Comments Made During the Contest

A.M. Wallace (Level 0)

I think you do a good job of setting the scene. You use very long sentences in your descriptions which slows the reading down. Short sentences move the screenplay forward. You have a lot of scene changes for 5 pages. I had to read it a couple of times to keep track of what was going on. Your screenplay should end with "FADE OUT" or something similar.

Adam Grage (Level 4)

I loved the feel of this piece. The characters were well drawn and the song sung by the vampires was good but I might cut alittle of that because I felt it got too drawn out. It's just my feeling so go with what feels right to you.

Some of the description was alittle hard to follow but that could just be me so I'm not gonna pay it too much attention. I'll read over them again and see if I still have any issues.

One the best so far. Good job.

Alex Hollister (Level 4)

GOOD
Very well written. The problem is, and I apologise, but this is all subjective after all, I'm not a vampire movie fan. I appreciate the originality of this particular Vampire story, but ultimately it is just another Vampire story. It even feels like the moment in the Titty-Twister in FDTD, only you've replaced bikers and truckers with sailors. The song threaded throughout the story was just weird. As I said I don't like vampires at the best of times, but singing vampires are frankly a step to far. On the plus side, this played well in my head. IT definitely had a nice cinematic visual appeal. I would have prefered some reasoning as to why the massacre suddenly erupted, but ultimately it's a well written tale with strong visuals hence the good.

Barbara Lewis (Level 4)

This is *really* scary, I love it! The tone is very consistent and the descriptions say a lot while remaining concise. You get in to the story and out of the story right at the right moments.

I feel like the harbor master would have had a stronger reaction to such a huge ship slamming in to the dock, since the steel was warped. I think he would probably be totally freaking out rather than just yell "Hey". This is easily fixed though! Great work.

Brad Huffman Parent (Level 4)

Yay, vampire pirates! I have a love/hate thing with vampires. I love them, but hate that no one ever does anything original with them. Good twist here. The flashback was a little confusing-I didn't realize it was a flashback until we came back out of it. And while I liked the idea, I just wasn't excited enough about the execution. The exploration of the ship didn't feel creepy enough and the attack wasn't exciting enough. I want explicit blood and guts! But maybe that's just me. Give me one creative, imaginative, detailed death and I'll be happy.

Brad LaMar (Level 2)

Very descriptive and tells an exciting story. I could see this playing out in my head as I read. It would make a good movie. Nice job on structure and leading this story along.

Brett Manley (Level 2)

A good ol' vampire flick where you least expect it! I really like this story, my suggestions are cosmetic for the most part. After re-reading the story I gathered that the galley scene where sailors turn on sailors is a flashback leading up to where the story started with the rogue ship crashing into port, but for reader's sake that could be mentioned somewhere. Also, perhaps make clearer that the 2nd of the two back-slapping sailors is the owner of the claw that tears out of his peer's chest. On first read, I thought they were both regular sailors and the claw belonged to some unseen 3rd party. Setting some tension right before things go berserk may help clarify.

Also, unless the song is continually playing throughout the short, I would lose the vampire singing the "dollar" verse as the port appears on the horizon. Personally, I felt it was a nice touch that started to overstay its welcome near the end. Otherwise, I thought the script was excellent.

Brian Wind (Level 5)

Cool. Vampires at see. I liked it. Great writing, great script. Nice work. I did not catch the meaning of the title though? Was that the name of the ship?

Caleb Parazette (Level 3)

Brutal tale. Well written. Not really my cup of tea. Probably need more pages to tell this right.

Caroline Coxon (Mod Emeritus)

Absolutely first rate and I have nothing but praise for it, except a slight worry about the budget!

Charlie Hebert (Mod Emeritus)

This one kept me going.

Loved the opening scene. The description was great.

The Flashback was a little confusing because you never said it was a flashback until it was over, think you should correct that.
Also, you have the vampires sitting on the bow at Dusk and the sun beginning to rise, sun sets at Dusk, rises at Dawn.

Still, thought this was very good, really liked it.

Chris Messineo (Founder)

I loved the atmosphere and tone of this story. Great setting both location and time period. It reeked of horror.

I especially liked the way you used the song throughout.

I do wish I knew a little more about the vampires and why they appeared and attacked this ship.

Still, this was a great read and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Chris Thomas (Level 3)

Interesting concept. I was a bit lost at times and had to back-track to re-read certain parts.

Dave Kunz (Level 4)

It's a very cool idea to have a ship full of zombie sailors crash into a fog shrouded harbor dock circa 1894. Plenty of great atmosphere and set design possibilities.

