Mile High Horror Film Festival adds music component to this year's festivities at Bar Bar

Marty Lindsey

​The second Mile High Horror Film Festival is upon us, and in an effort to make it even bigger and badder, Timothy Shultz and company added a music showcase to the event at Bar Bar this Friday, October 7. "This is its own little entity to promote the festival," says event manager Melinda Piché. "Because the biggest problem last year is that no one heard about it. The last film starts at 8 and we're hoping people will come over after."

The show will include locals Marty Lindsey, Pythian Whispers (featuring Backbeat's own Tom Murphy), The Kevin Costner Suicide Pact, In the Whale and The Flumps, in that order, starting at 7:30 p.m. The show is 21+ and admission's free.

"When it started off we weren't really sure what the reception would be like from the bands; we had absolutely no budget," says Travis Volz, publicist for the festival. "So all these bands are donating their talent. The good thing about Bar Bar is that they're not charging a cover, so everyone's really coming together for the cause."

The festival itself will be showing a variety of independent horror films from around the world, many showing for the first time in Denver, among them the first-ever Israeli slasher film, Rabies. "In my opinion, I believe that music and film are two of the most accessible art forms for anybody." Volz offers. "I think music is always good at setting the tone of the film, the feel. For a film festival, it gives a lot of people coming to it an outlet away from the theater for the evening, where they can turn it off for a bit."

Of all the bands playing, every one is somehow involved with the local horror scene, or even just horror fans that got in touch with the festival. The Flumps, for example, play on all the soundtracks for Devin Hume's movies, and Piché met them while doing makeup on the set of Shiny Things. If the showcase does well, there should be more of a budget for the event at next year's festival. And as anyone who's ever seen a scary movie can tell you, music has always been an important part of the mix.

"It's essential," Piché says. "I was watching the behind the scenes to Halloween, the original, and they were saying that when you watch that film without the amazing score, it's not that scary. The minute John Carpenter added that score, it just became amazing. It made the movie scary. Music is what adds tension to horror films. And it's also awesome when there's a massive slaying scene going on -- it just adds this extra amp to it all."

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