With Halloween approaching and “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” still holding its own on the best-seller charts, publishers are clamoring to find the next great gothic update of a classic work of fiction. Here are a few suggestions:
“Little Women of the Night”
Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy think their father’s just a little depressed and shell-shocked when he returns to their Boston home after a stint of working as a chaplain in the Civil War. How else to explain the fact that he sleeps all day and only comes out at night? But after Dad gives the girls some strange goodnight kisses on their necks, the March sisters start taking on his peculiar sleeping habits as well. Can boy-next-door Laurie save the day and put things back to rights?
“Scarlet Letter, Silver Bullet”
Hester Prynne’s puritanical neighbors don’t understand why she won’t reveal the name of her illegitimate daughter’s father. Little do they realize that she’s harboring an even bigger secret: her estranged husband Roger Chillingworth is living under cover in the Massachusetts woods to hide the fact that he turns into a werewolf every full moon. Can the cowardly Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale summon the courage to not only admit his paternity of Hester’s child, but also slay the wolfman?
“Wuthering Frights”
When Heathcliff goes out at night to commune with the spirit of his lost love, he discovers Cathy’s ghost isn’t the only specter haunting the moors. In this spine-tingling update of the classic love story, Emily Bronte’s Byronic hero takes on a legion of ghouls and zombies in his own uniquely bad-tempered style, and strives to keep the moonlit meadows safe for his own other-worldly romantic interludes.
“Moby Dick Meets the Creature from the Black Lagoon”
Captain Ahab’s crew is ready to mutiny when their monomaniac leader forces them into battle with the great white whale. The behemoth knocks a hole in their boat, and the sailors take refuge on an uncharted island while they attempt to repair the hull. Unfortunately, there they encounter another murderous beast – a living relic from the Devonian period who inhabits the island’s swamp and starts preying on the men. Will the erstwhile enigmatic whale come back to kill the creature, or will Moby let the lagoon monster settle his score for him?
“Dr. Zhivago and Mr. Hyde”
Heroic doctor by day; romantic poet by evening; crazed lunatic by night… Lara Antipova thought she had enough on her plate when her wimpy husband Pasha morphed into the feared Red Army general Strelnikov and her former lover Komarovsky tracked her down in her cozy Ural commune. But lately, making matters inexplicably worse, her soul-mate Yuri has started acting mighty peculiar whenever he takes a shot of the strange "vodka" he brews up in his secret home distillery. Is there no man in all of Russia who can come and keep this fetching comrade warm?
“A Midsummer Day’s Nightmare”
Star-crossed lovers, mischievous fairies and a troupe of bad actors take shelter in an enchanted forest thinking they’re in for a night of Shakespearean comedy. But then a fourth group mysteriously enters the woods. They say they’re loggers, but what kind of wood-cutters pull out their chainsaws after sunset?
“Bleak House of Frankenstein”
The overworked litigants and lawyers in this classic satire of the arcane Victorian legal system find something new to sue about when a strange German doctor sets up shop across the street from the Chancery. Now, not only are the wills and probate documents disappearing, body parts start missing too. This update of the Victorian tear-jerker brings a new “twist” to the word “Dickensian.”
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