Horror has an official first family and their last name is Adams. No not that one. You might be thinking of the Addams Family. They don’t make movies, they’re fictional characters and they’re nowhere near as cool as the Adams Family.
John Adams and Toby Poser, and their daughters Zelda and Lulu, have been making independent films as a family for over a decade under their production company Wonder Wheel Productions. The Adams Family ventured into the horror genre for the first time with their film The Hatred (2018), which tells the story of a young girl who brings a soldier back from the dead to unleash hell on earth. And just like that, they were hooked on horror.
The Adams Family’s early films like Rumblestrips (2013) and Knuckle Jack (2014), were usually case studies of outcasts, who were struggling to find some kind of normalcy and acceptance in life and were genuinely good people on the inside. In contrast, the Adams Family’s brand of horror is much darker in tone and features witches (Hellbender), murderous carnival workers (Where the Devil Roams), and body-snatching creatures from beyond (Hell Hole).
Aside from the fact that the Adams Family consistently makes original, thought-provoking indie horror, one of the most remarkable things about this family is that everyone is involved in every single step of the filmmaking process. If you watch the credits of any Adams Family movie, you will see that John, Toby, Zelda, and Lulu are all involved in writing, directing, editing, scoring, and filming. It’s quite an impressive feat for a filmmaker, but an entire family who creates movies together and serve as cast and crew? It’s unheard of. Until now. If that isn’t incredible enough, they also have a metal band called H6llb6nd6r, who is featured in their film Hellbender (2021) and you can listen to them on Spotify.
Daughters Zelda and Lulu are both in college now, but that doesn’t mean the Adams Family has stopped working. John and Toby directed an upcoming episode of the SCREAMBOX anthology series Tales From the Void called Plastic Smile, which is the first time they have served as directors only on a project. Their new film Hell Hole, co-written with daughter Lulu, is the family’s first creature feature and is a gender swap, horror comedy reminiscent of The Thing and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Hell Hole premiered on Shudder today, August 23.
Recently, Bloody Disgusting had the pleasure of sitting down via Zoom with John Adams, Toby Poser, and Zelda Adams to discuss indie filmmaking, making music and movies as a family, their horror filmography, and a whole lot more.
Bloody Disgusting: You’ve been making indie movies for over a decade as a family under your production company Wonder Wheel Productions and everyone in the family is involved in the entire process. How did you decide to start making movies as a family?
Toby Poser: In 2010, Zelda was six, Lulu was eleven, and we were living in Los Angeles. I had been primarily acting and John was doing a lot of great art, and he was on this awesome rock and roll reality show, and the kids were into theater. My roles just started to tank as I hit forty, so we all realized that we are all creative in our own ways and we decided why don’t we just hit the road and make our own damn movie instead of waiting for permission from someone else to do something we love. So, that’s what we did! [laughs]
BD: You didn’t start out as horror filmmakers, but that’s how I discovered your work. The Deeper You Dig was the first movie of yours I saw. I love what you’re doing in the indie genre space. What inspired you to start making horror movies?
John Adams: Toby was actually working on a script and me, Lulu, and Zelda were sitting around one winter, a little bit bored, because we had made four movies, so we were used to shooting all the time. Zelda said, “Hey, what do you say we make a movie where I kill a bunch of men?” I was like, “Zelda, that sounds like a great idea. Let’s make a movie where you kill a bunch of men.” So, we made a movie called The Hatred. It was only an hour long, but we fell in love with the process. It was so fun playing with blood, it was so fun killing people, it was so fun working on the cinematography, and we loved the freedom of expression. Then it got into a bunch of festivals like HorrorHound and suddenly we realized what an amazing, open-minded, and welcoming community the horror crowd was. And we fell in love.
BD: Hellbender is my favorite Adams Family movie because it explores the relationship between a mother and daughter and incorporates witchcraft and metal music. I know the three of you wrote and directed it. Was there something specific that inspired you to write this story?
