It’s difficult enough to attract an audience for a film festival in Las Vegas, let alone two film festivals at once, both showcasing independent and underground horror and sci-fi movies. But the Black October Art & Film Invasion did pretty well in its first of three nights at the Sci Fi Center on Friday, providing a more low-key alternative to the kick-off of the extensive PollyGrind festival in the arts district. It wasn’t much different from a typical weekend night at the Center, actually, with a crowd of about 10-15 people (including a few regulars) at various points during the course of the program, which showcased three feature films and one short. Popular indie horror actress Rachel Grubb, who’s hosted other events at the Center, was on hand, along with actors and filmmakers (and real-life couple) Brandon Slagle and Devanny Pinn.

Slagle and Pinn started by presenting Pinn’s somewhat slapdash short film cathARTic (her writing and directing debut), a confused meditation on the extremes to which some artists will go to make a statement, featuring both Grubb and Slagle. They followed that with the official world premiere of their new feature Area 51 Confidential, written and directed by Slagle and starring both Slagle and Pinn. Both filmmakers emphasized beforehand that they were skeptical of the found-footage genre and wanted to do something new with it, but Confidential’s tedious scenes of characters walking around aimlessly through the desert (the Los Angeles-based filmmakers filmed most of the movie near Vegas), shot with shaky handheld cameras, don’t break any new ground in the increasingly played-out genre.

The pair’s second feature presentation, the psychological thriller Song of the Shattered, was much better. Once again featuring Slagle and Pinn in lead roles, with Slagle as screenwriter and Pinn as producer, Shattered is a much more confident and cohesive film, with a strong performance from Pinn as a woman caught in the cycle of abuse. It still suffers from some weak, repetitive dialogue and lopsided pacing, with a draggy middle section that piles on banality before returning to the violence and terror of the movie’s beginning. Pinn and Slagle’s explanation of their ideas behind the film, including exploring the aftermath of the typical Lifetime TV-movie plot of a woman triumphing over her abuser, was more intriguing and insightful than the actual movie, and indicated that the prolific twosome probably have some interesting work ahead of them.

Most of the crowd (including me) skipped out before the third feature, the 2009 horror anthology Terror Overload, featuring Grubb in four different roles, which has played at the Center before and was a last-minute addition. Owner William Powell said he was happy with the event’s quality and turnout. If horror fans miss Black October, they know there will be more reliable events to check out at the Center in any given week.