In honor of “The Monster Squad” (Read Our Monster Squad DVD Review Here) finally being released onto DVD, director Fred Dekker sat down to talk to me about making the “Squad” and his love letter to genre films “Night of the Creeps.” I also got him to reveal his favorite Universal Monster, who his favorite horror director is, the possibility of him helming an episode of “Masters of Horror,” what went wrong with “Robocop 3,” his first directorial project in almost 15 years, and when “Night of the Creeps” will finally be available on DVD! Check it out!

TYLER SHAINLINE: Thank you so much for taking this time to talk to me. First and foremost, I wanted to let you know that you directed my two all-time favorite films, “Night of the Creeps” and “Monster Squad,” and it’s a real honor to get to talk to you today.

FRED DEKKER: Thank you very much.

TS: As a child were you one of those kids that everybody knew was going to be involved in film because you were always running around filming stuff in your backyard?

DEKKER: Exactly, yeah. It was when I was probably 11 or 12 years old, I started actually doing stop-motion animation with clay. The very first thing I did, I think, was a little stop-motion movie, and I was really into Ray Harryhausen and special effects at that time, and then lots of spy movies and chase movies to get my brothers and friends to run around the neighborhood while shooting them in eight millimeter.

TS: Was there any other direction you thought you were going to go in other than making films?

DEKKER: No. I pretty much knew from around 12 or 13 that’s what I wanted to do.

TS: So, then you went and applied to the USC and UCLA film departments and you were rejected, but you got into UCLA anyway. How did you manage that?

DEKKER: Well, there’s the standard curriculum and then film school tends to be more of a graduate program. So you have to do your grunt work first. I got into both universities, but neither of the film schools would accept me. I thought rather than slogging up that hill trying to get in, I would just enroll as an English major and go ahead and make my movies anyway. So, I spent quite a lot of time at the UCLA film school and also the USC film school because one of my best friends was over there in that department. I got to experience film school by extension.

TS: Is that where you met Shane Black?

DEKKER: Yes, I did. Shane was a theater major and I was an English major, but we developed this kind of unofficial fraternity of movie nerds which we called the Pad O’ Guys. It consisted of myself, Shane; David Silverman, who directed the “Simpsons” movie; Jim Herzfeld, who wrote “Meet the Parents”; Ryan Rowe (”Charlie’s Angels”); and a bunch of other great guys, and we had a really great time. It was kind of an extension of what I was doing when I was 12 years old except now I was shooting on video with my college buddies.

TS: That’s a pretty impressive group of writers and filmmakers to name as college buddies. Do you guys still get together from time to time?

DEKKER: Oh, Yeah. I think it is kind of remarkable. It was a really fertile period—the early ‘80s — of real talented people coming out of there.

TS: After leaving UCLA, how long was it before you started crafting the story for “House”?

DEKKER: Well, “House” was something that I wanted to do as my directorial debut. I was right out of college and at that time, much like recently, horror movies were kind of an easy entre in that they were very poplar and generally didn’t cost that much to make. So my thinking was, I wanted to do a real low-budget, really scary movie and when you’re making a low-budget movie, or when you’re contemplating making one, you have to think what assets do I have that I don’t have to pay for. My parents had really this picturesque Victorian house in Marin County, California, and I thought, okay, well, I have a house. Now I have to do the casting, because the more actors you have, the more you have to pay them. So I said, okay, the cast will be one. It will be one guy and a house; and at the beginning of the movie, he goes in; and at the end of the movie, he comes out; and in between it’s just the scariest crap that I could possibly come up with. That was sort of the setup for it. And I had the idea of the Vietnam vet and him being — sort of being haunted by his stint in Southeast Asia. But I never got around to writing the script and other things came up. I started writing what became “Night of the Creeps” and I was writing a 3D “Godzilla” movie for Steve Miner who ended up directing “House.” I just never got to the script and my buddy—college roommate Ethan Wiley — said, “Well, let me take a shot at it.” So he wrote the script and Steve Miner loved the script, and he went off and made it.

