Innsmouth - a Seaside British Adaptation of Lovecraft

Innsmouth - a HP Lovecraft adaptation
1. EXT. INNSMOUTH BEACH, NORTHWEST ENGLAND, LATE 20TH CENTURY, MORNING
A mid-70s bus arrives on a lonely, desolate beach, its sand blackened with washed-up coal, and a rusted promenade fence/gate with flaking blue paint, and a row of unused red phone boxes. There are houses, Victorian terraced villas. There is a lonely ice cream café, "Waite's", and a pub, The Gilman Inn. A shellsuited young man of twenty, ROBERT OLMSTEAD, pale, dark black hair in a fringe, walks out. The BUS DRIVER warns him.
CLOSE-UP - BUS DRIVER (still in bus, in Lancashire accent)
Lad, I told you not to go on 'oliday 'ere!
ROBERT (cheeky)
Why not?
BUS DRIVER (determined)
It's not safe. It's not right! There's high crime, there's something off!
ROBERT (yawning)
I know, but I just feel drawn to it.
CUT - The BUS DRIVER drives off, huffing and puffing.
CUT - ROBERT decides to walk along the beach. He sees a LITTLE GIRL, of about ten, with a red balloon, dressed in an old-fashioned dress, with bows in her hair.
ROBERT (calling the girl)
Is this the main village?
CLOSE-UP - The LITTLE GIRL opens her mouth. It moves differently to a normal human's mouth. It is slow. No sound comes out of it. Her cheeks are large and puffed-out.
CUT - ROBERT shrugs his shoulders, and walks off. He goes towards Waite's Ice Cream Café. He sees a row of arcades and shops, four names recur: Waite's, Eliot's, Gilman's and Marsh's. He enters a pub with a lurid green livery, the Gilman Inn.
2. INT. GILMAN INN, MORNING
CUT - The GILMAN INN seems a typical Northern pub, horsebrasses on walls, glasses hung on the bar ceiling, a dartboard, but it seems odd. The darts are glued to the dartboard, no alcohol is served and everyone seems stilted. They all have the "Innsmouth look", "queer narrow heads with flat noses and bulgy, stary eyes", that is except ALLAN ZADOK, a fifty-something Hungarian emigree.
ALLAN ZADOK (calling ROBERT)
Hey, you, come over!
CUT - ROBERT sits beside ALLAN ZADOK.
ROBERT (confused)
What is it? You're normal!
ALLAN ZADOK (drinking alcohol)
Exactly, boy, the name's Zadok, Allan Zadok. I run the train station.
ROBERT (curious)
Are you the only one who drinks Alcohol, Mr. Zadok?
ALLAN ZADOK (sinister but wise)
Yes, they are of a strict Christian tradition in these parts. Now, the bus driver must have told you not to go here, boy?
ROBERT (calm, collected)
Yes, he did, he said it was not right. I never had a Dad, he went missing, after I was born, so I don't take to male authority well.
ALLAN ZADOK (nodding, wise)
Well, take to me! The bus driver did the same to me, when I first came here. I'd been in London for a year, just a young Hungarian student. That was thirty-five years ago. What brought you here?
ROBERT (curious)
I came here, I felt drawn. My name is Robert, by the way, Robert Olmstead.
ALLAN ZADOK (laughing)
There are no Olmsteads around here. Only four families, the Marsh family, the Gilman family, the Waite family, the Eliot family.
ROBERT (nodding, curious)
I know. I could tell from the signage. Do they speak? How do they breed?
ALLAN ZADOK (whispering)
There's imports from the other villages, Arkham, Dunwich, even girls imported all the way from Ipswich and Norwich. Property is not allowed to be sold here, unless it is from a descendant or a blood relative of the four families. They have vows of silence, or so they say, but the truth is stranger.
ROBERT (quizzical)
What is it?
ALLAN ZADOK (spookily but not comical)
Once upon a time, there was a captain, Obed Marsh, a Captain of the Royal Navy, a great man who settled in this town, utterly out of his mind. He was an occultist, a necromancer, a disciple of the great Joseph Curwen. Marsh is the one who brought the other families in.
ROBERT (curious)
How, colonism?
ALLAN ZADOK (deadly serious)
No, do you see it? He summoned the Deep Ones, fish and frog-men. That's where the names come from. Waite, they waited to come here. Eliot, Eel-iot, Gilman, as in gil-man, Creature from the Black Lagoon, you know...
