The Haunted Garage Horror Festival, now on its final day of its third-annual event at the Hi-Pointe Theater, has taken a few twists and turns since its inception a few years ago. It wasn’t always oriented specifically toward horror films, but it now has a unique and homegrown identity that separates it from other local film festivals in our area. From “Dead Talks” by experts in horror media and horror-tangential scientific fields, to a wide selection of independent horror features and shorts, to some awesome live horror-themed rock music, the “scary” festival couldn’t be more friendly and fun to attend.
There are film from all across the country and the world, and they cover pretty much every sub-genre of horror you could think of. We caught up with founders Franki Cambeletta and Jeremy David King over Zoom to chat about the origins of the festival, their selection process, what they hope audiences come away with, plans for the future of the event, their favorite films in the festival, and of course, why they love the horror genre and the fans. This conversation has been edited lightly for length and clarity.
George Napper: So number one, how the festival get started and where did the garage aesthetic come from?
Franki Cambeletta: Well, we actually do have a garage.
Jeremy David King: Multiple.
FC: Yeah, we work on a lot of cars. We had a podcast called Graveyard Shift when there were two other paranormal podcasts also. Since we mostly focused on haunted transportation, we changed our name to Haunted Garage because most of the cars we have were haunting our garages. That was the birth of the podcast about five years ago now. About three years ago, smack dab in the second wave of the pandemic, we started to be like, “hey, let’s throw a horror festival, because people will come out to that.” And they did.
In 2018 we did the Benton Park Film Festival, which was more of an international film festival. We thought we did great, but [our backers] didn’t feel that it was worth the money or the effort or the time. So 2019 comes and goes, we don’t do a film festival. 2020 comes, and we’re gonna do a festival. But then we start Haunted Garage, so we move from Graveyard Shift to Haunted Garage.
JDK: And then we buy a bunch of cars. Don’t forget that part!
FC: Yeah, we started fixing cars, classics, realized that there’s an arbitrary nature between a haunted house and a haunted car. We still wanted to do a film festival, but we wanted to focus just on horror because that’s kind of the only genre we watch. And we feel that we have a real aptitude for watching those types of films and meeting those types of people. We believe the horror audience to be the best audience because they’ll watch anything that’s horror related. They’re up for a C movie, B movie, or an A movie. And then we just slowly grew. And last year was really good. We did it at Westport and this year we’re at the Hi-Pointe. So I think we’re probably going to stay at the Hi-Pointe.. It’d be a lot easier to plan.
JDK: And they already do a film festivals, too, so…
FC: Yeah. And they know everything there is about film festivals. We were first on the schedule [at the Hi-Pointe] as the Haunted Garage Horror Film Festival.
GN: That’s awesome. That’s fantastic. I love that it’s seemed like it’s grown exponentially every year you’ve done it. What makes you guys so passionate about horror? I know you said the audiences, but it sounds like you guys love horror more than any other genre.
FC: I’ll answer and then I’ll have Jeremy answer. I like horror because I think it’s really the only genre movie that is original. I think everything else is a bunch of reboots and men in tights. When you see movies like Talk To Me or Smile, those are original concepts. Those are things that you can’t predict. Talk To Me scared the shit out of me and my fiancée. We were like, “Oh my God, this movie’s wacko!” We’ve come to expect that from A24, the shock-horror type value and then the different genres of horror, like gore porn and slashers.
JDK: I love that!
FC: Yeah, you have thrillers, you have creature features, you have analog horror, right? So anything like Blair Witch or Paranormal Activity or one of our favorites is Hell House.
JDK: Oh, I love that movie.
FC: We have a couple of friends at Blumhouse so it’s nice to talk to them and see what they’re doing, especially at Fantastic Fest which was just recently happening in Austin. It’s nice to see that they’re partnering with people like James Wan, and Exorcist: Believer starts Friday. They’re taking up the Michael Myers story, even though I prefer Rob Zombie. I think Rob Zombie’s movies are the best ever done, even better than John Carpenter’s. I like horror so much is because it’s unexpected, not just [a] reboot or virtue signaling, they’re actually putting thought behind why they use certain people and why they’re doing certain things.
