For the podcast Best Movies Never Made, hosts Stephen Scarlata and Josh Miller dig deep into, well, movies that were developed but never actually made, and the latest episode features an interview with Fred Dekker, writer/director of fan favorites Night of the Creeps and The Monster Squad, as well as the co-writer of last year’s The Predator.
The topic of conversation? Godzilla: King of the Monsters 3D, a film that Dekker wrote back in the 1980s, with Steve Miner (Friday the 13th 2 & 3) attached to direct.
Story goes that in 1983, Miner (fresh off directing Friday the 13th Part III) approached Dekker (pre-Night of the Creeps), letting him know that he acquired the Godzilla rights from Toho and that he wanted Dekker to write the script for a brand new, 3D take on the iconic monster.
“I basically tried to come up with a story that would be interesting even if Godzilla didn’t show up,” Dekker recalls. “That was kinda my pitch.”
He continued, “[Miner] had this idea that it would be interesting for a kid to… not befriend Godzilla, but be sort of the conscience and heart of the audience as treating the monster as more than just this force of nature. I remember the broad brush strokes and the characters, sort of. I remember I wanted a spy element. There was a paleontologist. We had the feisty, Hawksian news reporter. And then the usual group of useless military guys, who would do nothing but get in the way.”
“The main plot point.. the main plot twist.. was an idea I had that I subsequently realized was a ripoff of a movie called Gorgo. We followed the Jaws template… we did that on a massive scale for the first act of the movie. We suggest Godzilla’s out there, but we don’t actually show him. And then the end of the first act, our spy guy gets a call from the state department or the feds or whoever… he goes to Mexico… there’s this giant dead reptilian creature the size of an apartment building on the beach. But what we find out is that it’s the progeny of Godzilla. And that the real dude is much, much, much bigger. Godzilla comes looking for the baby Godzilla.”
From there, enraged about the death of his child, Godzilla goes on a massive rampage. But we won’t spoil all the fun. For much more, listen to the full episode through iTunes or Spotify!