ROBERT (confused)
What, so they're not human? They're fish.
ALLAN ZADOK (nodding)
That's why they can't speak. They're born human, but over time, they evolve. Even Marsh relates to the river-marshes. I urge you to get out. The people here, with their Innsmouth looks, "queer narrow heads with flat noses and bulgy, stary eyes", go, go! The only files that relate to this town are in the Wax Museum.
ROBERT (confused)
Wait, is there a family tree?
CUT - The Innsmouthians overhear ZADOK, and bang the tables to get ROBERT out.
CLOSE-UP - ALLAN ZADOK.
ALLAN ZADOK (quick, shooing ROBERT out)
Get out, go to the wax museum, if you must! There might be something of interest. I must stay. They cannot harm me. They're harmless enough. They constructed it for their entertainment, but they're only slaves, remember, slaves of the Deep Ones.
CUT - ROBERT runs out of the pub, as the eerie-looking PUB LANDLORD and PUB LANDLADY chase him out.
3. EXT. INNSMOUTH WAX MUSEUM/INNSMOUTH BEACH, DAY
CUT - Outside, it is cold, rainy and windy, like any out-of-season British seaside resort. The streets are eerily empty. ROBERT sees a "Denis Tussaud's Magnificent House of Wax - Museum", a large squarish white Victorian building, and feeling something behind him, the cold winds of Innsmouth, the shadows rising over him, he enters through the already open door.
4. INT. INNSMOUTH WAX MUSEUM/INNSMOUTH BEACH, DAY
CUT - ROBERT enters inside. Although still open, it seemingly hasn't changed since the 1980s. There are wax figures of MARGARET and DENIS THATCHER, the motorcyclist BARRY SHEENE in full racing gear, the cricketer IAN BOTHAM, KYLIE MINOGUE & JASON DONOVAN in full 'Neighbours'-era prime, PETER USTINOV as HERCULE POIROT, CLIFF RICHARD, ROGER MOORE as JAMES BOND in a shabby "MOONRAKER" spacesuit and a sloppily rendered ROYAL FAMILY (inc. PRINCESS DIANA, PRINCE PHILIP, the QUEEN, PRINCE CHARLES, the QUEEN MOTHER, the DUCHESS OF YORK, a young ZARA PHILIPS beside a stern-faced PRINCESS ANNE and PRINCESS MARGARET). There is not one at the lobby. ROBERT finds a promotional leaflet with a map of the Museum. He looks at his hand, realises it is getting yellower and almost fish-like.
ROBERT (realising, as he reads the map)
The archive is in the Chamber of Horrors. They are trying to make me one of them.
CUT - ROBERT enters the incredibly small 'Chamber', a hallway with a LON CHANEY-esque WOLFMAN, a CHRISTOPHER LEE-esque DRACULA, a KARLOFFIAN MONSTER, a CUSHING-esque BARON FRANKENSTEIN and the NOSFERATU-esque MR. BARLOW from 'SALEM'S LOT'. At the end of the chamber is a filing cabinet, disguised as 'The Mummy's Tomb'. ROBERT picks up a stand wrapped in bandages and smoking jacket to look like the INVISBLE MAN and cracks it against the polystyrene 'Tomb'. There, he finds the papers. He looks at the FAMILY TREE, a huge four-foot-long .
CLOSE-UP - FAMILY TREE shows (in florid calligraphy) that the direct descendant of OBED MARSH is 600 years later, ROBERT OLMSTEAD.
ROBERT (looking at his hand)
What on Earth? I'm one of them. That's why I am here. Oh no! I'm the first to fulfill the destiny. No wonder I never knew my father!
ALLAN ZADOK (entering the Chamber)
Robert, it is the truth. Yes, I didn't want to tell you. That is why you are drawn here. I told you to get out, so you wouldn't know, but it is my fault for answering to your inquisitive nature. You are young. It is latent puberty that has changed you.
CUT - ROBERT turns around. He is a fish-person, slimy, slippery yellow-green skin, flippers, a bald head shaking its last few hairs off. The waxworks break up to reveal that they too are fish and frog-people in disguise.
ROBERT joins them as they begin to chase ALLAN ZADOK out.
CLOSE-UP - ALLAN ZADOK screams.