDb

Horror Shorts C
Title	Year	H	D	Director	IMDb
The Toll	2006	6	6	J Zachary Pike	IMDb
Pig Tale	2007	5	5	Adrien Van Viersen	IMDb
We're Closed	2007	3	4	Troy Wilson	IMDb
The Descendent	2006	5	5	Bobby Glickert	IMDb
Gourmet	2007	5	5	Mark Oguschewitz	IMDb
AWOL	2006	6	6	Jack Swanstrom	IMDb
Of Darkness	2006	4	5	Gary E Irwin	IMDb
Coming to Town	2006	6	6	Carles Torrens	IMDb

Sci-Fi Shorts A
Title	Year	H	D	Director	IMDb
Mogadon 7	2003			Philippe Roberge	IMDb
The Un-Gone	2007			Simon Bovey	IMDb
ELI	2007			Josh Lee Kwai	IMDb
The Nothing Pill	2008			Yu Gu	IMDb
Haunted Planet	2007			Danielle Stallings	IMDb
Glitch	2007			Peter Ricq	n/a
Face Machine	2006			Justin Simms	IMDb

Sci-Fi Shorts B
Title	Year	H	D	Director	IMDb
Epicac	2008			Will Tully	IMDb
Other Worlds	2006			George Graham	IMDb
Víctor y la máquina	2006			Carlos Talamanca	IMDb
Menagerie of Space	2007			Mack Duncan	IMDb
Maklar, Anyone?	2006			Phil Guzzo	IMDb
La Lluvia	2006			Nofre Moya	IMDb
Auto Da Fe	2007			Steve Rainbow	IMDb