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8.26.2023
KHFFXV Details & First Wave Titles Announced
The Knoxville Horror Film Fest is pleased to announce the primary details for our fifteenth annual weekend of hand-picked scares, running Thursday, October 19 through Sunday, October 22 with four days and three nights of screening events split between Central Cinema, Maryville’s Parkway Drive-In and – for the first time ever – downtown Knoxville’s iconic Bijou Theatre.
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The Bijou will host Thursday’s opening night event as Xül Beer Co presents a KHFF Grindhouse Gala showcasing the results of this year’s Grindhouse Grind-out Filmmaking Competition, an annual highlight in which teams of local creatives are given two weeks to produce a fake movie trailer. The evening will be rounded out with some exciting marquee programming and an afterparty, with details TBA. (Check back for full Grind-out details & registration, coming 9/1!)
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Admission to the Bijou is included with the KHFFXV Festival Pass, on sale 9/1.
Standalone tickets will be available once final programming details are confirmed.
THURSDAY OCTOBER 19
On Friday afternoon KHFF moves up the street to our home base at Central Cinema for an intimate weekend of scary movie excellence, presenting hours of short films (including our locally-sourced Tennessee Terrors program) alongside a slate of the coming year’s finest independent horror features, including John Pata’s Panic Fest award-winner Black Mold; Larry Fessenden’s werewolf riff Blackout; Joe Lynch’s Lovecraft adaptation Suitable Flesh, starring Heather Graham and Barbara Crampton; Demián Rugna’s demonic thriller When Evil Lurks; Anthony Cousins’ found footage crowdpleaser Frogman; and Where The Devil Roams, the Adams Family’s much-anticipated followup to KHFF 2021 prizewinner Hellbender. But that's certainly not all.... we'll be announcing more in the coming weeks, including our short film slate, special guests and additional features.
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Due to limited venue size, Central Cinema programming is reserved for those with a full KHFFXV Festival Pass, on sale 9/1. With the exception of Tennessee Terrors (details TBA), we will not be offering individual admission.
On Saturday evening carloads of horror fans will descend on Maryville's Parkway Drive-In for this year's triple feature centerpiece event: a “Double Dekker” presentation of Fred Dekker’s classics The Monster Squad (1987) and Night Of The Creeps (1986) paired with 1982’s Halloween III: Season of the Witch, long dismissed as “the one without Michael Myers” but lately and rightly reclaimed as a spooky season essential. KHFF will also be hosting a vendor fair at the Parkway giving attendees a chance to support some of the area’s best horror and film culture retailers!
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Admission to the Parkway is included with the KHFFXV Festival Pass, on sale 9/1.
Standalone event tickets will be available once final programming details are confirmed.
SATURDAY OCTOBER 21
DRIVE-IN TRIPLE FEATURE & VENDOR FAIR
ALL ABOUT KHFF
Launched in 2009 with a single evening program of local & touring short films, the Knoxville Horror Film Fest has grown into a four-night extravaganza of exciting features and unmissable short films, including special events like live podcasts, trivia sessions and our annual Grindhouse Grind-out filmmaking competition. We’re proud to be not only East Tennessee’s longest-running film festival but also one of the Southeast’s premier annual genre film events.
After a decade of screening at local venues like the Pilot Light, Relix Variety Theatre, Scruffy City Hall and Regal Cinemas Downtown West 8, the KHFF crew in 2018 opened single-screen moviehouse Central Cinema, which now serves as the festival’s home base. Between our theater’s intimate 88-seat setting and high-profile festival screenings at larger venues like Downtown West and Maryville’s Parkway Drive-In, hundreds of horror fans from around the region enjoy KHFF’s offerings every October.
Despite its ever-growing scale, KHFF remains a DIY labor of love for the small crew that puts it on each year, and we like to think the result is a film festival clearly run by fans, for fans.