TS: You stated that you wanted “House” to be your directorial debut. Do you think they followed the themes that you had set up in the story, or would you have gone in a different direction?

DEKKER: I think they followed the themes. The tone of the movie was very different than I wanted to do. Ethan injects a real sense of humor in every thing that he does, and I think Steve Miner responds to that because it made it a little different than your average haunted house movie. I think they both have a lot of fun injecting humor and lightness and a kind of crazy “Mad Magazine” approach to it. The movie I wanted to make was much more dower and dark and probably a little more depressing, although I think it would have been scarier.

TS: You didn’t get to finish “House” because you started working on the script for “Night of the Creeps,” a film that is simply overflowing with various film genre references. Where did you come up with all of the wonderful ideas for that script?

DEKKER: I think of myself as sort of a teapot filled with all of these movies and all the various science fiction horror and fantasy themes, and I just had such a wealth of that stuff kind of bubbling over in my head that finally I had to let the kettle vent the steam off or I would have exploded. So that was kind of my attempt to pay tribute to all those kinds of movies that I watched in my youth.

TS: “Creeps” stars beloved horror icon Tom Atkins as Detective Ray Cameron. What was it like working with him? Did he thrill you?

DEKKER: Oh, yeah; and still does. We saw each other at the Monster Mania Convention just last February and we got to sit down and catch up, and he’s just a real joy as a guy, but to work with was just absolutely wonderful. Casting is one of the most important things in creating a movie and it could make or break you. I really felt I caught lightning in a bottle by putting that particular actor in that particular role because he had so much fun with it, but yet there was still kind of a melancholy to it that really worked to me and I was proud of Tom’s performance in that movie as anything I’ve done.

TS: Absolutely. Six of the main characters in that film are named after horror directors: Romero, Hooper, Cronenberg, Cameron, Landis, and Rami. Of those six, who would you name as your favorite?

DEKKER: That’s a great question. I’ve never heard that one before. I’ve been lucky enough to meet most of them. They are all wonderful guys. I’d have to say I’m pretty much a fan of all of them.

TS: I see you’re taking the diplomatic way out.

DEKKER: (Laughter) Let me just reserve – Well, it’s tough. You kind of have me—I’ve painted myself into a corner a little bit, but I’m going to say this because I think he’s a little underrated, not by horror fans, not by the genre crowd, but I think that George Romero is one of the great film makers of the latter 20th Century in any genre. I think he doesn’t really get his due because he makes horror films; but I think “Day of the Dead,” which is not particularly considered his most successful of that series, is actually my favorite of his “dead” movies. I find myself drawn to it again and again as a really potent, scary vision of the end of the world and I don’t think anybody really topped it.

TS: I absolutely agree. I think he does amazing social commentary films, but he just gets written off as a zombie director by the general public.

DEKKER: Not just social commentary, but character. And I think he has a really keen insight into humans and how humans actually behave with one another, and that’s something a lot of movies don’t have. I’ve seen sort of weepy dramas, you know, pretentious romances or people with illnesses and so called important movies or historical movies that don’t have half of the truth that George’s movies have. That’s the end of my speech.

TS: Back to “Night of the Creeps.” Point blank, why is this film not available on DVD; and we, as fans, what can we do to get it there?

DEKKER: Well, it’s funny you should say that. The producer of “The Monster Squad” DVD is a guy named Micheal Felsher who is also a huge fan of “Creeps” and he has been making roads at Sony, so cross your fingers. Think very positive.

TS: Excellent. So did you see James Gun’s film “Slither” and did you see any similarities between “Night of the Creeps” and his film?

