500 word Proposal brief REVISED

Tagline: Something more sinister than a rogue Highway man lurks in the depths of the Georgian countryside.

Logline: Among the faint beginnings of the Agricultural revolution some thing is lurking among the freshly threshed corn. Against the backdrop of a modernising nation an ancient nightmare or folklore is coming back to haunt the people of rural Regency England.

This is from the opening of this film, 'The Creature' makes it's first attack, launching the story by creating the fist victims. 

At a crossroads a man sits alone leaning against the decrepit signpost. A long clay pipe hangs from his mouth; plumes of clean, white smoke encompass his shaggy head. Long Black hair surrounds his features. His teeth, green and broken are exposed by thin grimacing lips. His eyes glow a strange yellow from his beneath his greasy tresses. He is a vagabond, his long coat, once the finest velvet is now tattered worn thin by years of wind and rain. His top hat is distorted and like his coat worn too thin for the cold and wet. Around him the sound of the countryside is prominent, birds singing and a distant river. The countryside and its beauty make this man appear even more grotesque.

In the distance there is the sound of wheels and hooves along the road. The man looks towards the sound where a large cloud of dust precedes a sleek black carriage, drawn by two chestnut heavy horses. Their hooves kick up great lumps of dirt. The man grins and stands, slowly on rickety bones. The carriage draws ever closer, he flags it down.

As the carriage draws to a halt the man hobbles towards the window. The Carriage is driven by a portly man, whose smart tailcoat is stretched by his bulging gut. His jowls and vacant drooping eyes give him the look of a bloodhound. His top hat is perched precariously on his bulbous head.

The window on the carriage creeps down and a gun is thrust from it. A flintlock pistol, beautiful and ornate. A woman hold it, her fine lace gloves and bonnet betray her high class.

The man grins, his eyes which had stopped there gentle glow now shine, a grotesque, sickly orange. The woman is horrified. At her gasp the driver turns from his perch. He begins to climb down his pot bellied frame making it a struggle.

The man, eyes still glowing reaches and grabs the driver round his thick neck. Hoisting him in the air and throwing him several feet in the other direction. The woman fires the pistol. It sparks as the lead shot is released and a puff of smoke bellows from the mechanism. The shot travels straight through the man. He grins, reaches out and intertwines his fingers with the smoke seeping from the barrel.

Tendrils of smoke twist round his dirty fingernails and up his forearm. His flesh begins to disintegrate and meld with the smoke. The transformation travels up his arms, through his body down to his feet. As it travels through him the white smoke becomes thicker and any sign of flesh disappears.

The woman is frozen in horror, the Pistol clatters to the floor. The smoke like figure now twists and contorts. It becomes figureless, a cloud, poised. It darts, through the carriage, passing through the woman's body. The smoke appears again the other side of the carriage. It reforms into a figure, then collapses on itself, vanishing.

The woman lays dead, her eyes glassy and skin translucent. She appears cold although she is only a few seconds’ dead.