Fall HorrorHound Film Festival

The HorrorHound Film Fest and Script Competition (#H2F2) takes place semi-annually as part of the largest horror convention in the US – HorrorHound Weekend. HorrorHound Weekend and Film Fest have been the recipient of multiple Rondo Awards (an annual National awards program dedicated to horror, as voted on by the fans). Our events have won Best Horror Convention (twice), as well as Best Fan Event (twice). HorrorHound Weekend and Film Festival was also honored in 2016 by NUVO Magazine as recipients of their Cultural Vision Trailblazer Award for our continued support of independent filmmakers and cinema. HorrorHound Film Fest (an IMDb recognized event) was also named in Cinema Runner's "Indie Horror's Secret Seven," where HorrorHound was named the most influential brand in indie horror. Further, Lloyd Kaufman (President and founder of Troma Entertainment) officially recognized HorrorHound festival promoters with Official Troma Diplomas in 2018 for supporting Truly Independent Art. In March of 2022, Dread Central named the HorrorHound Film Festival as one of the Best Horror Film Festivals in the World.

For our Spring 2024 HorrorHound Film Festival, we added a script competition, expanding our showcasing of horror beyond the big screen. Accepting short and feature scripts, we are bringing all forms of horror cinema entertainment to our audience.

Our history:

Beginning humbly in 2007, our events have grown to over 35,000 attendees annually. Recurring venues include Indianapolis, Indiana in September and Cincinnati, Ohio in March (with other pop-up events hosted in such cities as Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Columbus, Ohio, and Pasadena, California).

Over the years, HorrorHound has played host to significant events such as:

• The first official screening of Clive Barker’s Nightbreed: Uncut http://www.dreadcentral.com/news/15566/see-nightbreed-uncut-for-the-first-time-ever/

• Jamie Lee Curtis’ only horror convention appearance, raising money for the Los Angeles Children’s Hospital (promoted on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno”) http://www.horrorhoundweekend.com/shows/201211/faq.html

• A Nightmare on Elm Street Original Cast Tribute to Wes Craven https://twitter.com/robertbenglund/status/641991741369794560

• The Horror Host’s Tribute to Vampira hosted by Daniel Roebuck as Dr. Shocker (largest assembly of horror hosts ever … at the time)
http://www.horrorhostgraveyard.com/2010/03/vampira-tribute.html

• The Monster Channel launched at our event in 2009 as part of “100 Years of Horror”

• The launch of the Horror Host Hall of Fame, in which HorrorHound has maintained involvement in (and host to the annual ceremony) for a decade).

• In 2012, HorrorHound Film Fest teamed with Elvira (Cassandra Peterson) for Elvira’s Horror Hunt – a film fest competition resulting in the winning feature and short receiving a gala screening at the historic Vista Theater in Hollywood. The films selected for the competition were first screened at HorrorHound Weekend.

• HorrorHound Weekend has been featured on multiple TV shows such as “Toy Hunter,” “Making Monsters,” and “Paranormal Paparazzi.” Furthermore, HorrorHound Weekend has been featured in the documentaries Scream Queen, King Cohen, Fantasm: A Convention Documentary, and served as the spotlight location on The Night She Came Home – a feature-length documentary about Jamie Lee Curtis’ appearance at HorrorHound Weekend (which has been included in every Halloween home video release since the 35th Anniversary Edition release of Halloween).

HorrorHound Weekend has included the HorrorHound Film Festival since its inception in 2007, and has been home to hundreds of advance or premiere horror and dark sci-fi feature and short screenings – including titles like The Devil's Candy, Hereditary, Summer of '84, Terrifier, Blood Fest, The Hole in the Ground, Camp Cold Brook, Tucker & Dale vs Evil, Maniac (remake), Let the Right One In, Turbo Kid, Murder Party, It’s in the Blood, Lake Eerie, Martyrs (original), Tales of Halloween, Murder Party, Old 37, Funhouse Massacre, Timecrimes, Found., Rec., Dear God No!, Black Waters of Echo's Pond, Cold in July, Chillerama, The Girl Next Door, Hatchet, and the aforementioned Nightbreed: Uncut.

Filmmakers and cast members are often in attendance to support the screening … over the years many of these names have appeared to do a panel or introduction – including Lance Henriksen (Lake Eerie, It’s in the Blood, Millennium After the Millennium), Joe Dante (Camp Cold Brook), Tom Atkins (Polybius), Robert Englund (Funhouse Massacre), Ethan Embry (The Devil's Candy), Robert Kurtzman (Lake Eerie, Funhouse Massacre), Kane Hodder (Old 37, To Hell and Back), Danielle Harris (Night of the Living Dead: Darkest Dawn), Michael Ironside (Turbo Kid), Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk (Tucker & Dale vs Evil), Michael Biehn (The Victim), Anne Bobby (Hanover House), Harry Manfredini (The Days God Slept), etc.

Our celebrity guests have often commented on how much they enjoy their experience at HorrorHound Weekend. It was this reputation that led Jamie Lee Curtis to choose HorrorHound for her one and only convention appearance as well as Clive Barker for choosing us for his first screening of Nightbreed: Uncut.

During 2020, thanks to the Cover-19 pandemic, HorrorHound Weekend physical events were sidelined due to quarantine declarations by the government. As part of our efforts to maintain the HorrorHound Film Festival, we switched to online virtual events for May and September, 2020. These events were livestream weekend-long ventures managed by in-house original platform programming to maintain safety for all screening films (including IP watermarking and hard user login interface). The events expanded fan interaction with live chat and video chat features as well as filmmaker Q&As. The virtual aspect of our event was so exciting, reaching a larger fanbase than we could otherwise, and showcasing the potential growth of reaching more and more new audiences – that we will be maintaining this aspect of #H2F2 as part of the overall HorrorHound Weekend experience in the coming years.

In September of 2021, we returned to physical screenings as well as continued our virtual screenings during HorrorHound Rewind, an online event that featured film screenings, panel screenings, sneak peek of upcoming guests, and much more. This event will be part of the HorrorHound offerings for years to come.

In March of 2022, Dread Central named the HorrorHound Film Festival as one of the Best Horror Film Festivals in the World.

Also, in March of 2022, HorrorHound Weekend and HorrorHound Film Festival launched a new award, the Icon Award. The first award recipient was Adam Green.