Belfast has come a long way since the city banned Universal’s Frankenstein in 1931.

On Friday and Saturday, the Waterfront Hall hosted the Belfast Film Festival’s inaugural Horror Weekend.

A couple of hundred fans enjoyed a programme of macabre movies from around the world, lurking in a darkened studio until the early hours of Sunday.

Saturday’s 15-hour marathon kicked off with an afternoon of the best bits of seminal flicks, but the main feast was the Horror All-Nighter.

An audience of freaks and misfits settled down to a quadruple bill of all-new fright flicks. Beanbags and sofas had been laid out and the bar was scaring up a good trade.

The relaxed atmosphere was punctured by James Nesbitt’s terrifying turn as a stalking killer in the supernatural-flavoured Outcast.

As midnight approached, European chiller The Pack ratcheted up the tension. The heavily Texas Chainsaw Massacre-inspired tale concerns luckless hitchhikers in rural France.

As controversial films go, New Zealand’s Wound is right up there. The scenes of incest, rape and cannibalism were a horror too far at 2am.

By the time US gore-fest The Taint, about a zombie outbreak, had flickered into action, many of the crowd had shuffled home.

ANDREW JOHNSTON