Zelda Adams: It was actually heavily inspired by our band that we put together which was called H6llb6nd6r. We have this song called “Blacksky” and we were making a music video for it, and it was really witchy and punk and dark and alternative. We were like, “This is so fun! What if we did something that was full-length that was this vibe like this music video?” We worked together a lot of life stories that we were going through. There was Covid; I was being home-schooled; Toby was dealing with some family discoveries. So, we morphed all of these things that we were going through in our life and used this inspiration from this music video that we were making and made Hellbender. And it was really just a beautiful, fun creation and a great project during Covid that really brought us close together.
‘Hellbender’
BD: Let’s talk about the band H6llb6nd6r. In one of your early films, Knuckle Jack, Zelda plays the drums briefly, so I wondered if you’ve always been musical. Tell me how the band came about.
ZA: Lulu and I were raised around music since we were born. Toby has always had amazing taste in music and John has always been in bands that we’ve heard stories about and also experienced growing up. John grew up in punk culture. He and Lulu had a band together when she was how old?
JA: She was about six. We were called the Hot Roses, and we actually had a little crowd because we played this bar in New York City called Otto’s repeatedly. When we got a little crowd, someone wanted to make a documentary about us. They started shooting the documentary and right in the middle of one of one of our concerts, Lulu decided to quit the band, because Lulu is so wonderful that she does whatever the hell Lulu wants [laughs]. So, we changed the name of the band to Kid California and Zelda decided she wanted to play drums. Zelda and I had a band called Kid California for quite a while and we also played live shows and had a beautiful time. So, we’ve just been playing together since they were born.
ZA: Then I kind of stopped playing drums because they were hard to lug around everywhere [laughs]. That’s when h6llb6nd6r was formed and it’s really more of a family band now because we’ll all sing on the tracks. It’s great.
BD: So, there is a documentary out there about your band Hot Roses?
JA: No, they didn’t finish it because they were so interested in the fact that this six-year-old was fronting a band that was gaining a following in New York City. And it was very funny because I would just play riffs and Lulu would just freeform sing. The stuff that came out of Lulu’s mouth was wild and so people just wanted to come to see what was going to come out of this kid’s mouth. The documentary crew should have kept going because they would have picked it up where Zelda picked up the mic. But they kind of stopped because they were more following this crazy kid, Lulu. There’s footage out there somewhere, I guess, but they never finished it.
BD: That’s such a shame! I would love to see that.
JA: [laughs] I would, too, because, Oh my God, Lulu was such a wonderful performer. Just amazing.
‘Hell Hole’
BD: You directed an episode of Tales From the Void on SCREAMBOX called Plastic Smile. It was the first time Toby and John only directed a project, instead of doing everything. What was that like?
TP: We shot in Northern Ontario and the crew was just so ace, just lovely professionals, so it was quite a nice experience. It was fast. For us, we’ll take almost a year to make a film and that one we shot in four days, with months of post. So, it was a very different experience, even from what we did with Hell Hole in Serbia. The crew was so wonderful that it was kind of a pleasure. Suddenly, you’re in a meeting talking about special effects with absolutely wonderful special effects people. And then with people doing coloring. John is amazing editor, but it was educational and illuminating just to watch the way these guys worked. The Canadian cast was great. So, it was just immensely positive.
JA: Yeah, it really was a great experience. They put together a brutal movie. It was a brutal story when we read it. They sent it over and said, “Would you guys be willing to direct this?” Because it takes place mostly in nature and they know from Hellbender that we love shooting in nature. We read it and we were like, “Oh my God, this is so brutal. This would be so fun to make.” [laughter] It was a joy.
BD: Zelda, you write, direct, act, play music, and you’re a model. What was it like growing up in such a creative, artistic family?
ZA: It’s been such a gift. Sometimes I look at my life just from a star’s perspective up from the sky and I’m just like, “I feel so lucky that I’m getting to live this life, and my family have given my sister and I these opportunities.” It’s really nice because the way that John and Toby have raised us has been very equal and has treated us at an equal level as them. I feel like that’s allowed me to have confidence in my artistic choices and feel very adult from a young age, and it’s great. It’s also taught me that you can really bond with people around you through film and music and learn a lot about life through art. So, it’s been such a treasure.
