![\"Poway](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/PRN-L-Costa-Dillon-1.jpg\")
Poway resident Costa Dillon acting in the library scene during filming of \u201cAttack of the Killer Tomatoes: Organic Intelligence\u201d that opened in movie theaters on Aug. 7. (Courtesy of Costa Dillon)<\/p>\nWhen Poway resident Costa Dillon came up with the idea of making a movie about killer tomatoes as a teen, he never dreamed that over 50 years later it would be a movie franchise with a cult following.<\/p>\n
But 48 years after the 1978 horror comedy film \u201cAttack of the Killer Tomatoes\u201d debuted, the fifth installment \u2014 \u201cAttack of the Killer Tomatoes: Organic Intelligence\u201d \u2014 opened in movie theaters across the U.S. on Aug. 7.<\/p>\n
Dillon was one of its two screenwriters and also had a couple of small acting parts.<\/p>\n
Poway resident Costa Dillon acting in the library scene during filming of \u201cAttack of the Killer Tomatoes: Organic Intelligence\u201d that opened in movie theaters on Aug. 7. (Courtesy of Costa Dillon)<\/p>\n
Like its predecessors, much of the movie was filmed at recognizable locations throughout San Diego County. These included the USS Midway, the Embarcadero, downtown Chula Vista, Rady Shell and Mission Bay, Dillon said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a great community of filmmakers here and have never had road blocks when filming in San Diego,\u201d he said. \u201cWe know the place and people know who we are and are very accommodating. We appreciate the cooperation of local governments. It\u2019s great to film here.\u201d<\/p>\n
The plot for this movie acknowledges the first, he said, by saying it was not a comedy, but rather a documentary to warn the public about the danger of tomatoes and how they are behind some nefarious incidents in history.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mostly enjoy other people\u2019s enjoyment of (the movies),\u201d Dillon said. \u201cI realize the concept is silly, but expect people to take the good-natured humor. There is not a message or political statement. People just go to the movie to sit and have fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dillon said he and his fellow filmmakers of the franchise intentionally make each film to get a PG or PG-13 rating so families can go see their tomato movies.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have just a handful, mostly Disney films and animation, because there are not many films where you can go as a family,\u201d he said. \u201c(With our films) the humor works for kids and adults.<\/p>\n
\u201cI enjoy hearing them laugh at what we put up on the screen,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
While Dillon\u2019s career as a filmmaker, writer and actor would be enough for many people, he actually pursued two very different careers simultaneously. The other was as a national park ranger.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been fascinating,\u201d Dillon said. \u201cI meet people who say they\u2019d love to be a park ranger or to work in the movies. I had them both as two careers.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Costa](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/PRN-L-Costa-Dillon-3.jpg\")
Costa Dillon, who has been a writer for all of the \u201cAttack of the Killer Tomatoes\u201d movies, took this photo of actor Paul Bates with director David Ferrino when the fifth movie in the franchise was filmed. It was released on Aug. 7. (Costa Dillon)<\/p>\n
Constantine \u201cCosta\u201d Dillon was born in 1953 in Connecticut. When he was a year old, his family moved to Camp Pendleton due to his father being in the Marine Corps, he said. The family subsequently moved to several places, but when Dillon was in seventh grade his father, Capt. James Dillon, was stationed in San Diego and they stayed here for the remainder of his formative years.<\/p>\n
Spending his teen years in Chula Vista, Dillon was among the first students to attend Bonita Vista High School from which he graduated in 1971. It was during his years there that Dillon became friends with John DeBello and Steve Peace.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe started making little 8 mm films \u2026 what you used for home movie formats. These were silent movies,\u201d Dillon said. \u201cWe made them in the summer after 11th and 12th grade. We put our friends and family in the movies.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were having fun making movies,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
While moviemaking was mostly a hobby at the time for the teens, they also won awards. For example, they came in third at the 1971 National Kodak Teenage Film Festival and in 1972 won the Shasta Film Festival.<\/p>\n
Despite this, Dillon did not plan to have a movie career. He attended the University of California, Davis as an electronics engineering major, but the required math courses led to him changing his mind, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe guy across the hall (in my dorm) was studying to be a park ranger and I had never thought of it,\u201d Dillon said. \u201cI thought I\u2019d love to do that because my family visited parks and went camping. I loved the idea of working at national historic places. It was the right choice.\u201d<\/p>\n
But getting a job in the U.S. National Park Service after graduating with a bachelor\u2019s degree in park management was a challenge when only around 100 park rangers were hired each year, he said.<\/p>\n
![\"Costa](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/PRN-L-Costa-Dillon-2.jpg\")
Costa Dillon wearing his U.S. National Park Service winter uniform. He retired in 2013 after 35 years. (Courtesy of Costa Dillon)<\/p>\n
