Creepville - A Halloween Tale by Dan Druff - Short, Family Horror - The residents of Creepville, U.S.A. look forward to the Halloween festival. Will the new arrivals in town embrace the celebrations? - pdf, format

I really liked the idea behind this story....but it felt like you spent most of the time setting it up and not enough time to wrap it up and do it justice.  For me it went flat...  

Loved the characters and dialogue.  Very well done on that end.

Morgan

I thought some of the dialogue was a little unnatural and clunky.  

The idea of the monster family was cool but I wonder how they were all different monsters, were the other resident families mixed too?

There were some funny moments in here, I always like a fart gag lol.  But overall I thought the ending was a little bit of a let down.

Yeah, this had some good moments. It seemed a little hurried at the end - maybe the writer was panicking to finish? I know I was!

I always look if the script stays close to the them, and this was pretty close.

Have to agree with alffy - fart jokes are always good value. And the kids love them!

Ok, first one down - 28 to go!

I normally don't get into the OWC stuff, but since it's got a monopoly on the portal page I had to skim through them and weed the good from the bad... So far, I'm 0 for 5.

This is a bath room break. I couldn't fathom reading the absurd dialogue anymore past page 7. The sad thing, there was only 13 pages to the whole thing. The dialouge was forced and redundant. The story went nowhere. If I heard the word Turd one more time I was gonna click the x button and... Guess what? I did. So, in turn, I clicked the red x button.

Passable in every sense of the word.

It reminded me of shoddy Mad TV skit spoofing the Munsters or something. Which, in turn, MAD TV sucks monkey nuts so it in itself would be a spoof.

I liked this one.  Sort of a clever spin on the Munsters where the humans are the weirdos.  I'm gonna guess the writer is a Brit or Aussie because of the spellings of humour and odour.  I wonder which one, though? Hmm.  Nice line about Cleveland in there.  Damm, my hometown can't even catch a break during an OWC.

This was a good story.

I liked it how the story was based on the "monsters" perspective instead of the humans, as most OWC entries are.

It worked well in accordance with the guidelines. My only advice is that there are too many characters introduced in a few lines at the start. Maybe introduce them when they have a line to say or an action.

Well done with this, funny stuff.

This was okay esp. for a difficult OWC. Fast read. Cool idea that poor humans don't realize how ugly they are. Light  on the horror aspect except for the tsunami at the end. More of a playful feel to it.

Gary

This didn't do it for me, sorry to say.  I don't see any horror here either...more like a remake of The Munsters.

Like Balt, I too grew very weary of the fart and turd jokes.  Actually, I grew very weary of all the dialogue as it was really nothing more than 1 joke after another...all jokes we've heard again and again.

I guess viewed for what this actually is, it's not all bad, but I just don't get a glint of horror here and that means it's a no from me.

Good effort though.

Hmm....a lot of comedy and almost no horror at all. Reads more like a family comedy/drama. Too much talking between family members with nothing much happening.

Sorry, nothing much to offer as the script didn't even try to fit the challenge.

Really didn't like this one - as mentioned above, shows like "The Munsters" and "The Addams Family" have already explored this territory and done it much better.

A few years ago, there was an attempt to revive both these shows, and the results were very poor - childish and shoddy. I am afraid that this script reminded me more of that than the great originals.

I thought this one was really cute. No horror really, but it was saved by the good idea of what this turned out to be. The word "turd" did get overused, and it did take a while for everything to get set up, but you had some pretty good comedy in there. Especially the end when the human family realises where they are. That was great and it put a smile on my face. Unfortunately, it didn't last long, as the build up to it just took too long, and that scene only lasted a page. I was finished reading wanting more.

Sean

A lot of style with very little substance; although the style that was there was quite fun, especially Mummy's longing for the Old Days in Egypt...

And is Cleveland really so bad? They have the R&R Hall of Fame, the Indians, if I remember the video correctly, a  local economy based only on LeBron James...

The Wolf Family seems to be pretty typical foil for this sort of story; might have been more fun if they had been like Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne moving next door. Some clever dialogue and description based on the monsters and their individual monstrosities, but suggest a little more than surface level insults. Would be a fun to see all the trippy visuals animated on Cartoon Network.

Beyond the turd and fart jokes, I liked this.  I liked the Wolf family.  Good script.  This would make a good short, if we cut the turd and fart stuff, that is.  Most realistic Fall Festival yet!  

I made the terrible mistake of reading the comments to this, before actually reading the script. I was reasonably determined not to like it.

Oh, dear. I must have a juvenile sense of humour. I thought it was quite good in places.

You managed to cram a lot in and if nothing else, brought a smile to my face.

Yeah... There wasn't that much horror. So what?

The turd jokes were overdone.

