Dead by Dawn 2003 kicked off on Friday morning with an additional screening of THE EVIL DEAD at 11.30 which attracted all the die-hard fans who were keen to get started early! The screening was in honour of our launching A FISTFUL OF BOOMSTICK.

By the early evening the bar was buzzing and at 11pm, Robert Englund took to the stage to intro our opening movie - Craven's A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET and after that Robert answered questions from the audience and then retired to the bar where he signed everything from chopping boards to pillow cases! (Kudos to the guys with the chopping board - wish I'd thought of it!)

On the Saturday morning we started with SOFT FOR DIGGING to make sure we could give you a head start on those nightmares, and followed it up with our short film competition CUTTING EDGE. The ten short films on show all got a fantastic response with the overall winner eventually announced as James Cotter's STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT, only just beating Igor Pejic's PARADISIAQUE into second and Eduardo Rodriguez's DAUGHTER into third.

The AUDIENCE AWARD FOR BEST FEATURE went to MAY dir Lucky McKee

There's no better time than sunset for a vampire double bill, so up first was the Chilean goth-fest SANGRE ETERNA neatly chased by Kathryn Bigelow's NEAR DARK.

The evening saw a screening of the lush short EVELYN: THE CUTEST EVIL DEAD GIRL which preceded what turned out to be one of the major hits of the festival, Lucky McKee's MAY.

With just enough time to get a pint in, it was soon midnight and time for the all-nighter to get underway, starting with Yuzna's latest as Herbert West returned in style in BEYOND REANIMATOR which also had one of the best closing credits sequences I think we've ever had, and then Olaf Ittenbach's astonishing GARDEN OF LOVE and through the night then came Steven Sheil's short movie CRY, then Mike Kallio's HATRED OF A MINUTE and then THE EVIL DEAD, which took us up to breakfast time and then, full of bacon and twitching from caffeine overdoses, the early morning shows were the Argentinian no-budget joy of PLAGA ZOMBIE: ZONA MUTANTE and finally Pepe de las Heras' Paul Naschy adventure, MUCHA SANGRE.

Just to prove I've got a heart, there was a gap in the programme for a few hours recovery, and then the late afternoon started with a Q&A with Dog Soldiers' director NEIL MARSHALL and producer KEITH BELL. Seeing the trailers for that movie left us all wanting to watch it again! We followed that with the South Korea/Hong Kong/Thailand anthology movie THR3E (damn those porcelain dolls!). A quick trip to the bar, then back in time for the short movies GONE BAD I & II followed by the Australian feature UNDEAD which went down a storm. So how the hell do you follow a movie like UNDEAD? How do you follow a blood-soaked zombie plague, alien invasion and fish that just won't take it lying down?

Thank all the gods for BUBBA HO-TEP. As closing movies go, it's a gift when Elvis and JFK ("The FBI dyed me this colour") team up to take on the evils of a soul-sucking mummy in a Texas rest home. Trust me - you have to see this movie, if for no other reason than to have it confirmed that Cleopatra does the nasty!

Before that, however, four brave souls came up on stage to impersonate Ash in an attempt to win the boomstick and chainsaw-wielding standee that THQ had donated to the fest, and the eventual victor was Frazer Lee, who seemed, as far as we could tell, to be Bruce Campbell impersonating Jack Nicholson impersonating Ash…but it was good enough to send our hi-tech clapometer over the edge….

Dead by Dawn 2003 was so much fun, and I really hope you'll join us (JOIN US!) again next year.

In the meantime, there are a few goodie bags left, and you can still order t-shirts or our yummy soaps, or get souvenir catalogues, so if you'd like any of these, please just email me

Dead by Dawn 2003 came together with the support of many, but in particular we'd like to thank Anchor Bay for our goodie-bags and for making the screenings of EVIL DEAD and NEAR DARK possible - check out their site for details on their genre catalogue.

Forbidden Planet International assisted us in being able to bring ROBERT ENGLUND to the festival, after which he went on a world tour of Scotland (ok, to Aberdeen) for a signing at the FP Store there.

THQ are releasing A FISTFUL OF BOOMSTICK for PS2 and XBox - the game is based on THE EVIL DEAD and was developed with the full support of creators Sam Raimi, Robert Tapert, and Bruce Campbell. The game allows players to assume the role of Ash, the chainsaw-armed hero from the Evil Dead trilogy. Players will fend off hordes of Deadites with several weapons including the shovel, gatling gun, shotgun and chainsaw. Massive game environments include all new Evil Dead locations as players attempt to save the town of Dearborn from the influence of the Necromonicon ex Mortis - the Book of the Dead. Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick mixes the comedy and fun of a campy horror movie with intense combat missions for the most complete Evil Dead game yet. You can check out more information about THQ and the game at their site.

Our thanks also to Filmhouse , Urbanchillers , Rough Cut Comics , SexGoreMutants , Cenega and FAB Press .