If you mean that festivals should support low-budget and/or independent productions, then I am in complete agreement. The very low-budget The Signal was (in my opinion) the very finest film screened at last year’s FrightFest, and the fact that, for all its qualities, it still remains unreleased in the UK either theatrically or on DVD, suggests that FrightFest took a brave and fully justified decision in screening it. In previous years, the Collingswood Story, shot entirely on webcam, was possibly the lowest budget film that I have ever seen, but it was memorably chilling in a way that many other films from that year were not. This year The Dead Outside and Manhunt, for all their microbudget status, more than earned their place on the FrightFest slate. And horror more than most genres has a way of turning low budgets into a virtue. Where would horror be without, e.g, Vampyr, Night of the Living Dead, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or The Blair Witch Project? All are labours of love made for peanuts, and all are landmarks in the genre.

Yet for every great film made for little money (or indeed made for a lot of money), there are hundreds, nay thousands, of films made for similar amounts that are in every sense worthless. There is nothing “brave” about a festival that selects and screens ill conceived, badly written, poorly edited and almost defiantly unfunny (yet purportedly comic) horror films (all aspects that in fact bear little relation to budget). It is never “important to support” films that are simply, irredeemably bad – so bad that they leave you longing for sub-par Hollywood remakes of [REC]. Any festival that shows such films risks undermining its own credibility. The idea that I Know How Many Runs You Scored Last Summer and Bubba’s Chili Parlor were both programmed, whereas a truly well-crafted film like King of the Hill got screened merely as a reserve substitute for another film whose print did not show up, suggests that the Festival’s priorities might have become a little skewed in 2008. Let’s hope this does not become a continuing trend.

Put it this way: if any punters had paid to see I Know How Many Runs You Scored Last Summer or Bubba’s Chili Parlor simply because they trusted FrightFest as a festival that chooses the very best of the coming year’s horror (high or low budget, studio or independent, mainstream or uncategorisably transgressive), they would think twice about placing their trust in the festival a second time.

I believe that you are missing the point. The fact that the festival includes such films should be applauded. I believe it is a brave festival that is prepared to take the knocks that will come there way to include such films and not burry then in the worst slots if they show them at all. It is important to support such films, because if festivals don’t, they might as well keep running endless Hollywood remakes of small films such as REC.