Kong survives the fall because he really is the GOD of Skull Island.

Here’s the story of King Kong – A bunch of White Men and a Blonde find an island where dinosaurs still survive. The natives give the Blonde to their God, a giant ape. The White Men try to rescue the Blonde, mostly get killed by dinosaurs but eventually succeed and capture the giant ape at the same time. The White Men exhibit the giant ape in the City. The giant ape escapes and, carrying the Blonde, climbs the tallest building around. Airplanes come, shoot him full of bullets and falls and DIES. End of story.

I’ve spent a stupid amount of time trying to come up with a sequel to King Kong that doesn’t either require a second ape (who is therefore not Kong) or change the ending of the original movie. I don’t usually waste time thinking about how to continue a story when the original author is still around or the story is held by a corporation. It’s unsatisfying to come up with an idea I’d never be able to use. King Kong is a weird example of a story that’s partly in public domain. I’d need to do more research to see how far I could go with an idea but it’s not outside the realm of possibility to do a sequel. Universal would probably sue over a big budget movie but might ignore a novel or a comic book. If one were careful.

Anyway.

Recently I watched the original movie and She within a week of each other and an idea occurred to me. When Denham introduces Kong to the audience in New York he says that Kong had been a king, a GOD, in his world. Denham, being a White Man, was speaking metaphorically. Only White Men had a real god.

But what if Kong were a God – the immortal protector of Skull Island? The sort of Lost World that Skull Island is, is pretty much impossible. An ape the size of Kong is pretty much impossible. So there must be Other Forces at work.

Won’t New York be surprised when the ape gets up again? The Blonde will really scream then.

Kidnappers hole up with victims at cabin by remote Canadian lake. All must band together when stalked by remnant prehistoric giant killer otters.

Yeah, otters are cute. Unless you’re something they want to eat. Then they’re just like any other toothy instrument of death and disembowelment.

Are there giant prehistoric otters lurking in remote Canadian lakes? Probably not. If you’ve got a problem with that you could always make them kushtaka or a Canadian version of Jenny Greenteeth.

Public Domain Rewrite Challenge – The Monster Men

Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote The Monster Men in 1913. The basic plot is “Scientist, trying to create a mate for his daughter, creates 13 monsters instead. The 13th monster, fortunately, looks like a handsome, giant man. Pirates attack and kidnap the daughter. Number 13 rallies the other monsters to rescue her. Much running around in the jungle ensues.”

With a plot like that you might expect the story to be all kinds of awesome, right?

Not so much. Burroughs wrote a LOT of stories. This is one that could have used another draft. Or two.

Public Domain Rewrite Challenge – The Call of Cthulhu

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with redoing a favorite story if you can bring something new to it. Shakespeare? The Greatest Writer in the English Language? None of his stories are original. They are all based on previous works or historic events. I’m not a great fan of his writing, in large part because the version of English in which he wrote is not the language that I speak, but even his admirers wouldn’t try to pass him off as an original plotter.

 I think most of HP Lovecraft’s writings are fine as they are. A rewrite or a modernization is unlikely to improve on them. I think Call of Cthulhu, however, has more potential than most of his other stories. The narrator isn’t actually involved in any of the events of the story. He’s the guy who puts all the pieces together but he didn’t witness any of the incidents. Cthulhu’s cult is a world wide organization (kinda sorta). The rising of R’Lyeh has world wide repercussions. So there’s potential for a few different accounts of the same events.

And yes, I know that Lovecraft’s stories have sparked their own sub-genre of horror and fantasy. I’ve read and enjoyed quite a bit of it. I’ve read revisions and sequels to a lot of his other stories but Call is one that I’ve seen any new versions of.

Werewolf Apocalypse

We’ve seen plenty of Zombie Apocalypses and even a few Vampire Apocalypses. With the exception of a few stories set on the Moon I don’t think we’ve had an account of a Werewolf Apocalypse. Depending on the type of werewolf plague that gets unleashed I’d find that scarier than either Zombies or Vampires. Zombies, even the fast kind, aren’t very bright and aren’t terribly strong. Vampires are worse than Zombies but I’ve less disturbed by something that kills me by sucking my blood than I am by something that will eat me alive.

Werewolves? Even the full moon only variety are:
Fast.
Relatively smart.
Superstrong.
And they eat you alive.

KILLER STARFISH.

I did say I’d be posting some really dumb ideas didn’t I?

Just about every member of the animal kingdom has been featured as the KILLER in some story or other. The Birds. Frogs. Grizzly (to pick one). Willard (and his rats).  Worms (Squirm). Slugs. Crabs. Piranha. All sorts of killer bees in movies and books. Lots of killer spiders.

Why not killer starfish?

10 years after a housing development is abandoned in midbuild, a mailman finds himself picking up & delivering mail to the empty(?) homes.

You know what I find creepier than old abandoned houses? New abandoned houses. That is, houses that were mostly built and then never finished. Old houses tend to be singular things that have come to the end of their lives. The new houses that come up as part of a housing development represent dreams stillborn.

I know, I know. Maybe someone just wanted to build them because they thought they’d make a lot of money and they paid as little as possible and the construction is shoddy and anyone living in them would have been miserable. Maybe. I’m one of those sentimentalists who feels bad when someones dream fails, even if it’s just the dream of making some extra dough.

I’m also a bit of an animist so, to me, places have spirits. And a place that was meant to be a home, yet never became one, seems like a very sad place indeed. 

Huge starships enter solar system, consume Pluto, begin harvesting Uranus, at current rate will reach Earth in 100 years

Most stories of alien invasions have the aliens making a beeline for Earth. Sometimes they want to help humanity, sometimes they are just explorers, often they want to take off. But an alien civilization might not be especially interested in either Earth or humanity. If they’ve adapted to life in space a habitable planet (for us) could be just another curiosity. Planets could simply be sources of resources.

And what would humanity do if we knew a technologically superior “enemy” was coming? Band together? Fight more? Invest in defense? Try to contact the invaders?

Lab creates bio-engineered horrors to use as weapons. SEAL team assigned to train them. Training effective. Time for a mission.

How many stories have been written about some secret government experiment or Evil Corporation that creates a monster with intention of using it as a weapon? I’m fairly certain that in every one of those stories the monster turns on its creator(s) and must be destroyed. So, been there, done that.

Are scientists really as careless as that? If you’re going to build a monster (and make a profit in the process) aren’t you going to build in enough safeguards that the thing won’t kill you in the test phase?

Helen Vaughn, Wilber Whateley and the Frankenstein Monster protect a defector from Soviet werewolves in 1947 East Berlin

Sequels are often inevitable. I’d first considered teaming up this trio a couple of months ago and mentioned it then in a Facebook post. The post actually said, essentially, “Helen Vaughn, Wilbur Whateley and the Frankenstein Monster team up to solve crimes or plot to destroy the world. I’m not sure which.”

Neither of this story suggestion nor the previous one need the characters to be acting altruistically. I tend to imagine they are because I like good hearted heroes. Or at least protagonists who are attempting to achieve positive results. But the trio could be acting villainously. It’s all a matter of who writes the story.