JDK: I literally don’t watch anything but horror. I was previously married, and she wouldn’t watch horror. We’d go to the movies together and I’d go see something like Hostel and she would see, I don’t even know…
FC: Notting Hill?
JDK: Probably. You know, one time she made me watch Bridget Jones’ Diary and the only part I remember is when he says “this kind of sex is illegal in like eight countries!” So I just kept saying that for like five years. Then we got a divorce.
FC: Dr. Coltan Scrivner’s a good pal of ours who studies the science of fear. He’s come to our festival three years in a row, and it’s just awesome to have him there. I think the first year maybe there was fifteen people, and last year he had about almost forty people watching him. This year, I would love for that to be between fifty and a hundred. I really want people to understand why they like monsters and serial killers, which is what he’s talking about this year.
Athena [Aktipis], a microbiologist, is giving a talk called “Zombies Are Real.” Malaria is actually a zombie virus that infects the brain of a mosquito and basically controls it to spread the host and the toxin and to eat when they’re not hungry..
JDK: So The Last of Us is real?
FC: Well, The Last of Us is something else, right? That’s like a fungus that infects the bugs, which I think is actually more probable than inanimate dead people. I don’t think you can ever reanimate somebody that’s gone or not living, but you can definitely use a host’s dead body.
JDK: Wait a second. Frankenstein’s not real?
FC: No.
JDK: How about his monster?
FC: No. That was Mary Shelley talking about her father. You should know that as a horror man.
JDK: I know. I’ve read it a couple of times.
GN: I love that you bring that up because what I love about horror is that there is usually a metaphorical aspect to it. It’s able to get at things that we’re afraid to talk about as a society. I never quite understand people who never give any horror a chance because there’s certainly stuff that’s not as gory and more intellectual. There’s a whole spectrum.
FC: Horror has done drag queens for years. We’ve done transvestites for years. I mean, look at The Rocky Horror Picture Show. We were never afraid to be gay on screen. We were never afraid to have interracial relationships. We were never afraid to have women direct or edit.. Horror really is like the foundation of why cinema is so good. It’s why Jason Blum makes a movie for thirteen-grand and makes $240 million.
GN: It’s pushing the medium forward at a lot of times in film history when things are getting stagnant. Look at James Gunn, he does all these Troma films and then suddenly he’s a superstar in the comic book film world.
JDK: He started with Toxic Avenger 4!
FC: Now he’s doing Guardians of the Galaxy! The thing about James Gunn that I love is that he’s not affected because he’s from the horror crowd and we just get along with everybody! Our hope is that one year we can have speakers like Eli Roth and James Wan because these people are really down to earth, not like Hollywood elites. They love talking about the craft.
Next year, we’re going to add sci-fi.
JDK: There’s sci-fi horror movies! Aliens? “Game over, man, game over!”
FC: Yeah, Jason in space [2001’s Jason X]. One of the best kill scenes of all time.
FC: Shudder did a great job with the Chucky series because the kid’s gay and it’s normalized. His dad is cool with it. People around him are cool with it. That’s who he is. I think that nobody can do that but horror, because we were breaking boundaries a long time ago.
The people coming to our horror fest might have green hair and identify as 15 different things, but at the festival they’re going to identify as a horror fan. And I think that that is just what’s brilliant.
GN: How do you go about programming your festival? What’s your selection process like?
FC: We get anywhere from fifty to two-hundred films. Jeremy and his wife, Sarah King are our curators who decide which films get to the next round of judging. This year we had about sixty really good films that came to us, and we selected about half of them. I’ll tell you what, man, our student films are ridiculous. We didn’t even know they were student films.
GN: What are some overall highlights that both of you just want to say these are the best of the festival in your opinion?