If you break a story down in terms of setup/build/payoff, then I would say this story had a really good, strong setup, but that the building-up-of-tension element was mostly ineffective. From the time the Constable and the Deputies board and search the ship, the interest level trails off. There's a series of incidents, but the incidents don't hold together as a story arc. The captain's log is opened but no facts are revealed or mysteries suggested. In the hold of the ship a hand grabs a Deputies leg, but, again, we're left hanging. I think you would have been better off going straight to the guy in the brig and the story he had to tell.

Also, what caused the entire crew to go zombie?

Kurt Weill was born in 1900. So the crew singing his "Alabama Song" is an impossibility (which also means the song isn't in the public domain).

There were some really excellent scenic descriptions in this piece.

DW Pollard (Level 4)

Great story, very intriguing and grabbing from the start. The ending didn't do it for me; I wanted something more. I was left feeling like this was a scene for something bigger. Definitely an interesting premise: a ship of vampires going from coast to coast or looking for a spot to set foot for good.

Anyway, the visuals and dialogue was well done.

Gary Murphy (Level 3)

Not a bad little comedy script here, you managed to build up enough suspense and follow it up with a decent ending. The script was written well and formatted correctly. I could really see very little wrong with it.

Maybe a little more research would have been better, a Galley is actually a kitchen. Also it may seem a small point but in the context of the story probably a big one that is is highly unlikely that they would have been drinking Whiskey, it is almost a given that they would have been drinking rum!

* Very Good

Graham Trelfer (Level 4)

I like that you have put vampires in a new setting, made it much more interesting, this is good since vampires can get a little cliché. The gore was nicely written as well. Overal, a good fresh idea well exicuted.

Jay Knisely (Level 4)

No place to run.
Plus: Who doesn't like a seafaring story?
Minus: musical vampires; jingle a little lengthy and tedious; no purposeful thought to their killing other than opportunity; no sense of numbers (platoon can be 6 or 36). Not quite good enough.

John LaBonney (Level 4)

Nice work on this one; it has a good, solid ending. I liked the dialog. Has the potential for some great visuals.

Jon Watts (Level 2)

Great action, good dialog. It wasn't obvious that the cut to the galley was a flashback. Work on the direction.

Kirk White (Level 5)

giving an excellent! I can tell you're a fellow comic book freak by you awesome descriptions! I really liked this..nicely brutally visceral and genuinely spooky. Hope it wins.

Margaret Avnet (Level 4)

I don't understand the title. And you mention towards the end back to present day. Yet you don't indicate that there was a flashback in the story. A little more back ground to the song may help to clarify the vampire story. But overall not a bad job.

Matias Caruso (Level 5)

I enjoyed reading this one.

The premise –vampires attacking people- was quite simple and not very original. But I liked the way it was presented.

I especially liked the opening, which was quite intriguing. I wish you used it as a starting point to give us something new, instead of recurring to such a used plot device. But I think you did fine nonetheless.

Good job.

Micah Ricke (Level 4)

CREEPY. Well written, good description. Tighten up the story just a bit, perhaps tell it more from the vampire's POV.

suggestion: choose a different harbor location. There's not much in the way of cities on Hudson Bay.

Michael Cornetto (Level 5)

That was VERY GOOD. I thought you handled the vampire story quite well in only five pages - it isn't easy to do. I was going to say that I didn't feel any sympathy for anyone but you proved me wrong with your ending. The only issue I had with it was that it seemed a bit choppy in the begining but I think that was the page constraint showing.

Michael Thede (Level 4)

From the moment it began, I could see this as a combination of 30 DAYS OF NIGHT and ANTARTIC JOURNAL. The concept is really good, but parts of it (especially the beginning) were difficult to visualize exactly. At one point, I had to flip back a page to catch were the beginning of the flashback seems to be implied. You've used "BACK TO PRESENT" on page 5, I don't see why there's any reason you can't use "FLASHBACK" to denote the beginning of the flashback on page 3. The vampires simply continued to sing the same song over and over again as the slaughter took place; as a result, a lot more page-space gets taken up by something that I'd like to see more stream-lined on the page. To be honest, I didn't think that the song really added all that much more to the story, so I'd use it sparingly. Nevertheless, I'm scoring you a GOOD for this.

Paul Jaworsky (Level 4)

Wow! Great job! I was totally taken by surprise with the vampire invasion. I didn't see it coming. Loved the action lines. Nice vocabulary. Does that come naturally or do you use thesaurus.com like me.(JK)The story had a nice flow and was easy to read and follow.
I did go and check on Kurt Weill's Alabama Song and noticed it was written in 1927 and the beginning of your story is set in 1894. Here's the link I found.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alabama_Song
Other than that, good work. A 5 bagger!

Pia Cook (Level 5)

I thought the writing here was fine, but the telling of the story left a little to be desired. Started out okay, but then there were vampire?? They don't just suck blood, but they dismember and toss entrails around.

