Filmstock Arizona 2013

Filmstock runs a number of film festivals every year in the four corner states: New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona. In addition to running a competition in each state each year, Filmstock cycles some of the winners to screen as special engagements in other states, effectively working as its own festival circuit.

Filmstock has been running since 2009 but I'm new to it with the Filmstock Arizona 2013 screenings that are coming up at Tempe Pollack Cinemas between 5th and 7th December.

The event runs over three days with a number of selections of short films, introduced by local actors of note. This event will see selections presented by James Ray, Greg Renfro, Victoria Paege, Shane Dean, Tiffany Shepis, Laurie Love and Greg Bronson.

Here are all the films screening at this event this year, 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

Documentary Shorts
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
Into the Black	2012	5	5	Dae Hyun Song	IMDb
A Beautiful Waste	2012	5	5	Jon Kasbe	IMDb
Keeper of the Mountains	2013	5	5	Allison Otto	IMDb

Drama in Shorts
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
Elegy for a Revolutionary	2013	5	5	Paul Van Zyl	IMDb
Inseparable	2007	6	6	Nick White	IMDb
Brightwood	2012	5	5	L Gabriel Gonda	IMDb
Insecurity	2013	5	5	Robert Brink	IMDb
Ta	2013	5	5	Kunlakan Chanakan Mamber	IMDb

Actors' Showcase with Animated and Art Shorts
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
Highway Duel	2013	4	4	Auburn Hodgson Setlogelo	IMDb
Ritz & Spitz	2012	4	5	Kirby Ann White	IMDb
Apparition	2013	5	5	Jahanara Saleh	IMDb

Comedy in Shorts
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
Love Notes	2013	5	5	Ryan Scheer	IMDb
Silent Treatment	2013	5	5	Mark Lobatto	IMDb
Spare Real Gun	2012	4	4	Jayme Davis	IMDb
The Things My Father Never Taught Me	2012	6	5	Burleigh Smith	IMDb
The Worst Best Man	2013	4	4	Kenny Colt	IMDb
El Western	2013	5	5	Ivan Malekin	IMDb
Happily Ever After	2012	5	5	Yonni Aroussi & Ben Genislaw	IMDb
SuperFuzz	2013	6	6	David Towles-Moore	IMDb

High Drama
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
A Stray	2013	5	5	Hayden Blades	IMDb
Those That Play Your Clowns	2013	6	5	John M Broadhead	IMDb
The Last Piper	2013	4	4	Iain Forbes	IMDb
Menschen	2012	5	5	Sarah R Lotfi	IMDb

Phoenix FearCon de los Muertos!

The first Phoenix Fear Film Fest was a busy one day film festival. It grew over the years to include more convention oriented activities such as vendors and special guests, leading to a partial rename to Phoenix FearCon. Every year included both aspects, but the balance between them shifted over time until 2014's Phoenix FearCon de los Muertos! was primarily a convention with a film festival attached.

Taking place immediately after Hallow'en at Fear Farm in west Phoenix, a working haunted house attraction, there were more guests than could be comfortably counted, from regulars like Tiffany Shepis to new faces like Ken Foree. None tied to specific screenings. Vendors grew to huge numbers and there were also panels and concerts. Most importantly, it became a two day event for the first time, a cause for great delight amongst horror film fans because Jim & Chris McLennan from Trash City have built up a reputation for being particularly strong on international and independent film.

Beyond that additional second day, I was particularly keen on experiencing FearCon de los Muertos! because Chris and Jim asked me to select and program two short selections, which I was honoured and very happy indeed to do. I selected nineteen films from a few hundred submissions and a few titles (like Plush and The Woodman and the American Woman) that I'd been dying to program somewhere. Ken Miller, director of Dust Jacket attended for a Q&A that was all too brief because of festival schedule constraints. Jim McLennan programmed the features.

Here are all the films that were shown at Phoenix FearCon de los Muertos!, with film titles linking to my reviews and the IMDb pages added for reference, where possible.