Dillon was eventually hired and had a 35-year career that had him living all over the United States until his retirement in 2013. He worked in such places as Gettysburg National Military Park, Independence Hall and Eisenhower National Historic Site (all in Pennsylvania), Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Canyon. He also worked at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (North Carolina\/Tennessee) and Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site (Arizona).<\/p>\n
He later became superintendent of the National Park Service Horace M. Albright Training Center (Grand Canyon, Arizona), Homestead National Historic Park (Nebraska), Fire Island National Seashore (New York) and Indiana Dunes National Park.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to live in different places and you had to in order to get promoted,\u201d Dillon said.<\/p>\n
He also earned a master\u2019s degree in public administration from the University of Colorado.<\/p>\n
But while trying to get his career started in the National Park Service, Dillon said he was back in San Diego, where he founded a film company in National City with his high school friends. They made a lot of sports films, such as for San Diego State University football games and local high school games, he said. They also took on work for TV commercials and industrial films.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 1977, we decided to make a feature film and I had the idea to make it \u2018Attack of the Killer Tomatoes,\u2019\u201d Dillon said, who first explored the topic as a short film during college. \u201cIt was a spoof of low-budget Japanese horror films.<\/p>\n
\u201cTomatoes were something innocuous \u2026 we were poking fun at low-budget monster movies,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOriginally, it was a fun idea and we raised a minuscule amount of money,\u201d he said. \u201cTo be famous is astounding. There were just serendipitous events.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dillon pursued dual career fields. DeBello became a leader in filmmaking, while Peace ended up with a political career in the California Assembly and state Senate, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cJohn (DeBello) really wanted to be a filmmaker and we (Peace and Dillon) kept our hands in the feature film stuff,\u201d Dillon said, adding he was never formally trained in filmmaking, but self-taught.<\/p>\n
![\"Screenwriter](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/PRN-L-Costa-Dillon-4.jpg\")
Screenwriter Costa Dillon took this photo of \u201cAttack of the Killer Tomatoes: Organic Intelligence\u201d actors Karly Rothenberg and Eric Roberts when they were filming in Chula Vista. The film was released on Aug. 7. (Costa Dillon)<\/p>\n
The first film was far from being a box office success, but because of the film format they used, it was among the first 100 films available during the start of VHS and movie rentals in the early 1980s. That led to its cult following, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople started noticing it there,\u201d Dillon said, adding that a clip about the movie on \u201cMuppet Babies\u201d also helped it grow in popularity.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had not planned to do another ever, but the popularity of the original film gained an audience so 10 years after the first we said OK,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
That 1988 sequel, \u201cReturn of the Killer Tomatoes!\u201d included in its cast George Clooney in one of his first movie roles. The film did not gain the admiration of critics, but its cult following continued to grow.<\/p>\n
Subsequent films were the 1991 \u201cKiller Tomatoes Strike Back!\u201d and the 1992 \u201cKiller Tomatoes Eat France!\u201d Dillon has been a writer and actor in all of them.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo make the third and fourth movies was just amazing,\u201d Dillon said.<\/p>\n
There was also a brief animated series on Fox Kids in the early 1990s, which had repeated airing in later years.<\/p>\n
Dillon said he and his wife, Ellen, who is a wildlife biologist, decided to return to San Diego County after his 2013 retirement from the U.S. National Park Service.<\/p>\n
They chose Poway for their home because \u201cit\u2019s a nice community \u2026 and very quiet,\u201d he said, noting it does not have a freeway running through it.<\/p>\n
They liked its \u201ccity in the country\u201d vibe and the ease for them to enjoy nature, he said. In retirement, he teaches classes about parks and U.S. history at San Diego State University and California State University San Marcos.<\/p>\n
Dillon said he also has more screenwriting projects in the early stages.<\/p>\n
During the recent San Diego Comic-Con International Dillon was among those on the \u201cAttack of the Killer Tomatoes\u201d panel talking about the latest film.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been to (Comic-Con) a few times and it is always surreal to have fans \u2026 because I\u2019m not an A-list or B-list celebrity,\u201d Dillon said, adding he is more like a letter much farther down in the alphabet. \u201cI can\u2019t imagine that\u00a0 \u2026 anybody wants to ask for my autograph.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Poway resident Costa Dillon came up with the idea of making a movie about killer tomatoes as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414548,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[171050,171052,171049,6756,74,27970,76,75,171051],"class_list":["post-430159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-attack-of-the-killer-tomatoes","tag-bonita-vista-high-school-alumni","tag-costa-dillon","tag-poway","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-comic-con","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-us-national-park-service"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}