‘Hell Hole’
BD: Your new film Hell Hole premieres on Shudder on August 23rd. It’s a gender swap story and it’s a monster movie. John and Toby, I know you co-wrote the story with your daughter Lulu. What was it like making your first creature feature and can you talk a little bit about the amazing practical effects?
JA: It was a super lucky experience. We were on Joe Bob Briggs’ show and the production team who works on the show had all come from Troma and they asked us if we had any ideas. We thought it would be a great time to do something that we could never do as a family, which is to do a creature feature with that kind of Troma production value, something that’s fun and something that we wanted to stretch our legs and try. So, it was a wonderful opportunity to shoot with a crew, to shoot a creature feature, and most of all to work with a great practical effects person, a guy named Todd Masters. Todd Masters is a genius and an amazing effects builder and he’s a wonderful human being. I think that’s what’s most important to us about everything that we do is standing next to really great human beings and that’s what he was. He brought wonderful art to this film. And we got to work with a monster. He built us this beautiful monster that served all the purposes we needed, and our effects guy got to work with one of his heroes, Todd Masters, and bring in stop-motion additions to Todd’s monster. So, it was a really nice kind of family event and now we have a bigger family.
BD: The effects felt very much like eighties camp and I loved that. There were things that made me laugh and then wonder if it was okay to laugh. It’s really fun and so different from your other films.
JA: Good! That’s great! We’ve seen two screenings and people were laughing and we were so happy that they were laughing. We were laughing the whole time we were making it. Horror is just a step away from comedy and this was an opportunity for us to put one foot inside comedy and one foot inside brutality. It was just really great and it was the perfect production crew to do that with.
TP: I’m so glad you had fun! Thank you. We were just saying it was such a great exercise for us making something where we were leaning a lot more into the humor than usual where we feel like our humor is sort of organically in there and it’s dark humor. This was really fun to think of where those jokes might land and of course, the Serbian cast was so great at delivering.
JA: One of the nice things that has come out of this experience of making Hell Hole and getting to kind of laugh a little is that we’ve just filmed two new movies as a family again, and they are fucking dark [laughs]. It was a chance to kind of do something and then return to some wicked stuff.
TP: It kind of reminds me of when you’re at the ocean and you’re sort of chasing the surf like, “Do I want it to touch me?” That’s what it feels like. We were like, “Do I want to chase this monster movie? Oh no, I’ll go ahead and dip my foot in.” Now I’m going to run back to the sands and do something that we love, which is very witchy and sorceress in the woods again. I hope we keep kind of dancing with the surf trying new shit [laughs].
‘Hell Hole’
BD: Can you tell me about what’s coming next from the Adams Family?
JA: Absolutely. As you said, Hellbender is the story of a young woman coming of age and her relationship with her mother. All of our movies are basically documentaries about where we are as a family in life, but we cover them with blood. This next movie that’s coming up is a movie about a father and a daughter, who find out that the daughter has a fatal disease. So, they go to a witch doctor to find a cure. As we all know, when one visits a witch doctor and gets the cure, there is always a price to pay. It’s very exciting.
ZA: I’ll also add that we’re shooting in the Catskills, which is right in our backyard, very similar to what we did with Hellbender. So, it’s very close to home storyline wise and location wise. I’m really excited to go back to the roots of Hellbender. Hopefully, you will really like it, especially since you like Hellbender.
BD: That gives me something to look forward to because I get excited when I hear about a new Adams Family movie.
JA: Conversations like this are what we love about doing this. We are part of a family; you’re a part of our family. It’s nice to be in this open-minded, accepting community where we all get to talk to each other. In a world where there is a lot of meanness or hatred or volatility, this is the one place that we find is very accepting and it’s so funny that it’s built around violence and gore and horror. It’s a beautiful community.
‘Hell Hole’