INTERVIEW: THE ADAMS FAMILY ON THE GLORIOUS DEAD

This week in the morgue, Gaz and Ken welcomed back John Adams and Toby Poser of the Adams Family — our first-ever returning guests — to talk about their new film, The Glorious Dead, which has just had its UK debut at FrightFest and is coming to Manchester's own Grimmfest next month, with John in attendance.

On the Script: Waking Up in America

Gaz Hames: We love the movie. There's a lot to unpack in there. It has your now-trademark humour. One of my favourite tropes in any horror movie is people panicking because they don't know what the fuck to do, so I had a blast watching scenes of that nature. But thematically there's so much in there — loss and grief, letting go, meditations on religion. What was the driving force behind the script? What was the thing that inspired you the most?

John Adams: I think really what we wanted to do was make a movie about what it feels like for our family to wake up in America in 2026, look around and say, wow, this is crazy. Crazy. And the nice way to do it is just to take place in one day, so that things start off kind of like, wow, this is crazy, but I can deal with it, to things are getting crazy, or I'm trying to figure it out, to holy crap, I don't know whether I can deal with this shit.

Another two things that factored in as well. We love to always try new things and stretch new muscles. So we really were interested in doing something that was just a story of escalating terror in a quick amount of time. We wanted to make kind of a lean, mean fighting machine. And we love working in the winter, and we were ready to do that again, and we only had Zelda for a short time, because she was finishing her last year of college. So it was the perfect opportunity to really explore something with a fast momentum and blood in the snow, which we love.

Ken Talbot: Blood, blood and other things in the snow.

Gaz: Yeah, blood in the snow always looks cool.

On Deb and Mikey

Ken: My personal favourite line of dialogue in the entire year of film is, “there's a hole in my front lawn made of meat.” So thanks for that. How's the festival run been? It's great to see you guys front and centre on a marquee.

John: So far, it's so good. We loved our premiere at Fantasia. And then FrightFest, of course, is always a highlight of our circuit when we're lucky enough to go there. We love screening in the UK. You guys are great. The people are wonderful, the audiences are great, and we just never fail to have the most rocking time.

Ken: Yeah, big community of horror fans here in Blighty. You guys seem to be growing in popularity with each movie and I kind of love to see it.

Toby — Solveig in Mother of Flies was pretty much my favourite performance of yours. And in this new film, your character is front and centre. We spend the whole movie with her. She's in almost every scene. And it's a very understated performance in comparison to your last film. So can you tell us a little about Deb, what kind of person she is, what kind of sheriff she is?

Toby Poser: Oh, yeah. Well, thank you. Solveig was a lot of fun, and so was Deb, because the minute you put on that sheriff's uniform, you kind of understand a lot more about authority. The way they walk, that heavy belt with all the gear and shit on it. I loved playing Deb, and I was going for something just very straight and simple. I just really thought, well, what would it be like to be someone who cares about her small community, which I do, but is in a position of authority and under the most dire fucked-up circumstances. So I really just kind of played it the way I thought it would go if I were in Deb's shoes.

And Zelda, our daughter, played Mikey, her young deputy. It was such a delight to play opposite her — her innocence and her desire to do well in the face of complete mayhem. I thought she was the most fun deputy.

On Small-Town Politics

Ken: I think it's those down-to-earth characters and the dialogue that they share. I don't think the movie works without that. Not to give too much away, but as the plot escalates, it's a very traditional kind of genre picture, told in this episodic way of a very normal small-town sheriff and her deputy going through the ever-expanding fuckery of this small town.

One of the things I wanted to talk about is the depiction of small-town politics, specifically in a post-COVID world. What did you want to say when you were depicting this community? I know you guys are big on community, and usually cast from around where you're filming, and I think that comes across here, but there is a point in the story where the community becomes an opposing force.

Toby: Yeah, where we live, we do live in a tiny — it's called a hamlet because it's not even big enough to be a village. So I think that means less than 500 people. And our girls went to school; Zelda in particular went to the public school there. Her friends were, like, the local deer butchers, the local loggers, and it's a wonderful, rich community, and then you also have artists and people who come up from the city. So we sometimes feel politically at odds with some of our neighbours, but we also connect around our love of our family. We want our kids to win on the soccer field. But if the shit hit the fan, people will be bringing out their guns, for sure. And so this was really a study in who would go in which direction.

John: Yeah, I think everybody in our community, whatever their viewpoints are on life and politics, everyone's a good person, but people have different ideas about how to deal with everything, especially in a small community like ours. Violence and guns are a big part of it. And so it was really fun to make a day where you have to navigate through a community that you love, and that you grew up with, where everybody has a different viewpoint of how to deal with something really out of this world.

And what's interesting about it, if you look at what's happening in America, is we're all trying to deal with something, everyone thinks they have the right answer, and ultimately, we're all on the same team, but we don't know it.

On Grounding the Abnormal

Ken: That's a very timely sentiment. Keeping with that — abnormal versus normal. The whole atmosphere of this normal rural town being changed in ever more escalating uncanny ways. It was a very Lynchian version of abnormality. And you have Judith Roberts, who has a great moment in the film. With regards to the script, how did you manage to keep Deb's story so grounded with these ever-escalating abstractions going on?

John: Because we basically based it on Toby, and Toby really played Toby, and Toby's not someone to hit a panic button. Toby's someone who, no matter what the shit is going on, is trying to work through it the correct way. And we won't give anything away, but even at the last scene, she has kind of hope and humour.

