A local filmmaker has made his dream come true. Monte Yazzie, a self-described horror hound, is releasing the first full-length feature film he’s produced. "The Dead Thing," will be streaming on the platform Shudder starting Valentine’s Day.
Yazzie has worked for the Phoenix Film Festival and International Horror and Sci-Fi Film Festival. "The Dead Thing" has been named one of IndieWire’s 52 most anticipated movies of the year.
Yazzie joined The Show to discuss what about this genre speaks to him.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: Monte, what about this genre speaks to you? Why do you love it so much?
MONTE YAZZIE: What I go back and tell people that horror has always been a part of my life, and whether that is through the upbringing of my parents, who introduced me to “Twilight Zone” and Godzilla films when I was a little kid, and just kind of stuck with me. And I always tell people that horror is this genre that you can really make a lot of different elements.
So you can have a funny horror film, you can have a real serious horror film. You can have a horror film that kind of embodies all these different genres, and at the core of it as well, too, you can have a horror film that is telling something socially important, and the commentary you get from that is so valuable, and some throughout history, horror, science fiction — these different genres have been the place where you can talk really obviously about something critical in the world, but do it through monsters and aliens and different elements like that, and that has meant so much to me.
BRODIE: Yeah, I’m curious about that, because I wonder if horror films offer an opportunity that maybe other types of films can't, or maybe just other types of media can't in terms of getting at bigger issues or really serious, hard to talk about issues where, yes, you can use humor, but you also can use monsters and make it about something else, but really it's about this really important topic.
YAZZIE: Yeah. Throughout history, horror movie history, that element has always been critical. I always go back to George Romero's “Night of the Living Dead.” And this film that came out a long, long time ago during a tumultuous time in America when race relationships were at an immense conflict. This movie comes out and tells a story about poverty and tells a story about race, and tells a story about all these different elements.
I feel like when you unpack it all, you can really get this understanding of like, “Whoa, there was something really tumultuous going on in that time period.” And I like to tell people that when you watch a film, no matter where it is, but especially in horror, you can really get a gauge for what society looked like at that point in time.
BRODIE: So how do you try to balance the message of a horror movie that you want to put out with, I think what I would imagine a lot of horror films expect, which is blood and gore and zombies and monsters and stuff that goes bump in the night?
YAZZIE: Yeah, I think a lot of that comes down to how you utilize those genre pieces, right? So, what is the purpose for gore? What is the purpose for a joke? What is the purpose for a monster? And balancing those pieces and understanding that, also, at the end of the day, you're also trying to make something that's entertaining, and you're also trying to make something that people will sit through.
BRODIE: Yeah.
YAZZIE: Sometimes it's hard to sit through some movies that are going to hit you over the head over and over with a message, and trying to find that nice balance point, where of how you use the genre to tell your story, but also at the same time, how you're using the genre to tell something entertaining. and there is room for both of those.
BRODIE: How have you seen this genre evolve over from when you were a child watching these TV shows and movies? How has the genre of horror changed over the years?
YAZZIE: With the impact of social media, right? And the impact of streaming services and television series is now becoming so much. Video stores were the place when I grew up, where you found your movies, right? Now it feels like there's so many places to find movies. There's so many different avenues to explore there. It almost feels like there's too much to explore, but the evolution of the genre goes through cycles, right? So, for a while you're really into zombies, and for a little bit you're in the vampires, and for a little bit you’re back to zombies.
But it does this cycle, and I feel like the reason why it does that is because those are vessels. Those are vessels for storytelling. And sometimes having a story about a lonely zombie in the world, and maybe they're the last ones in society, is a good, great way to tell a story of isolation. Telling a story about a 1,000 year old vampire who is in love with somebody immensely is a great way to tell a story about romance, maybe a romance that ultimately some people don't have, or some people yearn for. It's those elements that you can feel breaking down these barriers, and more and more people are telling stories. And I always tell people that every story is valuable.
BRODIE: Let me ask you about your film called “The Dead Thing,” which will be streaming on Shutter, which is a streaming service specifically for the horror genre. This seems like a real labor of love for you.
YAZZIE: It sure is. I have been working in film and media production for almost 15 years now, doing short films, working on projects, helping people make their visions come to life. And about six years ago, I started to wonder, “What's the next step?” You can only do short films for so long. You can only help out filmmakers for so long.
How do you make something of yours come to life? And a really good friend of mine, who runs a podcast. His name is Elric Kane. He has a great podcast called the Pure Cinema Podcast and Colors of the Dark podcast. And he brought this idea up. He said, “Hey, man, I have this script, I want you to read it. Check it out.”
And I read it, and I really connected with the subject. I really connected with the message it was saying. And I really connected with this idea of working with a group of creative people and doing it from a small, on our level at that point in time, to try to make it come to life. And I like to tell people that the process of making this movie come to life has been both the hardest and the most satisfying, you know, labor of love that I've ever done.
BRODIE: What does it mean to you to have it on a streaming service where pretty much anybody, anywhere who has this can see it?
YAZZIE: It is beyond comprehension. Sometimes, because when I grew up, it was video stores, but having these avenues now gives people more opportunity to put their films out there for people. So for me, for somebody who was so excited to see a streaming site like Shudder, where a horror movie fan like me can go to and find everything I ever wanted to find that could connect me to this genre that I love, and having the opportunity to show something that I've produced put on that platform is pretty amazing.
And I still tell people, I'm going to pinch myself one of these days. I'm going to wake up a freshman in college, wondering how I'm going to make my first film come to life. But I'd be remiss to not take it back a little farther than that. But I grew up, I'm Native American, I'm Navajo and Apache, and I grew up with connections to my family members throughout the state of Arizona. So going to movies with my mom was was my introduction to movies, and being in a theater, in a cinema, and my grandmother was the first person who allowed me to read a horror movie magazine called Fangoria Magazine, and it was her just honesty of saying, “Hey, if you have any questions, come and talk to me about it. But here's this element.”
And I remember being with her one time, and she bought me this magazine, and that was very early on. I was probably 8 or 9 years old. Probably shouldn't have had that magazine at that time, but my grandma didn't know any better, and I remember going home with it, and I never thought that an article would be written about something that I did in that magazine. And this month the magazine is out, and there's a full article inside it.
