Michael's Horror Lase-O-Rama: Paperhouse (1989(?), Image Entertainment)

If you're reading this in the US, there's a better-than-average chance you've never heard of Paperhouse. Don't feel bad--I'd never heard of this movie before I found this laserdisc languishing in the bargain bin of a local thrift shop. The write-up on the back had me interested, but the pull quote from the front made it a must-buy: "Paperhouse is the thinking person's Nightmare on Elm Street." Clearly the reviewer from 'Variety' liked this picture, as that's pretty damn high praise. While the cover was fairly beat up with a remainder hole punched in the lower-right corner (tells me they didn't sell a lot of this one), the disc itself was in excellent condition, displaying neither scratches nor signs of rot. The day I can't risk $3 on a horror film compared to Nightmare on Elm Street is the day I lose the "not becoming a hobo" contest, so home with me it came.

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Filmed in the UK and released in 1988, Paperhouse is based on a young adult novel entitled "Marianne Dreams", written by Catherine Storr in 1958. From what I've read, this particular adaptation (which only runs 92 minutes) doesn't stick very close to the book, but then again, since I've never read the book I was going in blind.

The story follows Anna Madden (Charlotte Burke), an 11-year old girl suffering from a mononucleosis infection. Twice in one day she suffers fainting spells. Both times when she's out, she 'awakens' in an unfamiliar field. When brought back around in the real world, she departs from the imaginary world created in her head.

During the second fainting session, Anna explores the area around her and discovers a strange house that resembles in every way a house she sketched on her drawing pad at the start of the movie. She bangs on the door, but no one's there to let her in and the door is locked. Upon waking, Anna returns to her drawing and adds a sad-faced figure to an upstairs window. When she falls asleep next, she returns to the house. Waiting for her at the second-floor window is an unhappy young boy named Marc (Elliott Spiers), who tells her she should leave. Indignantly, Anna refuses and instead demands instead for Marc to come down and unlock the door. Marc replies that he can't--his legs don't work, and besides, there are no stairs down from the second floor.

When Anna next awakens, she grabs her notebook, turns to a fresh page, and sketches out an interior of the house, one complete with a curving staircase, railings, a downstairs closet, and two upstairs rooms. She also sketches out a full-body rendering of Marc on the staircase, complete with legs this time so he'll be able to walk. Sure enough, the next time she goes to sleep, Anna can open the door and walk into the house...but something's wrong. Marc isn't waiting for her on the stairs, only a bizarre pair of plaster-cast legs which fall apart when she gets near them. She goes up the stairs and sees Marc, sitting in the window. He explains to her that his legs don't work very well, but he can still drag himself across the floor to meet her.

In between her fever dreams, Anna comes to realize the boy in her imaginary house is a dead ringer for another one of her doctor's patients: a young boy about her age who suffers from muscular dystrophy, which makes walking impossible, and most other movements slow and extremely painful. Now convinced she's creating Marc's reality and that she's responsible for his affliction, Anna adds more and more to her drawings, including an incarnation of her estranged father whom she hopes will keep Marc company. Unfortunately, she also discovers that she can't rub out her mistakes. The eraser simply doesn't work. Everything Anna draws on the paper transfers directly into her dreams, and when she angrily scratches out parts of her picture, she inadvertently transforms those dreams into nightmares from which she and Marc may not awaken.

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Paperhouse is goddamn brilliant, but I can totally see why it languished in an effort to find an audience. The film is clearly aimed at younger viewers with its simplistic narrative and pre-teen characters, but its PG-13 rating and the intensity of some of the nightmare sequences would be enough, at least in the late 80's, to scare off its primary audience while likely not doing enough to keep an older viewer (especially one expecting anything similar to the R-rated Nightmare on Elm Street) engaged. It's a slow-paced movie that takes its time building up plenty of questions before it deigns to answer any of them.

Nevertheless, this film's insane effectiveness comes from the ease with which director Bernard Rose captures the sorts of imagery that so easily resonates with a younger set of eyes. It's one of those "scary for its day" movies that adults can just brush off, but that would have given me nightmares as an 11-year old with a horribly overactive imagination. In this, it's wickedly effective, especially for an American audience for which the London filming locations would be somewhat naturally other-worldly in their presentation. But if there's one feeling Rose manifests on celluloid better than any other, it's a creeping sensation that not everything is as it seems.