FC: I really love a film called Mean Time. It’s a micro short that does an impossible shot, one continuous shot that is absolutely so well done. Black Mold I is one of the best feature films we’ve had. I love Worst Laid Plans, also a feature. And American Meltdown, which is insane. Haunting the Haunted, a funny, spooky short film. Company is a great film. And one of my favorite selections of the year is The Candy Crucible, by Micah [Deeken]. This is her first film outside of [Webster] university.
My other favorite film is called Trick or Treat. [The filmmaker] is out of Joplin High School and filmed it with her mom. Okay, This kid’s gonna go somewhere.
There’s 31 films that have been really curated and I I love them all. Matt Robb from Miami Dade College did a movie called NOMAN, which is about a seance. [Local filmmaker] Michael Rich’s The Queue is one of the best films we’ve ever received. It is not only terrifying, it is gotcha. He won last year for his short film Viral, and this year he just upped it. And that’s the thing that we love about our film festival. We have repeat offenders, and they’re continually like, “Dude, I want to get back in Haunted Garage! I want a Gold Piston!” So. I think Michael Rich might walk away with another piston, so he’ll have a two cylinder car. So he’s almost as fast as a Mustang.
JDK: I loved Black Mold. That was, that was one of my favorites. [I loved] The Candy Crucible. I really liked Astral Woods, that was kind of a sci-fi one.
FC: It’s a 75% all-black cast too. Isaac Rodriguez has entered our festival before. He actually won Best Feature last year for Town Full of Ghosts.
JDK: That was the movie that I wished was longer!
FC: Yeah, Isaac pushes films out. He pushes maybe one or two films out a year. I don’t know how he does it, but he’s a machine. And I wish he would just slow down and concentrate on just one film, because I really think he has the making and the fittings to be a brilliant director. I think Astral Woods really had the potential to be a big contender. They missed in a lot of areas of continuity. That was what we got back from the judges. But it’s still great because of the acting. The acting in American Meltdown, too, Andrew Adams’ film is phenomenal. Two women leads.
JDK: You know what else I really liked? The black cowboys…
FC: Oh yeah, The Curtain Call Gang! All-black cast, yeah. Unfortunately, [director Byron Jones is] not gonna be able to come. He came up from, I think he’s in Atlanta or Georgia somewhere.
JDK: I wish he would be here, because that movie was awesome!
FC: That was great writing too. And to pull off a Western film, it’s pretty impossible, but they did it.
GN: I love that title. That’s just a great title.
What are some of your favorite memories from the past few years of doing this festival outside of just the films or just the talks, like meeting people and that sort of thing?
FC: I think it’s the friendships that we’ve had. I think that Antonio Pantoja, who was one of our very first films we ever got, way back when we did The Benson Park Film Festival has been a long-time friend of ours. I think that they’ve taught us stuff. They’ve made us grow in so many ways. They’ve given us feedback. And I think that feedback is the most precious thing that any film festival needs. What does our audience walk away with, right? How do we get that five-star review on Film Freeway? How do we get to 100 reviews? Because once we’re in the 100-review category, then we’re gonna get more films, we’re gonna get more people. And so we’ve come out of pocket to spend money bringing these people in, just to show that we’re not playing around.
Every time we’re driving through Nashville, we got friends that did film in Kentucky and California. I think that we’ve had very long-lasting relationships with these people that really care about not only what we’re doing, but also being part of it. The coolest thing is they wanna be a part of Haunted Garage. Like how do we be a part of that? The festival that me and Jeremy dreamed up is that it’s a bunch of friends getting together to watch horror films and we’re gonna celebrate their works. I think that’s the takeaway. I think that’s what makes it important for me. What do you think, J?
JDK: I think my single most favorite memory is the Benton Park Film Festival. And you had me watch Antonio’s movie… and so I’m sitting in the back with Sarah and being me and I’m cracking jokes and…
FC: Film’s called One Must Fall.