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

Features
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
Dorchester’s Revenge: The Return of Crinoline Head	2014			Tommy Faircloth	IMDb
Blood Runs Black	2014			Andrew Muto	IMDb
Circus of the Dead	2014	4	-	Billy 'Bloody Bill' Pon	IMDb
The House of Forbidden Secrets	2013			Todd Sheets	IMDb
Berkshire County	2014			Audrey Cummings	IMDb
Mar Negro	2013	4	-	Rodrigo Aragão	IMDb

Shorts A
Night Mare	2014	5	5	Juan Carlos Camardella	n/a
Sometimes It Comes	2013	5	5	Félix Llorente	IMDb
Martyn	2013	5	5	Francesco Picone	IMDb
Dust Jacket	2013	5	5	Kenneth Miller	IMDb
Plush	2011	6	7	Ryan Denmark	IMDb
Ghost Light	2014	5	5	P J Germain	IMDb
Waterborne	2014	5	5	Ryan Coonan	IMDb
Special	2014	5	5	Mikeal Burgin	IMDb
The Woodman and the American Woman	2013	6	5	Jesús Hernández	IMDb

Shorts B
Hellytubby	2012	5	5	Matt Iseminger	n/a
Cowboy Ben	2014	5	5	Jon Shaikh & Scott Rawsthorne	IMDb
Tin & Tina	2013	5	5	Ruben Stein	IMDb
The Heebie-Jeebies	2014	5	5	Todd Slawsby	IMDb
Night Guards	2014	5	5	Marko Marinkovic	n/a
Sector C-17	2014	5	5	Tim Mattson	n/a
Mr Dentonn	2014	5	5	Iván Villamel	IMDb
Helsing	2014	6	6	Ryan Johnston	IMDb
Bar Talk	2013	6	6	Lowell Northrop	IMDb
Roulette	2013	6	5	Dídac Cervera	IMDb

FearCon V

Phoenix Fear Film Fest, also known as Phoenix FearCon, is an annual one day horror film festival and convention in Arizona run by Jim & Chris McLennan from Trash City, which is consistently strong on international and independent film.

2012 saw Fear Fest move to the UltraStar Cinemas in Scottsdale for its fifth year. Fred 'The Hammer' Williamson and Tiffany Shepis were special guests.

Winners were present to collect two of the three awards: Jay Lee for Best Feature (The House with 100 Eyes) and Bianca Luedeker for Best Short (I Want to Be Tom Savini). The audience favourite award went to All Men are Called Robert.

The convention side of the event grew exponentially in 2012 with a second theatre kept busy throughout the day, along with other activities both inside and outside the theatre. You can relive all the fun at the Phoenix FearCon website.

Here are all the films that were shown at Phoenix FearCon V, with film titles linking to my reviews and the IMDb pages added for reference, where possible.

To mark the occasion, I also asked both special guests to select two films each from their respective filmographies for me to review. Tiffany Shepis picked The Hazing and The Prometheus Project. Fred Williamson declined, staying in character as the Hammer to explain that everything he's in is automatically worth reviewing, so I picked a couple myself: One Down, Two to Go and Original Gangstas. I've included links to those reviews and IMDb pages also.

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

Features
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
The Holding	2011	6	5	Susan Jacobson	IMDb
The House with 100 Eyes	2011	5	5	Jay Lee & Jim Roof	IMDb
Inbred	2011	5	5	Alex Chandon	IMDb
Zero Killed	2012	4	4	Michał Kosakowski	IMDb

Shorts
All Men are Called Robert	2010	6	5	Marc-Henri Boulier	IMDb
Cargols!	2011	5	6	Geoffrey Cowper	IMDb
A Cruel Tale: Return to the Dream	2012	4	5	Andrés Vidal Alarcón	IMDb
Familiar	2012	6	6	Richard Powell	IMDb
I Want to Be Tom Savini	2011	6	5	Bianca Luedeker	IMDb
Juan y la Borrega	2011	6	5	J Xavier Velasco	IMDb
Refugio 115	2011	5	5	Ivan Villamel	IMDb
Velvet Road	2011	5	5	L Gustavo Cooper	IMDb
Whom God Helps	2012	5	5	Louis Mansfield	IMDb
Zombeer	2011	4	4	Drew Griffin	IMDb

Phoenix FearCon IV

Phoenix FearCon, also known as Phoenix Fear Film Fest, is an annual one day horror film festival and growing convention in Arizona run by Jim & Chris McLennan from Trash City, which is consistently strong on international and independent film.

