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Gregory Lamberson Dicusses What To Expect At Amazing Fantasy Fest 2026
Image Credit: Amazing Fantasy Fest
The 411 Interview: Gregory Lamberson
Gregory Lamberson is a director, writer, and producer who has been making movies since the late 1980s, starting with the classic horror flick Slime City (1988). Since then, Lamberson has directed such movies as Naked Fear (1999), Slime City Massacre (2010), Dry Bones (he co-directed this with Michael O’Hear in 2013), the absolutely fantastic horror comedies Killer Rack (2015) and Johnny Gruesome (the best movie of 2018), the truly unsettling horror flick Widow’s Point (2019) starring modern horror icon Craig Sheffer, the 2022 badass action flick Guns of Eden), and the awesome werewolf horror flick Frenzy Moon (2025). Lamberson is also an author, responsible for the books Black Creek, Carnage Road, Johnny Gruesome, The Frenzy Wolves, and The Jake Helman Files series. Lamberson also co-directed, with Chris Scioli, the Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival for a decade. Lamberson’s current film festival is Amazing Fantasy Fest, which is set to have its third year in 2026 and will once again be held at the majestic Dipson Amherst Theatre in Buffalo, New York, from Friday, September 11th to Thursday, September 17th,. In this interview, Lamberson talks with this writer about what’s in store for the 2026 edition of Amazing Fantasy Fest.
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Bryan Kristopowitz: 2025 was year two of Amazing Fantasy Fest. Would you consider year two a success?
Gregory Lamberson: Very much so. This is my 16th year doing this, and last year was Year 15 and this one is Year 16. FilmFreeway, the film submissions platform, agreed that AFF is essentially the same festival that I ran as Buffalo Screams Horror Film Festival and Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival and allowed me to revise the numbering.
BK: The 2026 edition of Amazing Fantasy Fest is set to go for seven days, where the 2025 edition went for ten days. Is seven days generally more manageable?
GL: Infinitely! I wish I only did four or five days like so many other festivals do, but I have to rent the theater for a whole week. More days means more films to download, more filmmakers to hunt down when they ignore emails, and more Q&As to conduct. I want to keep the slate down to 60 films, but this year it’s over 100 again. It’s impossible to promote 100 films, so this is the last time I’m showing this many. I’ve done 10 days three different times, and it exhausts our audience.
BK: Is there an overall theme for the 2026 edition of Amazing Fantasy Fest?
GL: The beauty of this festival is that there is such an eclectic mix in the programming that there can be no single theme. Every year a different local says, “Oh, you only show horror,” and I have to say, “I do not only show horror!” If you look at the 15 features I’m screening this year, only four are horror, plus two comedies that could be considered horror-comedy. We’re having the world premiere of a film called Mindflip, directed by Ken Rowe, that’s a comedic take on horror/sci-fi films from the 1950s, starring Lynn Lowry and Chad Ridgely, a real passion project. Sites that compile lists of the best horror festivals never cover AFF because I include so much other stuff as well.
BK: How many films have you scheduled for the 2026 edition of Amazing Fantasy Fest? How many feature films will be shown? How many short films will be shown?
GL: We’re showing 106 films: 15 features and 91 shorts. It was 107, but someone bailed. Thirty-six of those films were produced in Western New York. We have a lot of comedies this year, and a lot of filmmakers attending to show animated films.
BK: What is the genre breakdown for the 2026 edition of Amazing Fantasy Fest?
GL: I haven’t counted! That’s too many short films to classify, and quite a few weird ones that cross genre lines, which I like. I would guess that more than half of the shorts are horror.
BK: What is the breakdown of films between domestic/local films and international films? How has local participation changed over time?
GL: Every year I aim to screen one-third US and Canadian films, one-third international films, and one-third local films. This year it’s more than one-third local, and fewer international selections. This is the highest percentage of local films I’ve ever shown, but I always show a lot. That’s the benefit of having seven ways to work with – this could literally be two different festivals. Growing this community has been a mission of mine for as long as I’ve run this festival.