DEKKER: Well, if by that you mean are they both movies that have slugs spewing out of people’s heads and turning into zombies, then, yes, there is clearly similarities. But I think that James’s movie has as much to do with Cronenberg’s “The Fly” than it does with “Night of the Creeps.” I think the whole first half of it very much feels like “The Fly” and kind of turns into “Night of the Creeps.” I think he just paid tribute to a lot of the same movies that I was paying tribute to. So I am flattered by the comparisons. I don’t think they were intentional.

TS: Did you enjoy “Slither?”

DEKKER: To a degree, but I have to be honest, this is nothing to do with James, I’m not particularly enamored with comic horror films anymore like I was when I was a kid. I mean, as a kid, it was really cool; but I’m kind of over it now, and I’m also a little over horror movies, frankly. I know your readers are going to be shocked. I’m just kind of over them, you know. I think it’s kind of played out and it’s so seldom that something really rocks my world in that genre.

TS: Do you feel it might have something to do with the struggles that you’ve gone through as a director to get your horror films out there? Could that have tainted the genre for you?

DEKKER: I think it has less to do with that than the fact, as a film maker, I want to tell stories; and once you told a certain kind of story you want to move on and tell a different kind of story. So, a lot of the movies that I would have loved as a kid, because I made a couple of them, I’m kind of less interested in them.

TS: Understandable. So how soon after “Night of the Creeps” did you start working on the script for “The Monster Squad”?

DEKKER: Actually, we were writing it as we were shooting. Shane has a very small cameo in the movie that was kind of cut out so you don’t really see him. You kind of see his shoulder in one scene, but he was hanging around quite a bit; and, in fact, he really loved what Tom Atkins was doing and suggested Tom to do Richard Donner when Shane wrote “Lethal Weapon.” So the reason Tom Atkins is in “Lethal Weapon” is that he was in “Night of the Creeps”.” We started the script for “Monster Squad” while “Creeps” was still in production, and we actually were setting “Squad” up to make when I was in post-production on “Creeps.” So we went directly from one right into the other.

TS: After you met Shane Black at school, how did you get him to write the “Monster Squad”? The majority of the movies seem to be action films like “Lethal Weapon.”

DEKKER: Well, he was a fan of this series of books called “The Three Investigators.” He was always much more of a reader than I. He read books, and I watched movies. So, I was kind of the film buff of the two of us, but he was also a big movie fan and liked comedy and I was a big fan of “Abbot Costello Meet Frankenstein” when I was a kid; and I said to Shane, I kind of want to do that. I want to do some kind of update of what they did with that pitting of these kids against the monsters, and he hadn’t written anything at that time and was sort of following my lead as a screenwriter. So I got him at just the right time when he would still do what I say.

TS: “Squad” is obviously an ode to your love of classic Universal horror films and the Abbott and Costello movies. Of the Universal monsters, which would you say is your favorite?

DEKKER: I’d say it would have to be the Frankenstein monster. I think that particular series has the greater quality. I mean, from the James Whale movie from ‘31 and then even up until the cheaper sort of slight bargain basement “House of Frankenstein,” there was always something very compelling to me about that sort of iconographic image of this big monster and I loved the Jack Pierce makeup. There was just something compelling to me about Frankenstein, and I always loved that character.

TS: I’ve read interviews where you’ve gone on record stating that, much like myself, you have no love for vampires in general.

DEKKER: Not really. I find they bore the shit out of me, but that’s not to say that I’m right. In “Monster Squad” it was very important that we had an antagonist who could concoct this evil scheme and be able to enact it in a way. So I think a Dracula can be a very compelling character if he’s done properly.

TS: So which was easier for you to direct in “The Monster Squad,” the handful of kids or the group of monsters?

