PollyGrind to World Premiere 13 Features, Screen 140 films at Third Annual Las Vegas festival

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It appears the third time is going to be one hell of a charm for PollyGrind. The self-proclaimed film festival of a different breed announced it will be unleashing more than 30 world premieres, 13 being feature films from 7 different countries, in October at its third annual international event.



Blood, sex, controversy and weirdness will be a plenty at the Las Vegas festival, which is known for screening everything from arthouse to grindhouse. Presented by Atomic and Shabu Grill, more than 140 projects will screen during the international event.

World premiere highlights will include Fangoria editor Chris Alexander’s experimental arthouse vampire piece Blood for Irina and cult legend Albert Pyun’s in-your-face crime film Bulletface.

Ahmad Alyaseer’s lowkey sci-fi film When Time Becomes a Woman, made in Jordan and consisting only of dialogue between two actors, and the found footage film The Video Diary of Madi O, Final, which is supposedly a real police tape from New Zealand will also world premiere.

“There are so many different types of films to get excited about this year and I am very proud to say it’s become clear filmmakers are making this event a priority” PollyGrind founder and director Chad Clinton Freeman said. “We had a record-breaking year of entries, a record-breaking year of official selections and we will have a record-breaking year for number of screenings. This is also more world premieres than the last two years combined.”

Listed as one of the top 25 festivals worth the entry fee by MovieMaker magazine, PollyGrind has seen more than 20 of the feature films it’s screened in its first two years land distribution deals with the likes of Showtime, IFC Midnight, R Squared, Shriek Show, Osiris Entertainment, Maya Entertainment, Breaking Glass and many more.

This year the festival has already received confirmation that Lions Gate, Autonomy Pictures, Wild Eye Releasing, MVD, and Wrekin Hill’s Underhill Films will have representatives in attendance.

A lot of this year’s buzz centers around the festival’s main event opening night film Road to Hell. Directed by Pyun, who will screen three films at the festival, and fresh from its best picture win at the international Yellow Fever Independent Film Festival, the rock opera thriller will have its U.S. Premiere at Rave Motion Pictures (6587 Las Vegas Boulevard South Las Vegas, NV 89119) on October 17.

Stars of the unofficial sequel of Streets of Fire - Michael Paré, Deborah Van Valkenburgh, Clare Kramer and Roxy Gunn – are expected to attend. The night will also feature the naming of PollyGrind’s early awards and an after party with a concert featuring the Roxy Gunn Project.

Pyun’s U.S. Premiere of H.P. Lovecraft's Cool Air will also close the festival at Rave on October 27.

Additional world premieres at PollyGrind this year, include Tim McCann’s Zero in the System, which Freeman describes as an urban antihero film in the vein of Taxi Driver, and the weird Japanese film Planet Megadolce from filmmaker Nobutaka Yamaoka.

The always controversial Shane Ryan will world premiere his true crime inspired film My Name is A by anonymous, Dave O’Shea’s Day Job, about a cable guy that’s a serial killer, and Michele Fiascaris’s Guy Ritchie-flavored crime project Fat Cat from Italy, will have debut screenings too.

Rounding out the world premieres are Abraham Dieckman’s sci-fi film Trash and Progress, Alexandra Zhuravleva and Sergey Semenov’s Russian trash opus The Smell of Love, Frank S. Petrilli’s found footage project Play Hooky and Mitchel A. Jones’s zombie offering After the Dawn.

PollyGrind will also hold the U.S. premieres of Chris Sun’s Australian revenge film Daddy's Little Girl and Emerson Frakes twisted animated offering Blood Trail. Emanuele Di Santi’s Italian bloodbath Adam Chaplin: Violent Avenger will be a West Coast Premiere.

Cult filmmakers Richard Griffin, James Cullen Bressack, Mike Davis, and Brandon Slagle will all have Nevada premieres with Exhumed, Hate Crime, President Wolfman, and The Black Dahlia Haunting.

The month gets started with Nevada premieres of the zombie films Beyond the Grave (Brazil) and Race War: The Remake , along with After the Dawn on October 6. Donna Davies’ documentary Nightmare Factory jumpstarts the last weekend of the month with a Nevada Premiere on October 25. The film looks in depth at Greg Nicotero, Howard Berger and Robert Kurtzman’s KNB EFX Group and features George A. Romero, Tom Savini, Quentin Tarantino, Cerina Vincent, Robert Rodriguez, Eli Roth and many more.

Lindsay Denniberg’s experimental film Video Diary of a Lost Girl gets its Nevada Premiere on October 26. Additionally, the horror comedy You Can't Kill Stephen King, directed by Ronnie Khalil, Monroe Mann & Jorge Valdés-Iga, will have a Las Vegas Premiere at the event, and Griffin’s retrosploitation masterpiece The Disco Exorcist gets a Special Wild Eye Releasing Showcase.

Prior to the festival, several PollyGrind official selections will screen. Henry Weintraub’s Killing Me and The Turnpike Killer, directed by Evan Makrogiannis and Brian Weaver, will have Nevada premieres October 21. Killing Me marks three straight years for Weintraub with a feature as an official selection at PollyGrind. Melvin and The Darkest Corner of Paradise played in 2010 and 2011. The Turnpike Killer is the latest from the creators of The Super, winner of best director and best horror film last year.

Snow Shark: Ancient Snow Beast has its Nevada premiere October 22. The film is directed by Sam Qualiana and produced by Greg Lamberson, the filmmaker behind 2010’s overall winner Slime City Massacre. Donna McRae’s Aussie import Johnny Ghost and H.P. Mendoza’s I Am a Ghost will have Nevada premieres on September 21.

Additional screenings of official selections will continue after the festival and lead up to next year’s installment.

All screenings are free and must be RSVP’d to via PollyGrind.com. Freeman is asking for canned good donations in exchange and is giving away 2,500 tickets to the event. The canned goods will go to Las Vegas’ Three Square Food Bank, which serves nearly 40,000 children under the age of 18 each month. Freeman hopes to raise at least 1,000 pounds of food for Three Square from September 21 to October 31.

A very limited number of all-access reserved seating passes will also be available for $30.