Show Notes
It's Halloween season and we have a great episode for you with a delightful human being, Adam Deyoe, if you've seen Dead Season, they you already know his work. And he made a sequel just for you, Decade of the Dead, it's on tubi, check it out. He'll really appreciate that! Filmmaker, Adam Deyoe’s love for horror and film started in childhood with a game called Monkey Island and as a movie rental store clerk called Video Revolution in Concord, Massachusetts. All of his old video store buddies either moved to New York or out to LA with him, all in pursuit of a career in film, after college. And it worked out for many of them, (his friend from those days, Rob, just edited the new Naked Gun movie!)
But let’s go back…
Adam’s first foray into filmmaking was in high school, where he made two ‘bad’ movies, after graduation he went to film school. At Emerson, Adam made The Mental Dead, his first zombie film (Look out for the re-mastered re-release!). That was also the first film he sold, it was bought buy the man who made Splatter Farm, Todd Michael Smith. Soon, Adam also made a movie called Street Team Massacre, released only online through Troma.
After college, Adam and a college friend, Eric Gosselin made four feature films (Yeti: A Love Story, Another Yeti Love Story: Life on the Streets, Street Team Massacre and Psycho Sleepover)
Then, another friend, from another video store, named Matt Manjourides (who makes low budget horror films and is the producer of The Last Drive-in with Joe Bob Briggs) is an FX guy that helped Adam study up on zombies by getting him to watch Fulci horror in preparation for his first zombie feature, The Mental Dead. Matt also had a hand at helping another of Adam’s films, Yeti: A Love Story, get a little nudge toward success at Troma, unbeknownst to Adam.
At the time of the making of Yeti: A Love Story, Adam met filmmaker John Waters, he used to read Adam’s scripts and they became friends for a time.
Yeti was made during the time of MySpace and random people from there were excited to be nude in a very adult, very low budget and very Yeti movie. And a lot of Adam’s college friends. who were also in this movie, all moved to LA together. And unfortunately, because of the state of the industry recently, some have moved away.
Adam talks about the Yeti fandom, the changing landscape of LA and the rapidly changing business of film and then his feature Dead Season. He talks about scouting out the island where he was housesitting for filmmaker, John Cameron Mitchell (director of Short Bus and Hedwig and The Angry Inch), the island was Viajes, in the Bermuda Triangle. While there, someone said they should make a zombie movie, instead on the intended comedy, Boat, Island and that zombie movie was Dead Season. The only other film ever shot on that island was Lord of the Flies.
With his partner, Enzo, Dead Season was green lit and written within a month. Adam talks about a pretty major scam that bankrupted the production before they even started. He talks about the scramble to fund the film and still having to deal with this thief and their nonsense, during filming. That same person also told a lie about a permit, and that lie could have cost the cast their lives. (This story is crazy!)
After all of that, the film made it to its screening, hosted by a friend and something went wrong with the way it played. If this film didn’t do well or sell, Adam and Co were moving back home. This was a hail mary. With luck on their side and being in the wake of the first season of The Walking Dead, they hit the jackpot.
Years later, just as Adam is ready to film Decade of the Dead, it was canceled due to the pandemíc and the sudden hospitalization of his producer. And so for a year and a half, he waited (and made a stop motion short!) but it wasn’t over, soon pandemic or not, the film was greenlit. This is just part 1… c
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