Genre: Horror comedy
Premise: At the “MonstroCon” horror convention, a group of washed-up monster movie legends are reluctantly gathered in the green room, nursing bruised egos and lukewarm coffee. When they find themselves under siege by rabid, parasite-infected superfans they must fight their way out—armed with foam props, years of regret, and very bad knees.
About: Last year I did a pitch contest called Blood & Ink where anyone could pitch me movie ideas. I accepted the best 100 of those ideas. The writers then wrote those scripts. Ever since, I’ve been reviewing them on the site, looking for the best one. Already, one script, Wildman, written by Jacob Rainer, got him a manager and possibly more.
Writer: Ed Wood
Details: 90 pages
This was one of my favorite Blood & Ink pitches. The idea has all sorts of potential. Now, let’s see what Mr. Ed Wood has done with it, shall we?
We start on a dude known as The Fixer, who’s pitching a bunch of studio executives on how movies are dying. But he’s got the solution. You simply create an audience that wants to see the same thing over and over again. And he’s even got a way to do it!
He’s found a rare animal called a rat-monkey that contains a parasite that, when introduced into the human body, turns that person into a rabid fan who only wants to watch the same movies and TV shows over and over again. Studios will never have to try to be original again!
But first, they need a test bed for the parasite. So they create Monstrocon and stick it in the middle of nowhere, aka Gary, Indiana. They then recruit five of the biggest horror villain icons of all time: Robert Englund, aka Freddy Krueger; Kane Hodder, better known as Jason Voorhees; Doug Bradley, aka Pinhead; Warwick Davis, of Leprechaun fame; and finally Brad Dourif, the voice of Chucky.
Robert has just learned he’s going to die in two weeks. Kane chops quarry blocks for a living, so he’s still in fighting shape. Doug has become a sexual Mr. Miyagi, helping couples improve their sex lives. Warwick is dealing with blowback from woke audiences who think his Leprechaun movies encouraged stereotypes. And Brad still spends most of his days bitching to the Chucky doll, who lives with him.
The group heads to Monstrocon to make some extra cash and, while there, meets Luna Linwood, the hot-ass actress from Halo, who informally joins their crew. Before long, they spot someone walk up to another fan, dislocate their own jaw, then shoot goo into the person’s ear. Turns out this is how the zombies pass on the parasite.
It doesn’t take long for our group to realize that, for the first time in their lives, they’re the prey. And if they want to survive, they’re going to have to kill for real, just like they’ve spent their entire careers doing in the movies. Naturally, they’re all idiots, so they spend the majority of their time bumbling their way through these kills.
Eventually, they learn that Monstrocon is one giant experiment and the studios plan to blow the entire place up once the test is over, killing everyone inside. So our crew not only has to fight its way through an endless wave of zombie-fans, but they also have to stop this death trap from atomizing them.
Can they do it?? Based on their age and collective idiocy, the odds are against them!
I thought this was okay but, as we all know, ‘okay’ isn’t good enough if you want your script to move up the Hollywood ladder.
What’s holding it back? A few things. Starting with the setup.
I don’t like overly complicated, laborious setups in comedy screenplays. Comedy should be simple. And right now, we’re doing a ton of work to set up these movie executives trying to create the perfect fan, this virus that’s supposed to make people want to keep going to the movies, this convention in a random town where they’re testing it, and then a plan to destroy everyone afterward. It’s a lot, and I’m not even sure the logic makes sense.
If the virus is designed to make people want to see movies over and over again, how does testing their reactions to old horror stars at a convention prove that it works? And it’s also unclear whether turning everyone into zombies was the bad guys’ plan or whether the virus has unexpectedly gone haywire.
That’s a whole lot of setup for what is ultimately a very simple premise: five iconic horror movie actors are at a convention when a zombie outbreak occurs, and for the first time, instead of defeating monsters on a movie set, they have to defeat them for real.
That’s the movie! So let’s get to the convention, introduce these five actors, establish their situations, and then let the zombie outbreak begin. We don’t even need to know why it’s happening. Most zombie movies don’t stop to give us some elaborate explanation for where the zombies came from. If we come up with a great explanation that can be integrated later without slowing things down, fine. But it’s not something we need to build the entire opening around.