2011 was the first year under the FearCon name and the second at MADCAP Cinemas in Tempe. It was coincidentally scheduled on the very day that Harold Camping very publicly predicted the Rapture would occur, so the whole day was enjoyed with that very much in mind. Hilariously, after Jim and Chris joked about scheduling the 2012 event on the next rapture date to make it two consecutive apocalypses survived, another lesser event leapt on that idea and started up as the Rapture Horror Expo. They clearly didn't realise that scheduling on a supposed rapture date provided most of the fun.

The out of town special guest was musician and stop motion animator Voltaire, who wasn't only present for the screening of his award winning short film, DemiUrge Emesis; he also presented a class on stop motion animation and performed a concert for those of us who were still there to the very end. The other special guest was scream queen Tiffany Shepis, who remains popular enough with local fans to be asked back for FearCon V. She always brightens up any convention she attends.

As always, a number of filmmakers were present to introduce their films, provide Q&As and possibly accept awards if they won.

Matthew Roth, writer/director of The Man Who Collected Food, was able to accept his award, for the Audience Favourite, in person, as was Nathan Blackwell, the director and co-writer of the winning short film, Zombie Team Building. The Best Feature award went to Eaters, an Italian zombie film, so the memorably sharp trophy had to be posted over to directors Luca Boni and Marco Ristori.

Sevé Schelenz, writer/director of Skew, was also there to present his film, as was John Francis Conway III for Panic, Fear. Conway also brought the killer from his film, Saad Nassim, who was a notable presence throughout the festival in full costume.

You can relive all the fun at the Phoenix FearCon website.

Here are all the films that were shown at Phoenix FearCon IV, with film titles linking to my reviews and the IMDb pages added for reference, where possible.

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

Features
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
Eaters	2011			Lucas Boni & Marco Ristori	IMDb
The Man Who Collected Food	2010			Matthew Roth	IMDb
Skew	2011			Sevé Schelenz	IMDb
True Nature	2010			Patrick Steele	IMDb

Shorts
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
Because There are Things You Never Forget	2008	6	6	Lucas Figueroa	IMDb
Dolls	2009	5	5	Rosa Marquez	IMDb
Ma'am's Copy Shop	2009	6	6	ZiZak	n/a
Fearful John	2010	5	5	Daniel Romero	IMDb
Stay	2010	5	5	Álvaro López León & H R Paternain	IMDb
DemiUrge Emesis	2010	5	5	Aurelio Voltaire	IMDb
Her Special Day	2009	6	5	Casey Moore	IMDb
Panic, Fear	2011	4	4	John Francis Conway	IMDb
Zombiefication	2010	4	5	Stefan Lukacs	IMDb
Zombie Team Building	2010	5	5	Nathan Blackwell	IMDb
Cabine of the Dead	2010	5	5	Vincent Templement	IMDb

Fear Film Fest 2010

Phoenix Fear Film Fest, also known as FearCon, is an independent horror film festival in Arizona run by Jim & Chris McLennan from Trash City, a modern day empire built up the lowly but characterful fanzine Jim produced back in England that I enjoyed from the first issue.

2010 saw Fear Fest move from the recently closed Chandler Cinemas, where I enjoyed the previous festival, to MADCAP Theaters in Tempe for its third festival. Many of the filmmakers made it out to introduce their films and conduct Q&As, including the directors of three of the five features and a plethora of other cast and crew. Films are only part of the FilmCon experience and you can relive all the fun at the 2010 section of the FilmFest website.

Here are all the films that were shown at Phoenix Fear Film Fest 2010, with film titles linking to my reviews and the IMDb pages added for reference, where possible.