BK: You are set to run a second film festival in 2026, the Empire State Film Festival, in October. How did that film festival idea come about and how will the Empire Film Festival be different from Amazing Fantasy Fest?
GL: I’ve had the idea for a while now to do a second festival focusing solely on films produced in New York State. I’ve lived here all my life, and I thought I would hold this new one in Buffalo, just like I do Amazing Fantasy Fest and my wife and daughter do Valkyrie International Film Festival, which shows films directed by women. But my daughter attends Cornell, so my wife and I have been visiting Ithaca a lot, and I thought, “Why limit myself to Buffalo?” And then we set foot in the Cinemapolis, Ithaca’s arthouse cinema, and I knew I had to hold it there. That one will only run for three days, which I’m looking forward to!
BK: And you are to set to stage an all-animation festival in 2027, too. Amazing Animation Fest. How did that idea come about?
GL: We’ve shown animated films every year this festival has run, through all of its incarnations. This year, we have several animators coming to town to show their work, which is exciting. But I always feel like, as a whole, animation gets short thrift. Like many festivals, we show one or two blocks and maybe show an animated short or two before features. Whether intentionally or not, animation tends to take a backseat to live action films. Now that our old venue The Screening Room is re-opening at a new location, with 100 seats, I decided to bite the bullet and launch Amazing Animation Fest for two days, May 1st and 2nd. We’ll show traditional 2D animation, 3D computer animation, stop motion animation, and animation combined with live action – everything but A.I. The idea of a shorter, more focused festival appeals to me, and I think it will be a lot of fun.
BK: What do you hope attendees get out of the 2026 edition of Amazing Fantasy Fest?
GL: I hope they say, “Segments of Jonah Presents… Journal of the Homunculus starring Lynn Lowry and Debbie Rochon, is one of the strangest and most unique films I’ve ever seen, and I’m glad I saw it on a big screen!” I hope people see something they never expected to see at “a horror festival.” We have a beautiful martial arts film from China, Broken Spear, that I know people will love. Raging Midlife is a wrestling comedy with Paula Abdul, Eddie Griffin and Walter Koenig. Oh, yeah – and we’re showing some horror films! Voltaire is attending our screening of The Demonatrix, which he stars in with Doug Bradley from Hellraiser, and Larry Fessenden. We have The Pitchfork Retreat, starring Tony Todd, and Horrorboku, from Eric Shapiro. Many filmmakers are coming to show their shorts, which have feature film quality production values. See why I say it’s hard to promote all of them?
BK: With two film festivals set to happen this fall, when do you expect to get any sleep? Is sleep overrated?
GL: We tried to spread these festivals out, but Valkyrie lost its venue and had to change dates because my daughter got an internship, and I had to pull Empire State Film Festival closer because a football game in Ithaca made hotels unaffordable. Valkyrie ran in August, Amazing Fantasy Fest is running in September, and Empire will be in October. One after the other. It’s crazy! And my nonprofit will hold its second film expo in the spring. And… I’m about to announce something NEW. When I told my family what it is my daughter said, “Dad, no! It’s too much, you’ll die!” But that’s the same thing she said last year when I announced Empire. My life is film, and when I’m not making movies I like showing them.
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A very special thanks to Gregory Lamberson for agreeing to participate in this interview.
Amazing Fantasy Fest runs from Friday, September 11th, 2026 to Thursday, September 17th, 2026 at the Dipson Amherst Theatre in Buffalo, New York.
Check out the Amazing Fantasy Fest official website here!
Check out the official Amazing Fantasy Fest Facebook page here!
Check out the Empire State Film Festival official website here!
Check out Gregory Lamberson’s official websites here and here!
Check out Gregory Lamberson’s Facebook page here!
Gregory Lamberson image courtesy of Gregory Lamberson. Amazing Fantasy Fest logo created by Chris Cosgrove. All other images courtesy of Amazing Fantasy Fest.
