Late in 1992, a friend of mine reached boiling point when I was doing no more than bitching about the complete and utter lack of decent genre festivals for true Horror fans, dammit. 'Why don’t you do one yourself, then, if you’re so pissed off?' said he. I stomped off home in mini-sulk, made a few cautious calls to the BFI, got some people round, drank a lot, dreamt about the perfect festival, and then did something rather rash and booked a weekend at the Filmhouse for six months time.

Dead by Dawn isn’t perfect. Probably. But I am still a bit smug today that it’s a festival I’d be more than happy to pay to go to, and I hope you feel the same way.

All festivals are, of course,works in progress, so if there’s something you think could be improved or that has somehow been overlooked, all you have to do is contact me and let me know what you think and what you want!

I decided early on to set the tone for how I wanted the festival to always be, and for that reason opened the first ever Dead by Dawn with a screening of Murnau's 1922 classic 'Nosferatu' with live piano accompaniment. Left me speechless! (and that doesn’t happen very often)