Cow Tales by A Member - Short, Horror - Beware of the Milk 11 pages     A October '06 One Week Challenge entry - rtf, format 8)

Boy, is this a crummy logline.  And the page breaks on this one are all screwy -- strike two.

But some of the dialogue here is amusing, even though we start out with a really bulky chunk of dialogue that almost made me stop reading right there.  But like I said, it does improve.

It gets a little predicatable towards the end -- arriving pretty much where I thought it would.  And you kind of need to explain what happened to Allan for us.  You kind of lose one of your main characters along the way.

I would hope this author takes some time to read some of the other scripts in the challenge.  I think they would benefit from doing so.

Hey.

Nice way of crrepily involving milk.

Like bert said the first chunk of dialogue is large enough to turn people away.  Also, you don't need it.  Having a character quote an entire newspaper article is definetely a bad idea, and once again, you don't need it.  Have thewm bring up cows some otherr way, or find some other reason for them to go to the farm other than a cow-phobia.

Your story might also work better and be even creepier if you make the whole thing an elaborate plot rather than having the dad grind up all his daughters "boyfreinds", this will make the daughters..."looseness" more clear and motivated as well.

-Tyler

Yup, it says 11 pages though it would probably only fit 5.

SPOILERS...

Yet, the story is pretty good. I was laughing at the dialogue. The dialogue is the biggest point in this script for me. It was quite well written but some of the formatting was weird... I don't know if it was mistake but even then these should be proof read at least once.

The ending, yeah, it was pretty funny and twisted but that's the only horror point in this script... it lasted a few lines but it was satisfying.

Jamie :)

I didn't think this one was that bad!

Hard to say anything about format, because rtf. files sometimes look screwy.

I think the plot here has potential and you could easily expand on what you have here to make it much better. Like the other's said, that big chunk of quoting an article is not necessary and doesn't really lead to anywhere. If you still want to use it make it more relevant to the story. Maybe have an article about young men disappearing or something like that.

They do have front teeth btw, but only on the bottom :-).

Did you mix up your characters? Allen is the one afraid of cows and it's Jeff's uncle and cousin they go to visit, but it's Shana and Jeff who ends up rolling in the hay, not Allen. That seemed odd to me unless these people like family best.

Good job.
Pia

Humm...Bert was right where did you do with Allen? Maybe his desparence could be part of the old farmer plot...I don't know if I was you I did lot of "things" with cows, a old man, two idiots and a Shana and of course a barn with lot of soft hay!

Good attempt!

BTW I quiet forgot about the first dialogue. It should be used as action line when the guy starts describe the news!

What Pia noticed is the first thing that jumped out at me.  Jeff wouldn't need a tour since Ed is his Uncle, and Shana probably wouldn't want to give him that kind of tour...or maybe not...

Some of that early dialogue was really good.  I didn't have a problem so much with quoting a news article, but if you're going to do that, it has to be tightened up so that's it's more of a left margin blurb, and of course it has to have something to do with the story.  A cow firing a gun doesn't mesh with a man grinding up other men to feed cows.  Otherwise, all that long dialogue told us is that cows exist in the world.  There are easier ways to get to Allen's phobia.

Like everyone else has said, I am very confused about what happened to Allen, and the fact that Jeff is Shana's cousin and all.  I would hope a cousin wouldn't even describe Shana the way Jeff does to Allen.

The opening news report on the other hand did not defer me, though I agree it was unneeded, I was more intrigued by how ridiculous the news story was, and therefore intrigued by the fact that the rest of the script may be similar.

Definately a wierd one, though I wish it had more to it.

This one was okay.The dialogue had some cool parts, but dragged on a little too much at parts. But the story flowed very very nicely, it read very  smooth.

SPOILERS

The end was pretty good, grinding him up, but the scariest part of this script for me was the kissing cousins. What was that about? First Jeff tries to sell his own cousin's form to Alen, and then he "goes for a voll in ze hay" with his cousin.

The page breaks are also screwey.

But all in all, it was still a decent read.

****SPOILERS****

Okay, this is another one that really has no story. It’s basically a scene from an American gothic horror story.

The opening block of dialogue is way too long. That’s got to be broken up. You definitely don’t want a producer to open up your script and see a block of dialogue that stretches the entire length of the file window.

The blaring question (and plot hole) is, where is Allen while Shana and Jeff go to the barn? Where is Allen for the remainder of the script? Why is he even there if he has no point? It seems that he is only an informational device, there as a catalyst through which to deliver obscure cow facts. These types of characters are usually blatantly obvious. The cow phobia was a useful device to disguise this but then, as I mentioned, the character went nowhere.

Okay, looking over this, it appears that I may not have gotten all the pages. The header shows it to be 11 pages and I only have 6. My version ends with Ed saying the line, “To improve the milk, that’s why?”

If this is only half the script, then disregard any of my comments that might be altered with more information. If I read the whole script, then my review is complete.

Brea

[EDIT]

As I ponder, I’m wondering if the author didn’t make a mistake and write Jeff when he meant to write Allen as the boy Shana takes up with. That would make much more sense so I’m inclined to believe that. If that’s the case, obviously the author made a mistake both in writing and proofreading. This is why proofreading is so paramount.

As I was reading, I enjoyed the dialogue, especially "Cows are evil...", etc. This could have been the launching of quite a mystery. But soon as the grinder's mentioned, we know what's coming. The Shana girl seemed a bit retarded, start to finish. Still, I rather liked this one, though it had little point.

Okay, I haven't read the previous comments left for this script, but I do know that everyone (or mostly everybody) has commented on the format and the paragraph spacing, so I'm not going to go into that (or even ask why it's like that).

For the story, I liked it. Even though there were some clichés in there (Such as them getting it on when there is a creak (though it wasn't a killer...Or well, sort of), the daughter lying her butt off, yeah...). But what happend to Allen? He just disappeared...I thought it would have been him who would have ran off with Shana and got killed.

But other than that, good story. I liked it, and it was funny.

Sean

I have an admission to make...I just skipped that entire first line.

But after that, heck, this was mildly amusing.  It just didn't have any flair to it, really.  It was fair enough.  It'd need a hell of a hook added for it to go anywhere though.

This script was a plethora of good ideas, none of which were used to their potential.

The opening article would have been nice to expound upon in visiting a ranch or something and being done in by angry cows. Jeff took Allen out to this place and then Allen was completely forgotten. When Jeff started to get the tour, I had to look back to make sure I didn't get them mixed up. What happened to Allen? Then, you have Jeff as the boyfriend all of a sudden when only moments before he was "offering" the girl's virginity to Allen. It played out so randomly that it lacked a central narrative structure.

You need to select one plot and go with it. That alone will create a better story.