I’m a fan of combining horror and comedy. And a fan of game shows and theme park themes. So combine all that together and we have our next series. I think it would work as a game or a comic.
The story is introduced by our MC and vampire host explaining that monsters live in another reality separated physically from humans. However, monsters can influence humans in their sleep, so monsters have created nightmares and horror movies and beam them back to the humans while dreaming. For the monsters, this is both a sustaining lifeforce for their world AND it’s darn good entertainment, with the most popular creators becoming powerful stars. Like our humble MC. In tonight’s episode, our main character is going to die, so this won’t end happily for him.
After the broadcast intro, the MC hands things off to his assistant, Miss Walker, a dry and seemingly normal human woman. She handles everything about the operation outside of the on-camera hosting and writing.
In his sleep, our lead’s nightmare plays out like a standard horror movie, but at some point he gains some lucidity. As he comes to, the world seems less realistic and starts to present itself like a stage with props. He has trouble maintaining his lucid dreaming but catches glimpses of the stage, the production team, and then an audience. Since he’s no longer acting out the show’s nightmare, things start to fall apart and the audience is losing interest from the lack of action and scares. As the lead starts interfering with the set and things collapse, he gets laughs and cheers from the audience. Suddenly, things go dark and the lead feels himself yanked into a deep chasm.
He’s faced with the MC first trying to scare him but he’s too confused for it to stick, so the MC switches to chewing him out as a lousy actor that’s ruining the production. He doesn’t really know what’s going on, but our main guy realizes that the audience likes him and MC can't just cut him off or else they’ll be mad about the lousy show. Finally, the whole nightmare facade drops and our lead finds himself backstage on the production, being glared at by the MC and his assistant. Our lead offers to make a trade. The nightmare’s slasher pulls it back and he regains control of himself to complete the episode his way or he refuses to participate (they were going to kill him either way so sabotage is his best weapon). The MC lashes out trying to scare him once more, but when that fails, he reluctantly agrees. With a caveat! Our hero has to keep the ratings up! So each time he fails the mission, is too boring, or is killed by the monster before the show is a success, he resurrects with a punishment form and has to continue filming. Because if the action and scares can't sell the audience, T&A will. Our lead is confused by this but forms a mutually unhappy agreement. Already spinning this new development into the show, the MC calls for his assistant and tells her to start promoting the HorrorWorld Honey.