DEKKER: Duncan (Regehr, Dracula), Tom (Noonan, Frankenstein) and I have seen each other recently and I love them very dearly, and we reconciled any issues we may have had at the time. Because they both are very serious and committed method actors, I’m sure they’ll understand when I say that kids are much easier to direct. They don’t ask too many questions. They just do what you say. They don’t need any more motivation than, “You’re scared. Go do it.” Now with that said, working with actors is tricky because every actor is different. It’s called “result,” directing “result,” in quotes, because, and there’s a lot of directors who do this, which is say, “Be scared,” or “Be happy,” and that’s asking for a result which is not how human beings work. Whether it’s your girlfriend or your mother or whatever; they tell you to feel a certain way your first response is going to be the opposite, “Don’t tell me how to feel. You can’t.” The process with working with real actors is to get them to a place where they can respond in a human way which is not artificial. But with kids, they’re still play acting. It’s still pretend for them, so it’s much easier for them to just channel, you know, do this, do that, pretend you’re in danger. There’s less thought into it, so it’s really a joy to work with kids—and you’ll edit that answer I’m sure.

[Editor's Note: Edit is not in our vocabulary, why we have so many typos.]

TS: In retrospective “Monster Squad Forever,” Tom Noonan seems to almost take great pride in commenting and reflecting about how he made your directing job difficult on the set of “The Monster Squad.” What was working with him like?

DEKKER: We had a wonderful time because he was very much in character and he did everything that was asked of him. He was a terrific actor. We had one little setback during one scene and we’ve since made our peace; but I think Tom’s a real no-bullshit kind of guy, and I was really young at the time and it was just the confluence of an experienced actor and inexperienced director, and he was kind of taking the piss out of me and I have to say I respect him for it.

TS: On “The Monster Squad” DVD commentary, you mentioned how one of the film’s producers, Peter Hyams, was micromanaging the hell out of the film. How did you cope with that?

DEKKER: The movie was executive produced by three guys: Keith Barish, Rob Cohen, and Peter Hyams. He was a real hero of mine and if it weren’t for me being a fan of Peter, this movie would had never been made, or at least not the way it was because he was the one I came to with the script. And I was hugely enamored with his early films: “Capricorn One,” “Hanover Street,” “Outland,” and “Busting.” He was kind of a father figure to me, the only downside being he was also a director and had a very firm idea of the way that things should be done. I think if you take the same script and give it to any two directors, you’re going to have two different movies. The only problems arose when he kind of wanted me to do it his way and I wanted to do it my way, but in the end it was a collaboration that really benefited the movie.

TS: “Monster Squad” ended up being Peter Hyams’ last film as a producer. Do you think that the “Monster Squad” soured him on any future producing efforts?

DEKKER: I think so, yeah. And there’s no agenda there. He’s a control freak. I think he would admit he was a control freak. I know I am—like any director, to a degree is a control freak. I also don’t take it personally at all. I think if Peter produced more films with other directors, he would have the same problems that he had with me, which is that the director isn’t him.

TS: The creature effects from “Squad” are nothing short of amazing. What was it like working with Stan Winston and his crew?

DEKKER: They were like magicians. They just create this alchemy out of nothing and I just sort of sit there with my jaw open and go, “Wow.” The Gill Man that we came up with is, I think, second only to the original from Universal and I think one of the best monster costumes I’ve seen on screen.

TS: I absolutely agree, and that’s why I wanted to ask, even though it’s such an amazingly designed creature, it got the least amount of screen time of any of the monsters. Even the Mummy got more screen time.

DEKKER: Yeah. Well, that’s the problem with the monster rallies, is you always have to sort of shoehorn every body in and somebody is going to get shorted no matter how you do it. Another thing, this is not a water-based movie and that’s kind of his milieu. If the Monster Squad went to the Amazon in the sequel, then we’ll probably see a lot more of this creature.

TS: After filming “The Monster Squad,” it would be about two years before you wrote the most recognizable “Tales from the Crypt” episode and “All Through the House.” What were you doing to fill the time between those years?

DEKKER: Struggling to find another movie to do. I was really lucky to have Bob Zemeckis, Joel Silver, and Richard Donner kind of back my play and say, “Hey, kid, come and do this for us.” So “Tales from the Crypt” was a wonderful experience and I was with them for a couple years. I ended up writing about five of them and I directed one. It was a great shot in the arm to say you know your career isn’t over, keep going.

