Spooktober – Days 3 & 4


I’m doing a thing with some people to do 31 horror story concepts within October…

SPOOKTOBER DAY #3 — Western

TITLE:  Draw Down

PREMISE:  Korean and Japanese gangsters are both looking to take over a financially vulnerable casino in Las Vegas.  The mob bosses know a shootout in the city is a bad look, and strike a weird gentleman’s agreement.  They rent a touristy “Wild West” town for a weekend and take all their men there.  Then they hole up in a bulletproof lounge with a view of the streets and order their men to gunfight to the death.

HORROR ELEMENT: The violence is hyper and suffering real. No medical help for the fallen. The survivors decide their bosses gotta die for putting them thru that, team up to kill ’em nasty.

SPOOKTOBER DAY #4 — Cabin

TITLE:  Bear Trap

PREMISE:  A trapper tries to build a cabin.  The setup can be for a historical/educational look at how cabins are built.  Until…  One disaster after another holds up his progress.  He’s left in the rain, barely surviving, too weak to finish the job properly.  That’s when bears get interested in eating him.  He has to convert the unfinished cabin into an elaborate bear trap.

HORROR ELEMENT:  It’s Saw for bears.  Time to repent that they didn’t cherish pic-a-nic baskets when they had the chance.

 

 

Comments

  1. lochaber says

    Day #4-Cabin/Bear Trap Sounds like it has some amusing potential, but I feel like it needs another layer or something in there – I feel like it would be severely pushing even horror-movie levels of suspension-of-disbelief to have someone who can create elaborate mechanical traps, but also can’t construct a simple passive structure.

  2. says

    lol i know. i will say, a lot of traps involve thinner / more flexible kinda sticks than the heavy lumber of a permanent structure, but that is a pretty questionable idea. hey, at least i was at the emergency room on dilaudid when i wrote it? excuses excuses…

  3. brucegee1962 says

    Complication for #3: the plan is to evacuate all the non-gangster touristy folks from the town before the shootout starts, but of course the evacuation bus breaks down on the outskirts, so you have a group of plucky regular folks trying to avoid getting caught in the crossfire. Could definitely work.

  4. says

    Nice one, Bruce. I don’t know that any of these ideas will ever become final products, but just in case, I should tuck your suggestion into the list I have elsewhere. I’ll stick a (courtesy brucegee1962) after that part.

  5. brucegee1962 says

    I’m actually getting into this idea, and I think you should write it.
    Here are some other ideas:
    1) The touristy folks (maybe they work at the town’s one hotel/restaurant) are the viewpoint characters, so the audience doesn’t know anything about the purpose of the game or the existence of the bunker. They just see a bunch of creepy folks check into the hotel, then suddenly all start trying to kill each other, and they have to solve the mystery by capturing and interrogating some of the gangsters.
    2) the gangsters don’t bring their own weapons. Instead, they’re scattered all over town, PUBG/Fortnite style, so the viewpoint characters have to run around scrounging for them. This gives the excuse for having fights with lots of bizarre weapons combos. Of course, Battle Royale is already a movie, but this wouldn’t be quite such an outlandish or sadistic premise.
    3) but the entire thing is being streamed on the dark web for gamblers to bet on.

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