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

Features
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
Ouija Board	2009	4	4	Matt Stone	IMDB
Roman's Bride	2009	5	5	Michael Paul	IMDB
Sexy Killer: You'll Die for Her	2008	5	5	Miguel Marti	IMDB
Shellter	2009	6	6	Dan Donley	IMDB
Trippin'	2009	5	5	Devi Snively	IMDB

Shorts
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
3 Days Later: Jesus Christ, Zombie Lord	2008	5	4	Clay Robeson	n/a
Blockhead	2010	4	4	John Francis Conway	IMDB
Bloodstained Terror	2007	3	2	Cody Cather & Doug Gehl	n/a
Bloody Daisies	2009	5	5	Cameron Kerr & David E White	IMDB
Dead Creek	2008	5	5	Mike Turner	IMDB
Neon Killer	2008	5	5	Ben Robinson	IMDB
Party Girl	2009	4	4	Jayson D Densman	IMDB
Shrove Tuesday	2009	4	4	Lee Andrew Matthews	IMDB
Sinkhole	2009	5	5	Eric Scherbarth	IMDB
Teleportal	2009	5	5	Paul Shrimpton	n/a
Tinted Windows	2009	5	5	Adam Dekraker	IMDB

Phoenix Fear Film Festival II

I knew Trash City back in England, where I read Jim McLennan's fanzine from the very first issue. I discovered that he'd moved to Phoenix before me when looking into the local wrestling scene, but I somehow never made it out to any of their events. So when I found out about Phoenix Fear Film Festival II at Chandler Cinemas, I couldn't resist showing up with a stack of Trash City zines for Jim to sign. It was a memorable first meeting.

I enjoyed the heck out of Fear Fest II, which was a notably smaller but more intimate affair than the International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival I'd first attended a year earlier. The films screened showed continuity from the first Fear Fest, not that I knew that at the time. I just sat back and enjoyed the show, which included some memorable titles that have stayed with me.

Here are all the films that were shown at Phoenix Fear Film Fest 2008, with film titles linking to my reviews and the IMDb pages added for reference, where possible.

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

Features
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
Brain Dead	2007	5	5	Kevin Tenney	IMDb
Conjurer	2008	5	5	Clint Hutchison	IMDb
Demon Kiss	2008	2	3	Dennis Devine	IMDb
Sick Girl	2007	5	5	Eben McGarr	IMDb
3 Dead Girls!	2007	5	5	Christopher Alan Broadstone	IMDb
The Death Factory: Bloodletting	2008	4	4	Sean Tretta	IMDb

Shorts
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
Raising Cleveland		4	4	Bradford Alicea	n/a
The Blue Mouth Madness		4	5	Doug Mallette	n/a
The Eye of Menw	2006	3	3	Charles A Christman III	IMDb
Jason Goes Shopping	2008	4	4	Sean J Dillingham	IMDb
Mr Video	2007	4	4	Alex Masterton	IMDb
Cheerbleeders	2008	5	5	Peter Podgursky	IMDb
It's My Birthday	2006			Shannon Lark	IMDb
Prime-Age		4	4	Daniel Steffern	n/a
Genital Genocide	2008	3	4	Doug Gehl	IMDb
Shuteye Hotel	2007	4	4	Bill Plympton	IMDb

Phoenix Fear Film Festival

I didn't go to the first Phoenix Fear Film Festival in 2006 because I didn't hear about it until its sequel in 2008. In fact, I never got to experience the Paper Heart, the location for so much cool stuff, before it closed down. Fortunately Jim and Chris McLennan don't wipe one year's details off their website when they set up the next, so we can still see which films screened and how the event all went down.

Here are all the films that were shown at Phoenix Fear Film Fest 2006, with film titles linking to my reviews and the IMDb pages added for reference, where possible.

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

Features
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
Caregiver	2007			Dennis Devine	IMDb
Dark Places	2005	5	5	Guy Crawford	IMDb
The Deepening	2006			Jim O'Rear & Ted Alderman	IMDb
The Great American Snuff Film	2003	3	3	Sean Tretta	IMDb
Malediction	2007	4	4	Kevin R Phipps	n/a
Watch Me	2006			Melanie Ansley	IMDb

Shorts
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
Alone	2005			Kenny Selko	IMDb
The Eyes of Edward James	2006			Rodrigo Gudiño	IMDb
Flesh-Eating Ghouls from Outer Space	2004			Erik Weiland	IMDb
Human No More	2004	4	4	Christopher Alan Broadstone	IMDb
Into the Flesh				Doug Gehl	n/a
No. My Other Possessed Zombie Girlfriend	2006			Timothy W Mather	IMDb
Serial Cleaners				Drew Strickland	n/a
Tortured Man				Jon Rhymes	n/a

International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival 2019

Here's my usual index of all the films, features and shorts, that are being screened at IHSFFF in 2019, with directors, years and IMDb pages (where they exist).

