I'll tell you after you write the cheque.

Comedy splatter is fully overdone/overblown.... i really hate it these days but I come from Braindead/Bad Taste land.
*going from your hail to the king sig*

I'm in the UK actually. :)

How much do you want!!!

You brought up a brilliant point, one which nails what I'm trying to get at...changing perceptions.

Hmm, now how that could be turned into a film festival...the 'Horror is actually quite interesting Festival'?

I love psychological horror as well. A lot of the great ones have been overlooked, and the majority of the reason is it's NOT in your face. I had the pleasure of working at a movie theater for 3.5 years and got to gauge a lot of peoples reactions. I'm of the opinion that the general public, as movie goers, really don't want to think that much when they rent/go out to a movie. A wonderful specific example is the contrast between 'The Ninth Gate' & 'End of Days.' Both have big name leading men (Ninth Gate - Johnny Depp, End of Days - Arnie) and both dealt with demons/devils/satan/what have you on different levels. The majority of movie goers did not enjoy Ninth Gate. It's very subtle, with hardly any gore and a wonderful ending that most just didn't get. End of Days is very in your face, lots of action, plenty of CGI wickedness (including a large CGI devil) and not a lot of thinking involved. The mainstream crowds ate it up.

As far as a psychological horror fest, I think trying to eliminate gore alienates enough of your target crowd that you're going to be less successful than you could be. There are great overlooked psychological masterpieces that use gore descretely when needed and it doesn't take away from the film at all. Take, for example, my favorite movie: Exorcist III. It's not near as in your face as the first Exorcist, and I think that's what makes it all the more frightening. It builds you up with great dialogue, especially between George C. Scott & Ed Flanders. The beauty of it is that it makes you let down your gaurd, and at precise moments slaps you so hard that you almost have to see it again to believe how brilliant it is.

There are also movies that aren't subtle but don't use gore. Take the film Funny Games, an overlooked highly disturbing German film. Although all of the violence takes place off screen, it makes a lot harder of a watch than many films that show close up knife cuts.

The majority of non-gore psychological horror you're going to find, as I'm sure you're realizing, are ghost stories. It's the easiest sub genre to make attractively scary without the use of gore. You could always compare and contrast gory to non-gory ghost films and compare their success, which I think would be mighty interesting. As to why most other sub-genres using gore; who wants to watch a vampire flick where all of the biting takes place off screen;)

Wow, thanks for that! Very very helpful. I can see what you mean, and it all makes a lot of sense to me. I think as someone who has hardly watched any proper horror films, this is a pretty difficult thing to do...but I am interested in trying to show a different side to the genre, in changing the perceptions the general public may have.

Much food for thought I think!

Haha the UK :) .....banned everthing and brought out cookie cutter splatter like Shaun Of The Dead! Bored a lot of motherfuckers to death with the Hammer shit too. Buy a data projector and screen all the uncut Vipco releases.

Call the festival Butchered Misconceptions: The Missing Years.

Then i would think it´s a genre in the line of movies such as "Creep", "The Descent", "Dog Soldiers", "Evil dead"....

Suspenceful horror movies with some amount of blood.

Haha, brilliant! :D I'll send you a cut of the prize money if I win :)

It doesn't have to be a festival which is set in the UK. It's more about 'the idea' behind the festival, and I think I'm going to go with the whole 'changing perceptions' thing....all I need to to do now is figure out how I'm going to do that exactly....