Sunday, October 17, 2010

Shocktober Director of the Day: Fred Dekker


With only three feature films to his credit, Fred Dekker is better known as a writer and producer than a director. Still, he did manage to direct a movie that has won the hearts of children of the 80's (more on that in a bit).

In 1986, Dekker wrote and directed Night of the Creeps, a funny and gross Sci-Fi/Horror flick about slug-like alien parasites infecting a college campus on the night of their big formal social.

Starring genre fav Tom Atkins (The Howling; The Fog), Night of the Creeps is about a bunch of college kids who accidentally thaw out a body frozen since 1959, releasing the squiggly little aliens into the campus' general population and turning them into murderous zombies.



Of course. Night of the Creeps served as the inspiration for James Gunn's far superior 2006 film Slither, starring Nathan Fillion ("Castle;" "Firefly") and Elizabeth Banks.



Dekker followed Night of the Creeps with the aforementioned kids classic The Monster Squad. When Dracula conspires to take over the world, a group of kids gather up the Universal Monsters and put a plan in place to stop him.



Silly and a bit dated, a remake has been rumored for quite some time, though little, if anything, has come of it. Dekker's last film as director was 1993's Robocop 3, an exceptionally lame sequel by any standard.



Dekker most recently served as a writer and producer for the last "Star Trek" TV series, "Star Trek: Enterprise" in 2002. According to his IMDb profile, he hasn't worked since. One can only assume he is living comfortably on the residuals from his previous endeavors.

More, anon.
Prospero

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