Like most really great ideas, the name of the Deadmonton Horror Film Festival owes its origins to a mixture of ingenuity and serendipity.
Sprouting from the roots of the Return to Odd marathon screenings put on by the departed Oddity video store (since re-named The Lobby, the owner of which, Kevin Martin, has a hand in running the current incarnation of the festival), as Deadmonton co-curator and co-head organizer Derek Clayton explains, they had to improvise when they weren’t able to contact Oddity’s original owner about using the established brand.
“It all came about because his e-mail account changed, and we couldn’t get ahold of him,” says Clayton casually. “At that point, we decided we were going to have to rename it. So we decided to go with Deadmonton because we thought it might be nice to take the name back from the naysayers, and what better way to do that than with a horror festival? Shortly after that, Chris [the former owner] actually did finally get ahold of us, and he said, ‘You know, you could have used the name,’ but we figured it was a good time to rebrand it anyway.”