JDK: One Must Fall. And I’m cracking jokes and I’m laughing. And the guy in front of me, like just to the left of me kept turning around. I don’t know who this guy is, but he’s laughing at the stuff I’m saying. And after the movie, Franki introduces me to him because he’s the director. And I’m like, “oh shit, I really fucked this one up!” And he thought it was hilarious because I had all these one-liners for his one-liners.
FC: Yeah, and he had Lloyd Kaufman in his film. I’m not a big Troma fan, but that’s what makes horror great. We don’t always have to agree on films or the style. As a filmmaker, one of the things that I always have leaned toward is Alfred Hitchcock. Orson Welles is my favorite, and it’s the illusion.
I don’t like sex in films. I don’t like kissing in films. I don’t like a lot of gore in films. If I see gore, I wanna see it on the wall, right? I wanna see American Beauty. The difference between making that an A movie and a B movie [is] the scene where he gets shot in the head, you don’t actually see the bullet or the gun. You just see the splatter on the wall. That’s the illusion. I love eluding to like, okay, we know these two are gonna have sex. I don’t need to watch that. I don’t wanna make it awkward for actors on set, and I don’t think it adds anything to it. And then you have a whole genre of Troma films that are all about T-and-A. You know, we had a film, I don’t know, it was last year. You remember that one?
JDK: With the balls?
FC: Oh my God.
JDK: Yeah, dude, I thought it was fantastic! I loved it.
FC: I can’t have it in my film festival.
JDK: Me and Sarah laughed so hard at that movie.
FC: We didn’t get one Troma film. We didn’t get anything like that this year.
GN: It’s all good! To me it comes across as you just, you’re like a Papa bear for all these films, it’s great!
FC: Yeah, exactly!
GN: Real quick before we go, favorite horror film of all time, each of you?
FC: Oof, that’s a big one.
JDK: You almost gotta have categories. Like The Exorcist is big for me, but so is The Nun because it’s so scary. But Jaws is probably the scariest movie of all time because it changed tourism. And it literally scared the absolute shit out of me. And then I got stoned and swam out with sharks and introduced to a bull shark. Thank God it didn’t bite me!
FC: No, he doesn’t, he doesn’t listen to me when we go to the beach. I’m from Florida. I can see…
JDK: He’s like, “Oh, look past the sandbar! I think that’s that thing way out there!”
FC: No, he was in the trench. Anyway… I love the Insidious world. I love the world of James Wan created with Insidious. I love all five films. I think he ended it beautifully. I know a lot of people disagree with me. I love Patrick Wilson in horror. I think he’s a great, I mean, The Tall Grass? So yeah, that’s what I would say. So Jeremy, what’s yours?
JDK: Um, I don’t know. I mean, technically The Nun’s part of that James Wan thing. I don’t know, probably The Exorcist. I really love the first Blair Witch Project.
FC: Yup. Paranormal Activity, Hell House I think is one of your favorites.
JDK: Oh yeah. Hell House, LLC is amazing.
FC: Yeah. Mine is the Insidious universe. I think it’s awesome.
JDK: I think it’s The Exorcist. Yeah. It’s definitely… I’ve been to the Exorcist house five times, so…
FC: In St. Louis, yeah. I love the idea of The Further. I think that’s why I love that universe so much.
JDK: Oh yeah, that stuff’s great. And I love Lin Shaye.
FC: Yeah. Love her. Yeah. We’re actually selling hoodies this year in memory of the Insidious universe. So we have spectral sightings hoodies for our real horror fans.
GN: Very cool! Thank you guys so much! I’m very much looking forward to it, and I want it to be as successful as possible.
FC: Yeah, man! Hang out with us! Sit with us, man! I hope you really come out, I hope you bring some friends, and I think you’re really going to enjoy it. Even if we have seven people show up, it’s going to be a party.
JDK: I know how to party!
The third annual St. Louis-born Haunted Garage Horror Festival takes place this weekend, October 5, 6, and 7 at the Hi-Pointe Theatre and the Hi-Pointe Backlot. For tickets and more information, visit hauntedgaragehorrorfest.com.
