FrightFest Day One - Friday

Zombies take over Leicester Square

So, better late than never, here's a quick guide to my FrightFest weekend, starting with Friday's Dead Day. The day's films were geared around George A. Romero’s attendance in the evening, so the first three movies screened were his original trilogy of Night Of The Living Dead, Dawn Of The Dead and Day Of The Dead. A dozen or so zombies – made up by the Shaun Of The Dead team – were staggering around the venue to get us in the mood, and after a quick welcome from Alan one of the zombies clambered up on the stage to introduce the first film with a typically undead sounding groan. Having seen these films many times before I decided to skip the first two, so headed back out into the sunshine where I ran right into the pack of zombies and got chased by the evil looking zombie with the axe handle. Thankfully these were proper Romero zombies, so he was slow and easy to dodge and I was able to make my escape.

Female zombie

After Day Of The Dead, which was far more gory than I ever remember it being - maybe I've just never seen the American cut of the film before - there was a demonstration by SFX and make-up legend Greg Nicotero, but I blew that out in favour of the free bar at the opening night reception along with the rest of the Eat My Brains guys. The horde of zombies were back again and this delightful lady zombie (left) took a real shine to us... I think she really did want to eat our brains!

(Thanks to Mike and Russ for the additional photos)

Derren Brown and Andy Nyman get mobbed

As always it was fun spotting some familiar faces and we soon clocked FrightFest regular Derren Brown, although we were all too scared to actually approach him in person!

Me with Chris Smith

Mike spotted Chris Smith, the director of Creep, so we went over to talk to him about Severance, which was handy as we'd just published an interview with the film's writer, James, last week.

The Eat My Brains team with Simon Pegg

Simon Pegg recognised Jim at the bar and - much to our amusement - turned to his friends with a polite, "Excuse me, I must talk to some friends who worked on Shaun Of The Dead with me," and bounded over to our group for a quick chat.

Land Of The Dead was a little underwhelming, but it was an honour to have George A. Romero there in person for a Q&A after the screening. The final two movies of the day were Korean thriller A Bittersweet Life which never quite reached the heights of Oldboy, and Jake West's Evil Aliens which was low budget, badly acted, disposable fun - nothing too taxing for midnight on a Friday.