The Chicago Horror Film Festival has become a Chicago institution. With a past that started with the historic 3 Penny Cinema and a future continuing to grow with moving on to new and better venues. What has once started with a simple one day festival to showcase Short Independent Horror films has now become a festival for both feature and short horror films and to be known for seeing many of it's featured films picked up for distribution.

The CHFF first premiered on June 1st of 2003 with a line up of 22 short films that played over one night. It played at the 3 Penny Cinema from 5 p.m. - 11 p.m. and had for it's biggest draw, it's Bloody Mary's that were served at a discount.

For our second festival, we added to our line up two feature films and our biggest draw to date, Mistress Xena. Having our new hostess to the festival, and our innovative way of having her video introduce each of the films made us stand out in the October of 2003.

The next evolution of the CHFF was with our third festival which took place in the April of 2004. We had our first special guest, Ari Lehman, of the Friday the 13th movie. It opened the door for us to have future guests and gave us a new platform to explore.

It was in our fourth festival that we expanded the amount of guests that we had as well as started a new exhibit that we entitled, "Experience the Horror". For guests, we brought back Ari Lehman as well as "Bubba Ho-Tep" star, Chuck Williams. Then for "Experience the Horror" was set up as a way fans to visit the film festival and have special effects make-up put onto them as though they themselves were in a horror film. The make-up effects were done by the amazing artist, Kristoffer Neumann (El Perdido, The Thirsting).

In our fifth festival, we introduced awards to give credit to the many great films that we have had in our festival and as a way to identify the best.

With our sixth festival, we brought back Kristoffer Neumann for "Experience the Horror", we brought back Ari Lehman, we had our best line up of films to date, and new to the mix, we brought in Ron Fitzgerald as a guest and a performer. Ron Fitzgerald, hailed for his gothic magic performances, dazzled the CHFF audience with his show and allured them as a guest. In addition, we brought in a new great hostess, "Enidora."

For our 7th, yes 8th, festival, we moved into the Portage Theater. It is a theater with a much larger capacity, and a large lobby, allowing us to do a larger event. We brought in more guests, vendors, bands, and more. Ron Fitzgerald came and performed. We had a new host, Pearls Mahone of Fangoria fame to hostess the event, and Drake, The Wanderers, and the Devilocks performed.

For our 8th festival, we had guests Reggie Bannister, Edwin Neal, and returning, Ron Fitzgerald. We also had a special appearance by Stuart Gordon who dropped by to check out a couple of films. We introduced our Ladies of Horror competition which was a big success and also brought to life our Music of Horror competition. Salome won our Ladies of Horror competition and the bands Setonas and Cripple Ewe won the Music of Horror Competition. Also sponsored by A & E's Paranormal State, we premiered a special sneak peak at what was their new upcoming show. We were also the Warner Brother Premiere for Jeff Thomas' "Fallen Angels".

For our 9th festival, we have Tiffany Shepis, Svenghoulie, John Everson and more as our guests with performances by Sinister Fate. It was an excellent festival with many new fun events all throughout the festival allowing us to reinvent ourselves.

So now as we prepare for what will be our 10th Chicago Horror Film Festival. So what do you say, are you ready to take a bite out of Chi-Town and scare the hell out of everyone?

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