All too often we forget children interpret the world a completely different way than adults. Both screenwriter Matthew Jacobs and director Rose understood this though, and since the film is entirely presented from Anna's perspective, we as an audience are treated to how she sees the world, which may not be exactly how things really are. A child's perception of the world is clouded by blank areas, things they don't understand, and the lies adults tell in an effort to protect them from the harsh truth of reality. Paperhouse shies away from none of this, and thus, like Anna, we're forced to interpret the story through her eyes.

The benefit of adult experience, however, leads our minds in awful directions. Is Anna's father the good man she believes him to me, or a drunken and abusive lout who abandoned the family? Is Anna faking her illness as a way to garner sympathy, as is suggested earlier in the movie when she tells her mom her first fainting spell was a way to get out of detention on her birthday, or is she genuinely sick? How much power does she have to manifest the things she draws? Is she dreaming them because she drew them, or is something much larger going on? The film unravels the answers to these questions slowly, parceling out information that leads us to believe one way one minute, then second-guess ourselves the next as soon as another nugget falls in our lap.

In other words, it's exactly what being a kid feels like.

Equally impressive: after the denouement (somewhat spoiled by the cover artwork), the film manages to pull another 20 minutes' worth of story that is equal parts uplifting and depressing. Had I watched this as a child, I'd have been sobbing my eyes out by the time the credits roll. It's not My Girl levels of emotional devastation, but cripes does it murder the heartstrings and tease at an even more downbeat ending.

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While researching the film further for this article, I found something which makes this even worse. Elliott Spiers who played Marc died of an illness just a few short years after appearing in Paperhouse. What's even stranger to me is that Charlotte Burke, who carries the entire weight of the picture on her shoulders, has never acted in anything else after playing Anna in this movie. It's staggering to me a girl this talented never worked in front of the camera again, but maybe Paperhouse didn't draw enough of a crowd to make it worthy of putting on her resume. The US release apparently made under a quarter of a million dollars, despite a raving four-star review from Roger Ebert. Perhaps Gene Siskel's "Thumbs Down" made people reconsider, or maybe a low-budget British production whose genre is difficult to pin down (it's equal parts fantasy, drama, and horror, akin to Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures but with far less CGI) never really had a chance across the pond.

Whatever the reason, I'm glad I stumbled across this laserdisc. Even though it's a Pan & Scan version of the film, released in a standard 1.33:1 aspect ratio on a double-sided CLV disc, it's still the best way to see the film in the US. Paperhouse has never received a DVD or Blu-Ray release stateside, making your choice between a VHS tape and this LD release. The 'disc has a nice, clean picture transfer with both digital and analog Dolby Surround channels, and I find it hard to believe the VHS could either look or sound better. There aren't any extra features on the 'disc like a commentary track or even a trailer, but Image and Vestron were bare-bones distributors in the day, so that's not surprising. Of course, the UK's had both a DVD and Blu-Ray on the market for years, so if you live in PAL territory, rejoice and enjoy your 1.66:1 widescreen transfer. It's also available via YouTube's streaming service for $1.99, which is a hell of a bargain if you don't own a laserdisc player and got rid of your VCR back in the 20th century.

Paperhouse deserves to be a lot better known than it is today. The acting is top-notch, the story is brain-twisty, and the special effect shots are all refreshingly practical, with no hint of computer tampering. I only have one minor complaint: Glenne Headly, who plays Anna's mother, is an American actress, who didn't originally read her lines with a British accent. This is totally fine--it's not unheard of for an American woman to run off to the UK with a British husband, and wouldn't have affected the plot in any way. Apparently two days before the film's release however, somebody involved with the film's production decided Anna's mother should be British and not American. This required getting Headly into the recording studio so she could very quickly re-record all of her lines and have them dubbed over her original readings. The result is an ADR nightmare: her sound levels are all over the place with regards to the other actors and actresses, and her lips frequently don't sync up with her words. If you don't tend to notice this stuff, it won't bother you in the least, but as someone who studied acting and is drawn to watching performances closely, it stuck out far too often.

Absent that minor niggle though, Paperhouse is unbelievably good and effective at what it sets out to do. It won't scare you sleepless, but between the top-notch acting of its small cast and Hans Zimmerman's incredibly effective score, it will make you just the right degree of uncomfortable. Four years later, Bernard Rose would go on to direct the much bigger and well-known frightmare feature Candyman with Tony Todd, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn his work on Paperhouse cemented his suitability the job.

Thanks for reading, now enjoy the trailer!