The Experiment by Mike Shelton - Short, Gothic Horror - A young man, out walking his dog, stumbles across a portal that leads to the lab of an eccentric scientist. Dogglebe's Halloween Writing Exercise entrant - pdf, format 8)

I have no idea who this one belongs to.  But it starts out pretty odd.  What a weird set-up.  I kept expecting to find elves baking cookies.  But the stuff inside this tree was a little more gruesome than that.

(SPOILERS)

*  Alot of this dialogue is very clever.  Good job with that.
*  You really need to describe Asa for us when he shows back up.  It's a lost opportunity to include a few nice, visual details.
*  A little black humor with the foot.  Nice touch there.
*  The conclusion to this story is appropriate, but it follows maybe a little too logically from the anticipated course of this story.  When it arrives, it's not a big shock.  And it raises the larger question of what all those dogs were doing down there in the first place.

The exchanges between the characters were the biggest strength of this story, I thought. Much of the dialogue was very clever.  It was kind of "out there", which I also liked.  Good job overall, but for me, the ending could have used something a little more unexpected.  

Hmm.. this one's a little weird but I liked it. I have an idea who wrote this but something's puzzling me. Did somebody enter two scripts?

SPOILERS

As Bert says, the dialogue is the strength of this script. I liked your characters. The scientist is an obvious stereotype but I think it works to your advantage in a story like this. I enjoyed the dialogue between him and Victor.

I didn't really understand the pupose of all the dogs. Is he experimenting on them too? This could be made clearer. I thought perhaps he would feed the bodies of the failed experiments to the dogs instead of using the incinertor.

It's a strange little story with some nice comedic touches, but as Bert says, the ending is a little too straightforward.

I found this script to be more of a comedy that a horror script.  Everything just seemed to be so goofy and casual, starting with Pepe putting his paws over his eyes and Asa saying, "How many times in our lives do you think we'll get to walk down a creepy unknown staircase?"

All three characters seemed very casual with each other.  They talked to each other like they were old friends or, more so, like co-workers around the water cooler.  In fact, Guggenheim was probably the most politely evil scientist I've ever read.


SPOILER SPACE


To make this more of a horror story, you have to build up suspense.  You go straight to the chase once Asa  is knocked out in the lab.  Stretch thtings out a little bit.  When Asa is restraint, Guggenheim tells him in plan in one or two lines (about ten seconds of screen time).  Stretch that out to a page.  Let us feel what Asa feels.

At the end, you spent one line on Asa cutting off the doctor's foot.  This is supposed to be horror.  Stretch this out.  Include the doctor screaming, the saw going through the doctor's leg, thte doctor's screaming, the dog's going into a frenzy.  There should be a lot going on with this.


Hope this helps.


Phil

SPOILERS

I agree that this doesn't have quite enough emphasis on the horror elements of the story.  The comedy is very well handled and the dialogue is quite funny, but once Asa comes back, I think you need to build the suspense a little more.

For example, when Guggenheim finds that Victor is dead, you can give him a little time to panic.  Maybe he even grabs a few things and starts to leave, or tries to phone the police, and Asa stops him right before he achieves his goal.  

Once Asa has him strapped down, there's your chance for some real horror.  I think Asa could have a little more fun, wondering out loud what exactly he should do with the doctor, whether it will be painful enough, worrying about how much there'll be to clean up afterwards.  I agree with the others that the ending is a bit straightforward.  Maybe you could even have Guggenheim break the bonds on the table and go for one last desperate run (if you wanted to make it really black, this 'desperate run' could be after Guggenheim has lost his foot..).  I don't know, I just think the ending's a little obvious for a quirky story.

Oh and I love the comedy on the first couple of pages, well handled indeed.  Thought it was pretty funny that Asa called him a "scaredy-dog".

SPOILERS

For me, the dialogue was 50/50.  I mean some of it was pretty clever and humorous, but then Dr. G threatens to get Asa imprisoned for life?  Has he forgotten that he's murdering people in his lab?  You say eccentric so I'd expect him to be babbling on about other stuff, not "I'll imprison you for cutting off my foot!"

It started off like your standard horror/sci-fi flick.  Strange thing happens, main character unwisely decides to find out what's going on.  I tried putting myself in Asa's position if my dog peed on a tree and a porthole opened, would I go in?  Eh, maybe, maybe not.  Kinda cliche that he did.

Anyway, put that shtuff aside, it was still a very enjoyable piece of writing.  Dr. Guggenheim was your loveable crazy doctor and the whole concept of him creating a revival potion to bring back people he murdered was pretty creepy, so good job on that.  I'll be curious to see who wrote this for I have no idea, but kudos to you.  Experiment successful.

I'm going to have to agree with Greg on this one.  The dialogue about going into the tree needs tweaking.  Don't know how to tweak it, but it does need tweaking.  Right after going  into the tree, however, the dialogue was quite funny.  After putting this down, I thought, remove the camera on cutting and slashing and you have a pretty funny Halloween night prime time piece, here.  

I'm not a big time horror flick fan, which probably explains why I was draw the the two scripts you wrote.  

Don

hey Mike, I was looking through old shorts and this one caught my eye.  Untill the end This was more of a comedy, and it was very funny.


ASA
You’re going to pay me?

DOCTOR GUGGENHEIM
Yes.  Is everything ok now?

ASA
Well since you put it that way, No!  Now untie me you fuckin weirdo!


That made me laugh the most.  Good job there :D

I liked the last few pages as well, when it finaly turned into a horror story.  This was kinda like Hannibal when anthony hopkins was feedin the dogs part of Gary Oldman's face.

anyways, this was a lot of fun. :D

Hey Jordan,

Thanks for checking this one out.  It's been a REALLY long time since I looked at this one, that's for sure.

For this contest, I actually wrote two scripts, this, and The Forbidden Tree, which I liked a lot better, and wrote this one as kind of an afterthought.

Thanks for checking it out though, and I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Odd indeed, but I got a Re-animator vibe from it, which is a good thing. Good job here.

Asa turned into an assah**e in the last part.  I would have preferred if the experiment worked and then Asa gives the doc insights about the afterlife, because resorting to extreme violence is rude.