TS: Were you a fan of the EC comics as a kid?

DEKKER: Oh, yeah. Sure.

TS: So how come you only directed one of the five “Crypt” episodes you wrote?

DEKKER: I think there was only a limited number of shows and unlike most TV shows where you have kind of a cycle of directors, “Tales from the Crypt” was intended as a showplace for either established feature directors who wanted to do something small and quick or people who were writers, editors or effects guys who hadn’t had the opportunity to do it before. So there were only so many slots and by the time I could have done another one, I had moved on.

TS: I know you said you’re sick of horror stuff but with your great work on “Tales from the Crypt,” would you have any interest in working on the Mick Garris’ popular “Masters of Horror” series?

DEKKER: Well, yeah, I’d like to do one and I’ll tell you why. Because they are a real throwback to the “Tales from the Crypt” in that each one is a little movie. So it’s a matter of being able to find a story that you like and somebody to adapt it, and that’s exciting because it’s sort of a one-shot deal.

TS: Between the “Crypt” episodes you were also crafting the stories for the Denzel Washington cop drama “Ricochet” and the Richard Grieco vehicle “If Looks Could Kill.” Both are big departures from your other films. Everything else you’ve done is horror or sci-fi. What was it like working on those?

DEKKER: Well those were both screen plays that I wrote on spec, which is when you write a screen play on your own without selling it to anybody and then sell it after the fact. “If Looks Could Kill” was my attempt to do a kind of James Bond movie with a geeky high school lead. I was a huge fan of Anthony Michael Hall at that time who I thought was a genius, and I actually met with him and fashioned the movie kind of for him. I thought, well, what if we did a James Bond movie but with a 16-year-old nerd in the center as a world class super spy; and ultimately the direction that the producers wanted to go with it was slightly different than what I had in mind, so I basically sold the script and stepped away and kept my story credit. “Ricochet” was originally my attempt to a “Dirty Harry” movie.

I had never seen “Cape Fear,” so I thought in my addled mind, this was a tremendously original idea of this bad guy that a cop sends up the river and he gets out of prison and comes back for revenge. I wrote it originally as a “Dirty Harry” movie and very briefly was going to direct it with Kurt Russell as the cop; but one thing led to another, and I think I lost interest in it or we were having a hard time solidifying a cast, so that was another one I let go. It was rewritten and became a Denzel Washington movie.

TS: So the last time you stepped behind the camera was with “RoboCop 3,” which has you sharing writing credits with comic book god Frank Miller. Did the two of you work together on that?

DEKKER: Yeah, we did a little bit. I was a huge fan, and still am, of Frank’s work in comics and he had written “RoboCop 2″ for Orion and Irvin Kershner. When they brought me aboard, they had a script Frank had written for “RoboCop 3″ that they really, frankly, weren’t all that interested in making and I said, “Guys, there’s so much wonderful stuff in this. Let me sort of dust it off and make it what you want it to be, which is a little bit more kid friendly,” which, in retrospect, was a fatal choice because I realized that the character and the tone of RoboCop is really action and cynicism first and heart second. And the mistake that I think I made was, let’s put the heart first and the action second and try to keep the cynicism to a minimum. While that is a wise move if you wanted to make a movie for a younger audience, the fact is the character wasn’t intended for a younger audience. So I think we kind of shot ourselves in the foot on that one.

TS: Was the studio pushing for a younger audience because they were doing toy tie-ins and cartoons and stuff?

DEKKER: Exactly, yeah. It was a cartoon series to them and said, hey, this is “Transformers,” you know, this is “Ghostbusters,” and I was so enamored with the character and to be able to play in this toy box and work with Rob Bottin, all these great technicians, cast and crew. I think we had a great cast in that movie, a lot of actors who have gone on to great stardom, so I was thrilled. I had a great time making the movie. I just made a few key mistakes and one of them was I don’t think I made it special enough from an action standpoint. I really wanted it to be a Hong Kong or Wachowski Brothers action movie, but I just didn’t have the money or the temerity to do it.

