Horror Channel FrightFest

FrightFest was founded by Paul McEvoy, Ian Rattray and Alan Jones and staged its first event in 2000 at the Prince Charles cinema, off of London’s Leicester Square. Its August Bank Holiday weekend date has remained a fixture ever since. Greg Day, their long-serving PR man, joined the company as a co-director in 2006.

The objective of FrightFest was to provide the UK with a horror fantasy festival of similar stature to the market leaders in Europe, including Sitges, Spain and Brussels, Belgium. FrightFest has evolved into a community where audiences and guests travel from all over the world to be part of the event’s unique atmosphere. Due to rapidly increasing audiences and its burgeoning reputation as a must-attend event, FrightFest moved home to Screen One of the Odeon West End, Leicester Square in 2005 and staged the Land of the Dead premiere, with legendary icon George Romero in attendance. The 2006 event found FrightFest having to move again to the larger Screen Two auditorium in the Odeon West End and extending its length from four to five days. This was a banner year with the second only screening of Pan’s Labyrinth after its Cannes Film Festival debut. Director Guillermo del Toro attended for the second time that year and called FrightFest “The Woodstock of Gore,” and the audience sang Happy Birthday to Starsky & Hutch icon David Soul.

The 2009 season marked FrightFest’s biggest leap in their 10th anniversary year. Moving just a couple of hundred yard across Leicester Square, the festival upgraded to the UK’s largest traditional cinema screen at the Empire Cinema. This heralded the most ambitious line-up of new genre movies ever presented in the heart of London’s glittering West End. A second and third screens soon followed with the addition of the popular Discovery and ReDiscovery strands.

After five exciting years at the Empire Cinema where additional films and extra screenings were added to the line-up, FrightFest was on the move again, this time 100 yards along Leicester Square to the VUE West End, a state of the art multiplex. There FrightFest settled into five of the cinema’s nine screens. Taking advantage of the additional space FrightFest expanded again, increasing the number of films featured to 74 over the event’s action packed five days.

Outside of the main August event FrightFest also stages a Halloween extravaganza and hosts a regular two-day terror-thon at the Glasgow Film Festival every February. FrightFest also organizes special events, which have included Dario Argento at the Coronet, Notting Hill Gate, Drag Me to Hell with Sam Raimi, Hostel Day, Dead Day, An Evening with Jessica Alba, Clive Barker in Discussion, Cold In July with director Jim Mickle and co-presenting the Italian rock band Goblin in concert. FrightFest has also launched Jake West’s two Video Nasties documentaries and hosted the world premieres of Neil Marshall’s The Descent and Chris Smith’s Black Death starring Eddie Redmayne,