Should have kept to the werewolf rolling around in turds joke as a one off and use a different take on the mother (MUMMY)

Somewhere on the lines of - her bandages become unraveled - so does she. You get the idea.

Still... I enjoyed it.  Well done.

Marks out of 10 - 6 ish

I really have nothing bad to say about this one at all. It was completely well written. The characters, the story, the dialogue... It all was perfect in my opinion.

A really good example of a solid script and an even more solid writer!!!

Sandra

Stevie

I enjoyed this for what it was, in terms of the criteria set out by the challenge, you ticked all the boxes, good, clean family entertainment given the halloween treatment.

The opening images of the billboard and appearance of the wolf howling into the moon reminded me of a typical intro to a Simpsons Halloween episode, no bad thing of course. I really got a cartoonish impression of the whole scene, the wolf bounding of in the direction of a town aptly called "Creepville" thus setting the tone of what was to come.

Yep, the next scene depicting a family each carrying their own feature of ghoulishness i.e Father Dracula, mummified mother and Pumpkin-for-a-head Son  confirms my initial pre-conceptions.

HEMLOCK
It is to a small turdy vegetable
head like you.

HEMLOCK
Probably rolling in turds in
someone’s yard.

HEMLOCK
Don’t laugh, vegie breath. The
reason your head grew so big is
from Mummy packing turds around it
when you were born.

-- As much as I love and appreciate your use of the word "turd" and its variation "turdy" (I laughed at Hemlocks earlier name calling of Jack) I don't think it should be repeated again in such close proximity, let alone twice. Like in any dialogue you don't want to hear standout words again no matter how much you like them. Plus there are an ocean of alternative words for sh?t, you could have a great time just experimenting and diversifying ways in which Hemlock utters them to her Cucurbita'd brother.

HEMLOCK
Gross! I told you he’d been rolling
in turds.

-- Ok, now I'm beginning to realise that its just something she says, a word she has taken a liking to and gonna say it at every opportunity.

Having read the majority of your previous works I could've pobably known it was you if I had read this before the author identities were revealed. The meandering, multi character four page conversation at the start is a signiture trait of your writing. A trend of writing not to everyones taste, particularly in spec script land but I always enjoy the humour and wildly contrasting characterisations that populate your work, this being no difference, not least their appearances but also in varying personalities.

As for the story, not much happened in it but then again it is only 12 pages, it seemed to only serve the challenge and nothing more. My liking of this came primarily from the exchanges between the family members and the general concept of this other worldly inhabited town called Creepville idyllically residing in harmony somewhere in contemporary America (possibly not too far from Nebraska)

This was a cool idea, well concieved and which would definitely appeal to kids. It could be the making of a cartoon series much in the vein of (if you can remember it) Count Duckula or the once popular Addams Family, although you could be accused of ripping that off. I take it you were influenced by their cartoons/films?

Overall, a decent piece, Stevie. As I said, I was more receptive to the motif and banter within the family home then how the story itself ultimately unfolded, good job though.

Col.

Hi Col. Mate, thanks for your usual insightful rveiews. I'll use this now to thank everyone else who read and commented.

This was a tough challenge! I was all looking forward to trying a straight horror one then the theme came out. I had some good ideas and got inot it, but was sick for two days during the writing. Then, what I had written became sillier by the word so I scrapped it and started over.
My original idea was that the town was called Halloween, so every October there would, naturally, be a festival. the characters would all be introduced wearing the spooky gear- the mayor was Frankenstein,etc . But there was  something threatening the town in the background, which was going to derail the festival.
Basically, the payoff would be that the town was all real 'creeps' and humans were planning to crash the festivl. This would've all been revealed by the last page. Anyway it meandered off somewhere else. So, after panicking for an hour, I  salvaged some ideas and this came out.

I was pretty happy with the end result. Like Jeff, I cut my FADE IN/OUT and THE END, to keep it under the page limit. I also cut any un-needed dialogue and it made it tighter in the long run.
I did base the family on a mish-mash of TV stereotypes. Not so much the Addams Family as a UK kids show called Young Dracula. Very funny that show with a wisecracking Daddy Dracula. Anyway, I cobbled together some characters and tried to give them some good lines.

The overuse of 'turds' was mentioned by most of the other reviewers. I apologise! But the simple explanationo is that I wasn't sure if 'shit' would be family fare! Ok, in certain contexts maybe. Like a character hitting his head and yelling 'SHIT'!
But if they said 'rolling in dog shit' it sounds a bit more mucky and, well, i wasn't sure about it so i left turds in!!  Possibly could've used 'poo'...
I thought that at the family table, kids would say turd instead of shit.

Anyway, cheers to all who entered the challnege and good stuff!
Col, that's cool that you can spot my dialogue! But then you have read all my stuff. Thanks again buddy.