The Crabs

Horror scripts these days (and films made from those scripts) need a gimmick to get the interest of the audience. It’s no longer as easy as giving a crazed human a weapon or a typical monster movie. What you need now is something taboo, and I think that’s what THE CRABS provides. In this script, the Pubic Lice STD, known as “Crabs” in slang, is the monster. How does this happen?

It’s the early 2000s and George W. Bush is president of the United States. For some reason he believes that the social policy he should push forward most is “sexual abstinence” among the youth. That is, holding off on any sexual activity before marriage. Like the youth would now, my generation scoffed at the notion, and it became a joke to tell each other we we’re abstinent. That may not have been the case in rural Texas where this script takes place. At least not for most teens.

One night in a small a rural town in Texas, two men pour a mysterious substance in a creek. They leave the scene immediately (since what they are doing is illegal) and we never see or hear from them again. Kassie is the “it” girl at her high-school and she happens to be dating a college guy. One morning, she skips class to meet up with her boyfriend and they began to get intimate. They decide to go in the creek where the mysterious liquid had been poured the night before.

Kassie and her boyfriend aren’t the most hygenic people, and they happen to be infected by pubic lice. The pubic lice mix with the mysterious substance and begin to mutate. Later that day, we see them (now bigger in size) leave the creek for land. Rose, the true main protagonist, aspires to be a journalist and leave her small, conservative, boring town. She happens to know Kassie and after a someone dies outside of Kassie’s house (hint: it was the crabs), Rose wants to get to the bottom of the story. Kassie won’t just give Rose what she wants, so in exchange for telling her the story, Kassie wants Rose to bring an innocent girl to one of her “kickbacks.”

Rose agrees and eventually takes the innocent girl to the party. What the party goers don’t know is that the crabs have mutated to great sizes and burrowed into the ground. The group figures out that the crabs attack when they think about anything sexual. They must survive the night by destroying the crabs or waiting for help to arrive. I can’t spoil this one like ALPHA CODE, so your just going to have to have to read it. Enjoy.