TS: There were a lot of great character actors that went on to do bigger parts after “RoboCop 3,” like Steven Root (”Office Space”) and Chi Chi Pounder (”The Shield”). What was it like working with them? Did you see any signs that they would go on to achieve what they have?

DEKKER: Sure. All very solid people. For Jill Hennessy, that was her first lead and she’s gone on to “Crossing Jordon” and being a big star; and Brad Whitford, who I just love, has recently gotten his Director Guilds card on “Studio 60.” These are just really solid, wonderful actors and it was a real turnaround for me to do that movie because I realized that the actors are really more important than the special effects and all the makeup and stuff. Those are all great tools to have, but there’s nothing better than great actors on screen, so that was a joy.

TS: If you were given a chance to go back and redo “RoboCop 3,” what would you change?

DEKKER: Good question. And I have to tell you, when you do something in life that you kind of wish you hadn’t or you made a mistake, you have recurring dreams about getting a chance to do it over. One of those dreams in my life is making this movie again. What I would have done is told the studio that I need enough money and resources from the Hong Kong action community, the Jackie Chan stunt team, or whoever it is, to make this something that American audiences have never seen before. I also would have probably not written the script myself but would have hired another writer, even besides Frank, to make it really sort of dark and cynical and have it be as wickedly funny as the first movie. Because I think that’s really what’s missing from it, it’s not funny enough and the action isn’t good enough. So I would have made it funnier and had better action and I think it would have been a big hit if we would have done that.

TS: It would be about eight years after “RoboCop 3″ before you return as a writer/producer on the “Star Trek Enterprise” series. What were you doing to fill the void between those years?

DEKKER: I was lying in a corner in the fetal position licking my wounds with all the “RoboCop 3″ reviews nailed with bloody handprints on the wall next to me. No. I mean, show business is very unforgiving. If you made a piece of shit movie that does hundreds of millions of dollars, you’re guaranteed a career. If you make a movie that’s not well regarded or doesn’t make its money back, you know, people are a lot less willing to go to bat for you.

TS: Yeah, you screw up at McDonald’s 13 people know. You screw up on a big-budget film, 30 million people know.

DEKKER: Yeah, exactly, and so that’s very hard to come out from under. I spent the years after that movie came out kind of trying to reinvent myself and say I need to make movies that nobody else would make. Many directors are picking a product and they’re turning out something that any handful of guys could pull off. I realized that the directors that I respond to and my heroes are the ones whose work is very unique. From Steven Spielberg, to Stanley Kubrick, Michael Mann, the Cohen Brothers, Martin Scorsese; all of these directors, if you look at their movies, you can tell who made them and I realize that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to do something that has a unique stamp. It doesn’t have to be the same stamp as my other movies. Like I say, I’m a little bit over horror films. To do something that’s special I would rather make a special low-budget movie than a kind of bland hundred-million-dollar movie. So that’s what I was doing and trying to figure out what I’m going to do next and writing screenplays and doing acting and directing workshops. Kind of preparing myself, like in the “Rocky” movies, for the next time I go into the ring to beat the holy hell out of the other guy.

TS: Good attitude. So what drew you to working on “Enterprise?” Were you a “Star Trek” fan?

DEKKER: I was a little bit of a “Star Trek” fan. I loved the original series when I was young and I also love the movies featuring the original cast, particularly the first couple. I loved “Wrath of Khan” and “Search for Spock.” I really think those are great but what really drew me to “Enterprise” was the fact that we were going to start from scratch. I was very excited to be involved in a franchise that’s so popular and well known but that we were going to do it without any characters that we’ve seen before, to kind of not reinvent but reinvestigate the history and substance of this universe that Gene Roddenberry created; and, unfortunately, I feel that where the show failed was not going far enough in that direction. Very early on the executive producers decided to bring in the Klingons, the Vulcans and the Andorians, all of the aliens that we knew from the other series. I thought, well, this is just like the other series now. You guys are doing exactly what you said you wouldn’t do. So it was a little bit disenchanting.