Those of you who have been following my coverage of the International Horror and Sci-Fi Film Festival over the years, especially those who have read my book, The International Horror and Sci-Fi Film Festival: The Transition Years will know that I see it as unfolding in sets of three years. We've gone through the Early Years, as it figured out what it was; the Indie Years, when it went on the road; the Transition Years, when it was subsumed by the Phoenix Film Festival to be its genre track; and the Pre-Teen Years, when it realised it still had an identity but wasn't quite sure what it was.

2019 is the final year in a new set of three, which seems to me like the Reaffirmation Years, during which festival director Monte Yazzie has given it a fresh emphasis within the Phoenix Film Festival, expanding its scope and improving the quality as it's gone. He's made few changes this year, the obvious one being that he's shifted two slots away from Showcase Features to Competition Features.

That change means that there are four features in competition in each of the horror and science fiction tracks this year but showcase features drop to fourteen, two of which are still to be named. On the short film side, there are once again two sets of shorts for each of horror and sci-fi. That means that we're still at 26 slots, the same as last year and the previous high of 2007.

Taking advantage of the longer running time of the festival, there are plenty of repeat showings. Each competition feature will screen three times and each competition short twice. Most showcase features will also screen twice but four are only on the schedule once and one, Survival of the Film Freaks has three screenings. I'm not sure why.

This all looks good, as do the selections. The majority of films seem to be English language, mostly from the US but with plenty of UK films and a few from Canada and Australia. The exception is on the sci-fi side, where the four competition features include one from China and another from Malaysia and the short sets include films from Qatar, Sweden, Georgia and the Ukraine.

The crew behind the festival remain the same as last year, starting with Jason Carney and the folk at the Phoenix Film Foundation. Danny Marianino and Brandon Kinchen are in charge of horror competition titles and science fiction writer Mike Stackpole handles the sci-fi competition side. Monte Yazzie is the Festival Director.

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

Horror Features
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
Isabelle	2018			Robert Heydon	IMDb
The Chicken Party	2018			Carlos R. Valencia	IMDb
My Soul to Keep	2018			Ajmal Zaheer Ahmad	IMDb
To Tokyo	2018			Caspar Seale Jones	IMDb

Sci-Fi Features
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
Excursion	2018			Martin Grof	IMDb
Last Sunrise	2019			Wen Ren	IMDb
Volition	2019			Tony Dean Smith	IMDb
The Spiral	2018			Peter Wong	IMDb

Showcase Features
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
Assassinaut				Drew Bolduc	IMDb
Automata	2019			Lawrie Brewster	IMDb
The Bastard's Fig Tree	2017			Anaïs Murugarren	IMDb
Body at Brighton Rock	2019			Roxanne Benjamin	IMDb
Darlin'	2019			Pollyanna McIntosh	IMDb
The Hole in the Ground	2019			Lee Cronin	IMDb
I’ll Take Your Dead	2018			Chad Archibald	IMDb
In Fabric	2018			Peter Strickland	IMDb
I Trapped the Devil	2019			Josh Lobo	IMDb
Nightmare Cinema	2018			Alejandro Brugués, Ryuhei Kitamura, David Slade, Joe Dante & Mick Garris	IMDb
One Cut of the Dead	2017			Shinichiro Ueda	IMDb
Redcon-1	2018			Chee Keong Cheung	IMDb
Survival of the Film Freaks	2018			Bill Fulkerson & Kyle Kuchta	IMDb
They’re Inside	2019			John-Paul Panelli	IMDb

Horror Shorts A
Plastic Hip		4		Bradford Uyeda	n/a
Third Wheel	2017			Daniel DelPurgatorio	IMDb
Keloid	2017			Brendan Pollecutt	IMDb
Rotsy	2018			D. A. Keenan	IMDb
Songbird	2018			Helen Baldwin	IMDb
The Leshiy	2019			Ben Anderson & Sawyer Purman	IMDb
The Foodies	2014			Julien de Volte & Arnaud Tabarly	IMDb