The other big thing we need to nail is our five horror icons. For this movie to work, at least four of these five characters have to be perfectly comically conceived. Each one needs a clear identifying trait that creates a constant stream of comedy opportunities.
Right now, Brad is easily the strongest. The idea that he still talks to Chucky, resents him, and has this bizarre Norman Bates-like relationship with the doll is hilarious. That’s a character.
Kane kind of works too because he’s essentially Jason in real life. The problem is that he doesn’t speak, which severely limits how much comedy we can generate from him. We need to find another layer there that gives us more opportunities.
After that, things get shakier. Warwick mostly just feels like Warwick: a nice, pleasant actor. Pleasant doesn’t get you very far in comedy. He needs a strong comedic trait that immediately separates him from everybody else.
Robert is the biggest missed opportunity because he’s arguably the most recognizable person here, yet he’s currently the most boring. Even his “two weeks to live” storyline isn’t being exploited for comedy. That should make him the wildest guy in the group. He just found out he’s going to die! This should be his, “You picked the wrong fucking day to mess with me” moment. He has nothing left to lose, so he goes absolutely nuts.
And Doug is currently the most incorrectly conceived of the five. I understand the challenge because most people don’t know anything about Pinhead. But turning him into some sort of sexual-healing doctor feels disconnected from the comedic engine of the movie. We need something sharper and exploitable.
The key is that each of these guys needs his own unmistakable comedic identity. What might that look like? I could see Kane refusing to kill anything. He’s an extreme pacifist. Which would be really funny because he’s undoubtedly their biggest potential weapon. So, everyone is constantly trying to unlock that.
Brad argues with Chucky more than dealing with the actual situation. While the other guys are killing 10 zombies who just got into the room, Brad is in the back arguing with Chucky who’s mad “that Brad didn’t pack his favorite socks.”
Warwick could have a MASSIVE EGO. He genuinely believes Leprechaun is the greatest horror franchise ever created. So the only way to activate him is to tell him that the zombies were talking shit about Leprechaun 7. And he gets VERRRRYYYYY sensitive anytime anyone disses Leprechaun in Space.
For Robert, ditch the 2 weeks to live thing. Instead, make him a giant coward. He’s terrified of everything. Spiders, blood, confrontation, dark rooms.
And I say we make Doug the pretentious artist. He considers himself an extremely serious actor and still performs in small stage plays. He’s embarrassed that Pinhead is his biggest success. He constantly intellectualizes everything to the most annoying degree.
Notice how all of these traits aren’t just funny. They make these guys the WORST POSSIBLE PEOPLE to be thrown into this situation. And, just as importantly, they give each character something they have to overcome during this movie. I don’t think the current character construction is doing that.
But when it comes down to it, funny is the name of the game here. That’s what we care about most in a comedy. The plot is often background noise. So, as a screenwriter, your job is to come up with a concept that naturally generates a ton of comedy scenes. Which this concept does. Give us a plot that then moves things forward but, at the same time, is so sparse that it stays the fuck out of the way. And then you need characters who naturally generate comedy within their scenes. That’s where the script is lacking.
I would argue that the number one way to make a funny movie is to create hilarious characters, because those characters are going to be in almost every scene. If you haven’t achieved that with at least two of your leads, you’re going to struggle to consistently generate laughs. Cause you’re going to be trying to create funny out of nothing. That’s where comedies die. Cause you can see the writer desperately scrambling in real time. If you want to see what this looks like, go watch the back half of any SNL episode, where they put on the weaker sketches.
So I would go back to the drawing board with these characters and not start writing again until you can make a convincing argument that every one of them is at least an 8 out of 10 on the comedy scale.
I still think this has potential but the rewrite would have to be pretty substantial.
What do you guys think?
Script link: Fan Favourites
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If you’re moving mountains to set up a comedy, you’re probably doing it wrong. Comedies should be pretty easy to set up. Set up your characters. Set up the problem that starts the movie. Boom, you’re into the fun stuff.
