The Duel at Blood Creek

Credit to IMDB

One of my modules this year is looking at scriptwriting, and we're often shown a variety of short films. With this in mind, I thought I'd take a look at one of my favourite short films, The Duel at Blood Creek, a comedic period piece directed in 2010 by Leo Burton.

Taking place some time in the early 19th Century, we follow Lord Allesbury as he travels to Blood Creek with his servant, Benton. His intention is to fight a duel with Sir Oliver Hawthorne over an affair of honour. Unfortunately, he's not the only one coming to Blood Creek to fight a duel:

• Judge Edgar Proust is seeking to fight a duel with a man named Townsend, when he and Allesbury take an instant dislike to one another
• Lt Simon Beckett has been challenged to a duel by Captain Howard Gower
• Mr Mason and Mr Tunstall have come to settle their business dispute in a pistol duel overseen by their mutual friend Mr Elliot.

You'd think a short film couldn't work with so many characters, but somehow it creates some great humour from the bickering between the various duellists, especially as the reasons for duelling come to light. They're not exactly honourable, and some are outright childish.

For a film about duelling, there isn't much focus on any duelling until the end, but that's the joke; they're too busy arguing about who gets to duel first. Even when the duelling is underway, it gets hampered by the tensions between the different duellists.

If there's anything I do have to criticise, it's that nothing truly gets resolved. It ends with an anti-climactic deus ex machima. However, that itself is also pretty funny, so it's not a major issue for me.

The Duel at Blood Creek can be found online here. I highly recommend it for the laughs.

Happy writing, and if I don't post anything else in the next few days; Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, and any other holidays from around this time I may have missed.