The Witching Hour by Curtis James Coffey - Horror - On a dull Autumn night, three teens decide to check out an abandoned mortuary on the edge of town. Once there, they discover it is not abandoned and their host, a creepy moritician, tells them three tales of terror, all the while have something much more sinister in mind. 87 pages - pdf, format 8)

Hey i think the whole script was great, you just got few typos on pages8-10-33 maybe a few more but i would pay to see this good luck with it and is was a easy read.

At first I was slightly skeptical of this; repeated (and sometimes unecessary) words made it a slow start, and when I read The Mortitian description, for some reason I thought about The Tall Man from the Phantasm film series....but then, something made me stick with this.

The idea of writing an anthology, not unlike an EC comic / Tales From The Crypt. That's very bold. The overall challenge is to keep interest while introducing our wraparound tale (kids with the Mortician) around the unrelated stories. Two movies, Sin City and Trick Or Treat come to mind in good examples of how anthology can work when characters interconnect with each story. But most of the time, an audience is divided, because there is no central character or character (s) to follow. Good idea, with sticking to the former and not the latter.


No Escape

While it is understood this is the first of The Mortician's tales, why bring us out with "Yes, the very same Anna from the prologue" - and is it a younger Anna? It doesn't seem to be the case-  and I was a little disappointed when you give generically named 'Mom" and "Dad".

Then I get a ton of worthless filler such as:

Quoted Text EXT. ANNA'S HOUSE The truck pulls out of the driveway, and drives away. TIME LAPSE EXT. ANNA'S HOUSE - DAY It's an hour or two later, and the truck returns to the driveway. Anna gets out of the truck, and slams the door. The truck pulls out of the driveway, and speeds away. Anna slowly walks up the steps to the front door, tries to compose herself, and enters the front door.

Why bother? Just get her back in the house and have her Mother talk about having a "fight" with John. Just get to it.

Quoted Text As Anna skates, it becomes clear that she's thinking about what happened a couple hours ago. FLASHBACK

You're tempting me to stop reading the script right here. I have already seen grammar tense errors here and there, but this can't be ignored. If this is the same Anna from the start of the script, then either this is a fictional story by The Mortician or it's a flashback already. If it is simply a tale from The Mortitian he STOPS the story to tell the kids about Anna's spat with John. One of his listening audience is ANNA.

But as the story goes, there is a STALKER (John?) who kills (?) two little brats skating, chokes out a "DRIVER" and does Anna in. Of course, he really didn't succeed, unless all the kids w/ Mortitian are already dead. It wouldn't make any sense, but the story would seem reasonable if Mortiican was telling them "stories" on how they died.

I'm taking this guess at p34 when "Escape" ends. The tale is unsatisfactory; it meanders and seems to come out of nowhere with no buildup. It should either be shortened up or have some more gusto. In any case, you tip your hand.

Retribution

Sure enough, it's Steve's turn.  I can't take all the FLASHES anymore. FLASHBACKS in FLASHBACK (or within the tale of which Mortician tells it) makes it less and less interesting. I'm done with this by p50; when we have the DETECTIVE and the COP. I'm surprised I lasted this long. But I did want to see where you were going to go with this.

Long in the tooth, these tales are. Takes awhile for them to get to the point. It's not scary, not creepy and...what's worse?

No coffin humor or demented "gotcha" twist.
Where's the ol' EC spirit?
:-/

Thanks for the detailed feedback. I appreciate it. I do realize there are a few flashbacks and they don't exactly mesh with the Mortician telling the story, as nobody would tell a story like that. But eh, I was taking some creative storytelling liberty. Obviously it didn't pan out for you. I'll probably address it.

If you had read to the end, you would have understood the point and meaning of having the kids be in the stories the Mortician tells.

I also must thank you for bringing up the fact that I was taking a step in the right direction with the anthology set up - that's probably the most common feedback I get. I know almost nobody is willing to tackle projects like these anymore, but I wrote it mostly for old-school horror fun. My intention was to focus on suspense and scares, not blood and gore.

Hey, congrats on finishing up a feature length... here's my early review & thoughts

When reading the first 10 to 15 pages to a script you can gage the potential of the script, but with any idea or hook or decision made to take a story one way rather than another makes way for pitfalls, which could possibly weaken a script.

You have a small cast at the beginning, good for low budget, and they seem like regular kids. That’s good to an extent depends on how the story ends. None of them have any real problem or issue other than being bored. I don’t know if you did this intentionally but it works well because the Mortician is like I’ll give you the story of a life time (not bored).

It does read like Final Destination with the mortician played by candy man with a Tales From the Crypt three stories in one. So, expectation is that these stories should all tie together by the final story or else. Or else you’ll too much of an episodic feel, literally three different stories (shorts) thrown together.

If each one is suppose to be what that particular character is suppose to learn, I would of liked to have seen them have displayed the weakness of not having that trait before the stories start.

You have a good show rather than tell in the No Escape. It read easily, lots of white space and verbs small things that make a big difference. Inviting script.

Script reads so easily, should be able to finish up soon.

BLB

Thank you so much for the feedback, BusyBee. You are right with your assumptions that the small cast and relatively limited locations was written with the intention of low budget.

I think you'll find that while they don't exactly learn a lesson about themselves, it wraps up quite nicely in the end. I thought so, anyway.

I am glad that you're liking it so far and I look forward to more detailed feedback. I really just wanted to write a horror script with an all around spooky atmosphere that focused on scares and suspense rather than shock and gore.