TS: So now that “Enterprise” is off the air, what’s next for Fred Dekker? What are you looking forward to?

DEKKER: Well, I’m really thrilled with “The Monster Squad” DVD. The audience who grew up with it are finally able to see it in its full wide-screen glory, and so that’s really terrific. And I have several projects I’m working on. I’ve got a sort of apocalyptic science fiction horror thriller that I’ve been attached to direct for Gold Circle which is… I cannot tell you the title of, but I’m very excited about it. (TS: It’s titled, “The Belcoo Experiment”) Eric Newman of “Children of Men” is producing that.
My partner, Alex, and I sold a TV pilot to TNT which Dreamworks is producing. It’s an hour-long drama with a fantasy twist to it that we’re really jazzed about and then I’m also writing a drama that’s a biopic of a really promising young playwright, Oakley Hall III, who suffered a brain injury in the 70’s. It’s very powerful.

TS: Well, I’m glad to hear you got a lot of irons in the fire.

DEKKER: It’s feast or famine in Hollywood. There’s been a long fallow period and now things are coming back.

TS: My last question is about Phil’s. At least three of your films have featured a food establishment named Phil’s. What’s the origin of that?

DEKKER: Okay. There was a really great, cool looking old art deco train car diner in North Hollywood, California, called Phil’s and you could see it in “Night of the Creeps.” Since the Ray Cameron character had this Raymond Chandler old school detective quality to him, I said, well, we got to have a shot of Phil’s Diner. So that was not something we built. It existed in North Hollywood and I said, let’s do just one shot of him driving by. I just thought it was a really cool looking thing. It has nothing to do with the movie and it kind of sticks out like a sore thumb when you think about it, but I just loved it. So then when we were making “Monster Squad,” I said, we have to have Phil’s in here somewhere. There was a scene that takes place at a burger drive-in and I said, okay, let’s call it Phil’s. So we built a big neon sign that says “Phil’s” and that was my tribute to Phil’s from “Night of the Creeps.” Then, when we were prepping “Robocop 3,” I said we got to figure out a place for Phil’s, so we had a donut shop because, you know, all cop movies have to have a donut shop somewhere. We also had a tie-in with a place called Dunkin’ Dine, I think it was, which is an actual place. There was a real one in Atlanta, Georgia, where we filmed the movie. I told the art department, I want you to put up Phil’s Dunkin Dine. So if you look very carefully, you can see that Phil’s lives on. So I got to find a place for it in every movie. That’s my trademark.

TS: Excellent. Well that’s all the questions I have for you today but I just wanted to say…

DEKKER: They were really good ones. I really enjoyed it a lot.

TS: Thank you. I just wanted you to know that “Monster Squad” came out when I was in fourth grade and I had the poster above my bed probably longer than I should have, when girls would come over and look at it and then look at me and be like, ooookay….

DEKKER: (Laughter)

TS: But that is one of my all-time favorite films and I’m just so happy that Lionsgate did an amazing job on the DVD and that you took the time to talk to me today.

DEKKER: Yeah. It is awesome, isn’t it? Thank you so much man.

And speaking of thank yous, I wanted to give a big thanks to Allie Leung from Lionsgate for setting me up to interview a man who has been a hero to me since childhood and an extra big thanks to Kelly Bryce for helping me transcribe the damaged audio file of this interview.

Read all of Tyler Shainline’s articles and reviews in his Archives

[Editor's Note: I made a free "Night of the Creeps" ringtone just for fun. You can get it HERE. ToneFM was made by the people who bring you HorrorYearbook, just because we could! It is 100% free, no scams, no spyware, we just wanted to be able to make fun ringtones that no one else would think of making.]