Horror Shorts B
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
Peep	2018			Zachary Dehm	IMDb
Zombied	2018			Matthew Van Vorst	IMDb
Frozen in Terror	2018			Chad Patrick Shannon	IMDb
The Whistler	2019			Jennifer Nicole Stang	IMDb
Exhibit Man	2018			Trevor Mirosh	IMDb
A Doll Distorted	2018			Niall Shukla	IMDb

Sci-Fi Shorts A
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
Transmission	2018			Rebecca Gardiner	IMDb
Bombora	2019			Augie Meleo	IMDb
Beautiful Bunkers	2018			Boone Cavender	IMDb
Lavender				Henry Boffin	n/a
Hot Knife Cold Butter	2017			Zaine Salameh	IMDb
Tik Tok	2018			R. J. Blake	IMDb
Regulation	2019			Ryan Patch	IMDb

Sci-Fi Shorts B
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
Secret Chord	2019			Karl Thyselius	IMDb
In Her Image	2018			Nikoloz Kevkhishvili	IMDb
The Way the Future Was	2019			Raphael Kryszek	IMDb
Eternity	2018			Anna Sobolevska	IMDb
Widdershins	2018	5		Simon P. Biggs	IMDb

International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival 2018

Here's my usual index of all the films, features and shorts, that are being screened at IHSFFF in 2018, with directors, years and IMDb pages (where they exist). I'll link to my reviews as I write them.

Those of you who have been following my coverage of the International Horror and Sci-Fi Film Festival over the years, especially those who have read my book, The International Horror and Sci-Fi Film Festival: The Transition Years will know that I see it as unfolding in sets of three years. We've gone through the Early Years as it figured out what it was, the Indie Years when it went on the road, the Transition Years when it was subsumed by the Phoenix Film Festival to be its genre track and the Pre-Teen Years, when it realised it still had an identity but wasn't quite sure what it was.

2018 is the middle year in a new set of three, firmly under the guidance of festival director Monte Yazzie, and he's made a serious expansion this time out, taking advantage of the longer running time of the Phoenix Film Festival as a whole.

There are 16 showcase features this year. That's not just up from 11 in 2017, it's two higher than the previous high of 14 way back in 2007. Everything else remains stable: three competition features and two sets of shorts for each of horror and sci-fi. That makes 26 slots total, matching 2007's high, when there were six sets of shorts.

As with the previous two years under Monte's guidance, attendees can see every single IHSFFF film, feature or short, and that's much appreciated. What's more, it's easier than it's been, because films are screening more often. Everything in competition is screening three times this year, rather than the usual two, and the showcase features (with three exceptions) are all screening twice. Those exceptions are The Ranger and Summer of 84, along with the first older film to make the cut since 2014, Flash Gordon. This is showing at the end of the second weekend, so will serve as a sort of closing night film for IHSFFF.

One notable difference that's surely out of Monte's control is that there's very little genre material in the wider Phoenix Film Festival and, where there is, it's not really horror/sci-fi.

The crew behind the festival remain the same as last year, starting with Jason Carney and the folk at the Phoenix Film Foundation. Danny Marianino and Brandon Kinchen are in charge of horror competition titles and science fiction writer Mike Stackpole handles the sci-fi competition side. Monte Yazzie is the Festival Director.

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

Horror Features
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
The Evil Within	2017	6	5	Andrew Getty	IMDb
Marla Mae	2018	5	-	Lisa van Dam-Bates	IMDb
Secret Santa	2018	6	-	Adam Marcus	IMDb

Sci-Fi Features
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
Andover	2018	6	6	Scott Perlman	IMDb
Chimera	2018	5	5	Maurice Haeems	IMDb
Darken	2017	4	4	Audrey Cummings	IMDb

