Another UK Festival of Zombie Culture gone, another day where the Phoenix Arts Centre in Leicester ran red with blood and was filled with the living dead for a 12 hour marathon of zombies and zombie movies…

The zombie movies were not simply your Hollywood affairs, these were classics and ‘never before heard ofs' and a UK Premiere thrown in for good measure. But this is not just a day of feature length films, each was preceded by a high quality gem of a short film, so, as they say in the adverts…. BOGOF…. You bought one, you got one free….

Alongside the zombie films, were a whole host of other zombie bits and pieces to get you teeth stuck into (sorry), these included Kit Cox, Caricaturist extraordinaire, Gavin Gore and Steven the make up artists, Harvey from FAB Press with his collection of DVDs, T-shirts and books covering just about every aspect of horror you could possibly want and tonnes of prizes galore including an original prop newspaper from ‘Day of the Dead.'

The opening film was the classic, original flesh-eating zombie film from icon George A. Romero, Night of the Living Dead and swiftly following this was a selection of the greatest zombie short films discovered by Terror4fun, where the ‘Rest of the World' went up against the ‘Best of British' after a hard fought battle on the clap-o-meter, the winner was deemed to be the New Zealand film ‘Zombie Movie', followed up by a the runner up, the British film, ‘I ran from a Zombie.'

The third film we showed was the surreal journey into Pakistans first zombie/gore flick, ‘Hellsground' featuring some of the most surreal and yet sinister villains ever seen on celluloid, including the acting cake seller with his dark past in Bollywood horror movies…. And then we followed this with ‘Zombie Strippers,' Jenna ‘internet actress' Jameson and Robert ‘Freddy Krueger' Englund, with this movie you get exactly what you pay for and therefore we got no complaints from any of the audience at what was the most viewed film at the event…

The next film was a proper print of ‘Return of the Living Dead' and this got the reaction we had hoped for, it was still bloody hilarious as ever and there were a couple of people who had not seen this before and they ranked it as the best zombie film they had ever seen, so high praise indeed…

Finally, we had a sudden surge for our UK premiere, as a whole host of Kiwis from London arrived for the premiere of Logan Macmillans zombie classic-to-be ‘Last of the Living.' We were honoured to have ‘Man with Shotgun' and his victim in the audience too and when the film started, it was truly awesome and the whole crowd got straight into the 3 wasters versus the rest of the world treat…

…and then for us the day was done, the bar was shut, the prizes handed out, the blood drying over the pipes in the toilets and then the journey home… But with a new topic in our brains… Just how are we gonna top this in 2009…

There are, of course, an endless list of people to thank, these include the sponsors of the event…

CAPCOM Europe Home of Resident Evil and Dead Rising

The Prizes were provided the by following:

Abaddon Books The UKs Home of Dark and Fantastic Fiction

Revolver Entertainment UK DVD and Film Distributors

The Monster Company Specialists in Film Memorabilia

The Monster Boutique Make Up, Masks, Costumes and Props

and FAB Press Cult Cinema Films, Books and Merchandise

 

And thanks to everyone that helped us out including everyone from the Phoenix, Brain, Craig but most of all, Jane and Graham, Sam and Darren and Heather and Peter...

See you next year !!!!