ROSCOE, N.Y. — Sitting on a red velvet couch in her living room, Zelda Adams, 17, opened her mouth to describe the plot of her family’s next movie. Before she could begin, a bloody, chewed-to-the-gristle, severed arm emerged menacingly from behind a wall and then waved cheerily at her.
“It’s a period piece,” she said without missing a beat. “Set during the Great Depression.”
Her father, John Adams, 55, bounded in and deposited the limb, along with a gnarly chopped-off hand, next to a plate of homemade chocolate-chip cookies. The appendages appeared ready to duke it out for treats, but aside from the gory props, the family’s rustic hillside house, packed with colorful landscape paintings and portraits, felt downright cozy.
The family of four — Zelda’s sister, Lulu, 23, and their mother, Toby Poser, 52, are the other members — is Wonder Wheel Productions, a production company based out of their home in the western Catskills town of Roscoe, N.Y.
They write, produce, shoot, edit, costume design and act in all their films, rotating from behind the camera to the front. They’ve made six small independent movies, and their last two, “The Deeper You Dig” and “Hellbender,” took a sharp turn into horror. Creatively and professionally, they seem to have found their niche.