Showcase Features
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
All the Creatures Were Stirring	2018	5	5	Rebekah & David Ian McKendry	IMDb
Closer Than We Think	2017	6	-	Brett Ryan Bonowicz	IMDb
Cynthia	2018	5	5	Devon Downs & Kenny Gage	IMDb
Director's Cut	2016	5	5	Adam Rifkin	IMDb
Downrange	2017	6	5	Ryuhei Kitamura	IMDb
Feral	2017	4	4	Mark Young	IMDb
Flash Gordon	1980	5	5	Mike Hodges	IMDb
The Heretics	2017	5	5	Chad Archibald	IMDb
Imitation Girl	2017	4	3	Natasha Kermani	IMDb
Lowlife	2017	6	5	Ryan Prows	IMDb
The Ranger	2018	4	4	Jenn Wexler	IMDb
Revenge	2017	5	5	Coralie Fargeat	IMDb
Rock Steady Row	2018	5	5	Trevor Stevens	IMDb
Summer of 84	2018	6	5	François Simard & Anouk & Yoann-Karl Whissell	IMDb
To Hell and Back: The Kane Hodder Story	2017	5	5	Derek Dennis Herbert	IMDb
Wildling	2018	5	5	Fritz Böhm	IMDb

Horror Shorts A
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
Love Cuts Deep	2016	6	5	Veronica Shea	IMDb
Fisher Cove	2017	5	5	Sean Skene	IMDb
It Began without Warning	2017	4	4	Jessica Curtright & Santiago C. Tapia	IMDb
The Night Delivery	2017	4	4	Scott O’Hara	IMDb
The Dollmaker	2017	6	6	Al Lougher	IMDb
Avulsion	2017	6	6	Steven Boyle	IMDb
Something in the Darkness	2017	5	4	Fran Casanova	IMDb
Rigor Mortis	2017	5	5	Matthew E. Robinson	IMDb

Horror Shorts B
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
Alfred J. Hemlock	2017			Edward Lyons	IMDb
Hope	2017	6	6	Adam Losurdo	IMDb
En Passant	2015	4	4	Barron Hilton	IMDb
What Metal Girls are Into	2017	5	5	Laurel Vail	IMDb
The Day Mum Became a Monster	2018	5	5	Joséphine Hopkins	IMDb
Grin	2017	5	5	Tanuj Chopra	IMDb

Sci-Fi Shorts A
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
Invasion		5	-	Vesa Manninen	n/a
Isabella	2017	5	-	Qihong Wei	IMDb
Metta Via	2017	5	-	Warren Flanagan	IMDb
Echo and Solomon	2017	4	-	Jem Garrard	IMDb
The Apocalypse Will Be Automated	2017	6	-	Melanie Killingsworth	IMDb
Visage	2017	6	-	Jackson Tobiska & Blake Hodges	IMDb
Bullies	2018	6	-	Daniel Bydlowski	IMDb

Sci-Fi Shorts B
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
Land of Behemoths		5	5	Fred Grant	n/a
Noro	2016	6	5	Duncan Roe	IMDb
Wishing You Well	2017	5	5	Carolyn Corkindale	IMDb
SandBox	2017	6	5	Eddie Lebron	IMDb
Caronte	2017	5	4	Luis Tinoco	IMDb

International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival 2017

Here's my usual index of all the films, features and shorts, that are being screened at IHSFFF in 2017, with directors, years and IMDb pages (where they exist). I'll link to my reviews as I write them.

Those of you who have been following my coverage of the International Horror and Sci-Fi Film Festival over the years, especially those who have read my book, The International Horror and Sci-Fi Film Festival: The Transition Years will know that I see it as unfolding in sets of three years. We've gone through the Early Years as it figured out what it was, the Indie Years when it went on the road, the Transition Years when it was subsumed by the Phoenix Film Festival to be its genre track and the Pre-Teen Years, when it realised it still had an identity but wasn't quite sure what it was.

Well, 2017 marks the start of a new set of three years, firmly under the guidance of festival director Monte Yazzie, and I can already see many strengths by looking at what's scheduled.

For a start, this is the most international that the event has been in a long time. This is especially true on the sci-fi side where all three competition features and the entire Sci-Fi Shorts B set are from foreign shores. It's less true on the horror side, but there are still features from Australia, Finland and Ireland and shorts from places as far afield as Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

There's also more content than there's been since 2014. Like that year, there are three horror features and three sci-fi features in competition, plus eleven showcase features; plus two sets of horror shorts and two more of sci-fi shorts, for a total of 21 slots. That's one slot up on last year and the trend is pleasing.

And, perhaps most importantly for genre fans, not only can we see every single IHSFFF film (as we could for the first time in 2016) but we even have options this year! That's great scheduling and I'm very appreciative of the effort that went into making that the case!