Your build up was all wrong. You started out with the harbor Master, but then abandoned him. No foreshadowing about vampires or the carnage to come. Therefore, it seemed to come completely out of left field and rather than feel scared or horrified, I felt more like wtf?

Like I mentioned earlier, your writing is fine, just try to tell a more complete and less confusing story.

My vote: FAIR

Sally Meyer (Moderator)

I'm giving this a VG because the writing is top notch. The imagery is wonderful. I would have given it an excellent if the story were stronger.

To me, there's not a lot of backstory or feeling of what is happening. Yes it's a vampire story with a lot of great detail, but I don't see a protagonist with which to empathise. I only see a group of men who are basically nameless and who while I feel bad for their plight, I don't really care about.


For a story to draw me in, there has to be someone who I can root for, someone who has a name, identity and who I connect with.

In your story no one emerges.

One little note.. When one of the people said "Oh, great" that took me out of the era. I just thought it was too modern for the dialogue.

Good writing, and I think this would be a wonderful start to a feature. I just wish you'd named someone and had them be the protagonist.

Nice work though, and I gave it very good marks.

What I like

I like the fact that you could create a story in so few pages. It's a big epic sort of story, that would be very visual on screen.

Stephenie Ruffin (Level 4)

I was a little lost in the beginning two scenes, but this story turned out pretty good, I like it. Also, I didn't pick up on the flash-back until you ended it. For me, the story started off a little rocky but then got smoother as the story moved on. I also thought the descriptions were written well.

Sylvia Dahlby (Level 5)

Normally I love a vampire story, and there's a special place in my heart for the "whiskey bar" song... but the characters in this tale, both human and undead, were so under-developed and the song took up so much of the dialog that I got no sense of any one character (who is the protagonist, the Harbor Master?). Overall this felt more like an excerpt from a larger work, there was no real beginning-middle-end to the tale. Things just happened in a more or less predictable fashion. I liked the idea though, and would suggest picking a human character and making this HIS story about a narrow escape or his ultimate demise. Less singing and more character development so we can feel the suspense.

Tom Shipley (Level 4)

Couple quick notes as I read:

-Better description of where the Harbor Master is… on a dock? As it reads now, the reader just knows he’s somewhere on the exterior of a harbor.

-Starts at dawn, then jumps to dusk when constable arrives… seems like a long time to pass. I’d maybe explain this by having the constable ask something like “any crew?” harbor master “not that I can tell. No sign of life on the boat all day.”

-Anachronistic use of the Alabama Song, but in a film about vampire sailors, think you can get away with it. Also think you may go on one too many verses with it.

But, with that out of the way, I thought it was very good. Reads the the opening of a larger film.

William Bienes (Mod Emeritus)

You need to tighten up the format a bit. Some extra spacing and the slug line needs to have time or FLASHBACK. The transition to the Vampires is confusing at first.

I like the idea of the song and use of the lyrics (to a point)... problem is it was written in 1927, not 1894 (though good use of the actual song). I did feel that the vampires were very solid, but the constant use of the lyrics in a short piece can have the opposite effect -- losing their power.

William Coleman (Level 5)

Anything that uses that great Brecht/Weill song can't be all bad. Seriously, you've crafted a terse little horror flick that combines elements of The Flying Dutchman and Nosferatu/Dracula into a new work that echoes the older ones yet is itself's own self.

The piece has a nice energy and atmosphers.


You had me with that well written opening paragraph. Any qualifications? I'd like to know a little more about the Harbor Master. You sketch in his independence, but maybe a little more character. Horror works best when we know more about the victims.

Comments Made After the Contest

Charlie Hebert (Mod Emeritus) ~ 2/1/2008 12:35 AM

Nice work, James, this was definitely a contender this month.

Caroline Coxon (Mod Emeritus) ~ 2/1/2008 12:36 AM

I thought this should have won - equal with the one that did! You was robbed!

Chris Messineo (Founder) ~ 2/1/2008 1:28 PM

This was one of my favorites as well. I love a story with style.

Paul Jaworsky (Level 4) ~ 2/1/2008 5:18 PM

I really liked this one. Could have easily cracked the top 3 IMO.

Elias Farnum (Level 5) ~ 2/26/2011 1:12 AM

This was fun. Although the singing is prevalent throughout, it is certainly a tip of the hat to Jim Morrison, (but, the next pretty boy? What kind of pirates? lol.)

I didn't really get a Deutsche perspective from the title, and the English translation "You Suck," had me thinking I was in store for a comedy.

Elias Farnum (Level 5) ~ 2/26/2011 1:14 AM

Uh, Deutsche perspective from the story.