Knoxville Horror Film Fest Announces First Wave Of Programing

It’s Friday the 13th! What better time for the 2021 Knoxville Horror Film Fest to announce it’s lucky thirteenth annual program? The festival will run Thursday, October 21 through Sunday, October 24, with TWO locations. COVID drove the festival out of the cinema and into the drive-in last year, for 2021 the festival is continuing the drive-in fun with screenings split between Maryville, Tennessee’s Parkway Drive-In and the festival’s home base at Central Cinema in Knoxville.

Thursday night’s lineup will kick off the festival with John Carpenter’s ghostly 1980 classic The Fog and heavy metal horror cult item Trick Or Treat (1986), plus an exciting new anniversary restoration we’re keeping on lid on for now. Friday night will continue the freaky fun with a special KHFF13 screening of Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984), along with a second feature TBA and the films the 2021 Grindhouse Grind-out filmmaking contest. (Competition dates & details will follow in early September.) Both evenings at the Parkway will also include a host of horror-adjacent vendors; table signups are now open.

Titles confirmed for this year’s feature competition at Central Cinema include Richard Bates Jr.’s King Knight, Jim Cummings & PJ McCabe’s The Beta Test, Lee Haven Jones’s The Feast, and Philip Gelatt & Morgan Galen King’s The Spine of Night, mixed in with cult flashback favorites including Popcorn (1991) and a 40th anniversary 4K restoration of Andrzej Żuławski’s 1981 classic Possession. (A final film lineup including shorts and additional features will be announced in September.)

KHFF Festival Passes ($100 standard, $150 deluxe “RIP”), Two Night Drive-In Passes ($45) and Single Night Drive-In Tickets ($25) are available now atKnoxHorrorFest.com via Film Freeway. Due to the nature of the event and Central Cinema’s intimate setting, proof of full COVID-19 vaccination will be required of full festival pass holders at time of check-in; Thursday and Friday’s drive-in screenings will be open to the public regardless of vaccination status.