In fact, we can see every IHSFFF film and still have room on Sunday for a couple of features screening in competition in the wider Phoenix Film Festival: Unnerved and Brave New Jersey, a horror thriller and a comedy set during Orson Welles's infamous radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds in 1938.

The crew behind the festival remain the same as last year, starting with Jason Carney and the folk at the Phoenix Film Foundation. Danny Marianino and Brandon Kinchen remain in charge of horror competition titles and science fiction writer Mike Stackpole handles the sci-fi competition side. Monte Yazzie is the Festival Director.

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

Horror Features
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
The 6th Friend	2017	5	5	Letia Clouston	IMDb
Happy Hunting	2017	6	6	Joe Dietsch & Louie Gibson	IMDb
The Night Watchmen	2017	5	5	Mitchell Altieri	IMDb

Sci-Fi Features
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
Anti Matter	2016	5	5	Keir Burrows	IMDb
Inherit the Stars: The Director's Cut	2015	2	3	Keishi Suenaga	IMDb
The Open	2015	5	5	Marc Lahore	IMDb

Showcase Features
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
A Dark Song	2016	5	5	Liam Gavin	IMDb
Dave Made a Maze	2017	5	6	Bill Watterson	IMDb
Found Footage 3D	2016	5	5	Steven DeGennaro	IMDb
Game of Death	2017	5	5	Sebastien Landry & Laurence Morais-Lagace	IMDb
Hounds of Love	2016	6	5	Ben Young	IMDb
Killing Ground	2016	5	5	Damien Power	IMDb
Lake Bodom	2016	3	3	Taneli Mustonen	IMDb
Sequence Break	2016	5	5	Graham Skipper	IMDb
Sweet, Sweet Lonely Girl	2016	5	4	A. D. Calvo	IMDb
Tonight She Comes	2016	5	5	Matt Stuertz	IMDb
The Transfiguration	2016	5	5	Michael O'Shea	IMDb

Horror Shorts A
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
Unfinished Business	2016	4	4	Adam Ganser	IMDb
Wandering Soul	2016	5	5	Josh Tanner	IMDb
Spell Claire		5	5	Greg Emetaz	n/a
Creatures of Whitechapel	2016	5	5	Jonathan Martin	IMDb
Shah Mat	2016	4	4	Razan Takash & Kirill Kripak	IMDb
Mister Sewer's Murder Room	2016	5	5	Abe Epperson	IMDb
A Horror Story	2016	4	4	Philip Donohue	IMDb

Horror Shorts B
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
Time to Eat	2015	5	5	Luke Guidici	IMDb
From Dusk Till Dad	2016	4	4	Abe Epperson	IMDb
Laura, Lost		4	4	Simon Sandquist	n/a
The Catalyst	2016	3	4	Alan Fine	IMDb
The Call of Charlie	2016	4	4	Nick Spooner	IMDb
Black Ring	2016	6	6	Hasan Can Dagli	IMDb
Born Again	2016	6	5	Jason Tostevin	IMDb
Kookie	2016	5	5	Justin Harding	IMDb
Beneath the Surface	2016	5	4	Michael Trainotti	IMDb

Sci-Fi Shorts A
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
Dogstein: Super Science Adventure		4	4	Tianyiming Qi	n/a
Dark Machine	2016	5	5	Sander van Dijk	IMDb
The New Politics	2016	5	5	Joshua Wong	IMDb
The Night Shift	2016	5	-	Adam Gold	IMDb
Girl #2		4	4	David H. Jeffery	n/a
Real Artists	2017	6	6	Cameo Wood	IMDb
Where No Jedi Has Gone Before	2016	5	5	Rena Yamamoto	IMDb
The Massacre at Black Divide	2016	5	5	Steve Makowski	IMDb

Sci-Fi Shorts B
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
I am the Doorway	2017	4	4	Robin Kasparik	IMDb
Gadget	2016	4	4	Sebastiano Pupino	IMDb
Zero Sum	2016	4	4	Jimmy Hay	IMDb
Might	2016	4	4	Emil Sallinen	IMDb
Enora	2016	5	5	Benoît Monney & Sami Khadraoui	IMDb