And I think that's really what kept the movie grounded. When we first started shooting, we were slightly worried that it would possibly be mean and too political, like, too kind of hitting the nail on the head. And so what was fun was watching the humour and the humanity come through. We ad-lib a lot on set, so we'd say, this is what's gonna happen in the scene, but just say what you think you should. And Zelda especially brought a ton of very grounded human humour into every single situation, and played off of Toby. It really works well, because it's not like, nod nod, wink wink, haha, let's slap our knee. At least, we didn't think it was. We think it's very normal, like the way we, as the Adams Family, do talk in hairy situations.

Toby: Something that's always crucial to us is that our characters are multidimensional and not perfect at all. Not only are there cultural differences within the community, but there are generational differences between Zelda's young character and my late-50s character. And Deb isn't always right. She's definitely not perfect, and she still says things that could be construed as old-fashioned and outdated. And then you have the younger generation to say, hey, come on, snap out of it, that's not how we call things these days, or that's offensive.

And so it's always fun to tell those stories and show that people, even your so-called protagonists, are fallible. And this is definitely a fallible community, whichever side you're looking at.

On Judith Roberts

Toby: And let me mention real fast, Judith Roberts — she's so cool.

Ken: Oh, she was amazing.

Toby: She's a dear friend of ours. I got to work with her on a short film a few years ago, and we just became fast friends. So we were able to go down to her apartment in the city. She's almost 92, and we worked with her there. She's up on the 44th floor. It's incredible. So here we're pretending it's the country and it's the city, and that shows you the magic of John, that he can pull that off. That was so much fun.

Ken: There's a big naturalism to the film despite what's going on, but when we get to her, there's such a gravity to her performance, it sucks you in. I didn't recognise her at first, but as soon as the film finished, I'm like, hang on a minute. Oh, yeah, of course.

John: Yeah, she was incredible. As soon as we started filming — that level of acting, it was amazing. She kicked into gear, right, Tob? Remember? We were both like, holy — well, you had seen it before, because you'd worked with her. But wow, she was wonderful.

Ken: Toby, in the scene, you look like you're being blown away by these portents being fed to you by this woman.

John: Toby was amazing. The two of them played so well together. It's funny, because she's the nicest woman in the world. But when you look at her, if you don't know that, you could be really intimidated by her, because she's so powerful looking, and she has these great hands, and a strong nose and these features. Incredible. We should maybe make a female Nosferatu and cast her.

Ken: We would rush for that.

John: Well, she's up for it too. She's the toughest lady you could meet. She's just so smart, so nice.

On Effects, Creature Design and the Soundtrack

Ken: Let's flip onto the technicalities of film, because your whole extended Adams family just gets better and better. Outstanding effects work this time around again. Is this Trey Lindsay again?

John: It is. Trey's always — he's in the family. His name's Lindsay, but he's an Adams.

Ken: He's in the film at one point, isn't he?

John: Yeah. He's designing his own gut work.

Ken: Outstanding creature design. Gaz and I recently covered the Silent Hill films and games, and I think you've captured more of that uncanny, horrible, Lovecraftian abstraction than those do, so that's really effective work.

We also need to talk about the soundscape. You guys really aren't playing fair with how crunchy this bass is. I know we talked a bit about the music for Mother of Flies, but tell us something about the pieces you chose for The Glorious Dead, because especially when Deb is driving between locations, I pull that scrunchy face I pull at a gig.

John: We just all wanted a super heavy, crunchy, but fun-sounding soundtrack for her travelling from piece to piece, just to show the adventure of the day. To me it was funny — I don't know how other people take it — but almost like a heroic soundtrack, as she goes from one bad thing to another bad thing.

So we had a ton of fun with this soundtrack. The horror community out there that we love so much gives us permission to experiment and have fun with the soundtrack. So we're going to continue doing that, because it's really a fun part of making a movie.

Ken: When I start an Adams movie, I'm just like, okay, what's going on? And it's much better at the beginning because the happenings are a bit more mundane in nature. Deb will drive to another location, and it's bang, bang, bang. It's very enjoyable.

On What's Next

Ken: I implore everyone to go and see The Glorious Dead. Everyone should go to Grimmfest and catch this, and maybe meet John. We'll finish off with what we usually finish off with, which is: what is next for John and Toby?

Gaz: Because you're shooting something right now, is that correct? You never stop!

Toby: We are in Paris right now. And we have the bunny, Les Lapins, and we are hopping from one place to another, and we are shooting a lot. We shot in London, and we shot in Scotland, and we're gonna shoot in Manchester. We're shooting wherever we go, because we've made so many great friends, and we're asking people to be in the movie.

For me, it feels like a real stab at giallo. It's more urban than our other films — I'd say it's a pretty fully urban film — and we follow this one character through the back alleys of cities, and she has to go to a place to see horrible things happen. And you don't really understand what's going on until the very end. And it's interesting, because with The Glorious Dead, we really had a great time with dark humour. This one just feels dark. We're like, holy shit, this is dark. It's a little mean and nasty.

Gaz: We love that on this show.

Toby: So that's what's up. It's called Killer Fun.

Ken: We have a planned giallo episode, guys, so we should probably wait for that.

Gaz: We've been planning an episode around some giallo for some time. We haven't got around to it yet, but if it coincides, that would be awesome.

Toby: We're hustling for it, then. We'll hustle up.

The Glorious Dead screens at Grimmfest in October. You can listen to the interview in full on any platform here.