Why not on DVD, Remake??

I am a kindred spirit. I too thought that this movie was wonderful.
I already knew Glenne Headly ("And the Band Played On") and Gemma Jones ("Bridget Jones' Diary", "The Devils" etc.) but I had never heard of Charlotte Burke or Elliott Spears prior to this movie. The chemistry between these two young actors was amazing! It seems a crying shame that neither of these talented persons ever went on to make other movies (Oh, o.k so Elliott Spears apparently featuredin a movie called "Taxandria", but who the heck has even heard of it, let alone seen it?)

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I agree with your post, except for one thing; a larger budget would most likely ruin this film, and rob it of it's character. A small budget simply means that the filmmakers have to utilize art and creativity to get the story across. a remake today would be wretched, all CGI effects and Hollywood style trash. For Paperhouse, it's small budget is the very thing that makes this so special, and so unique.

I would love to see a remake, if only to remove a few of the 80s-isms throughout. Like bits of the score that are all synthy, or that corny electric guitar sound effect when Anna's father appears suddenly. Or that whole sequence where the movie suddenly turned into a poor 80's horror film for about ten minutes, I think that could have been done more tastefully. But other than those few nitpicks, it really was a delightful film!

This has become of my favourite films of all time, I was read the original book, Marianne Dreams, by my mum when I was a kid as a bedtime story (not all at once though) and parts of it were quite frightening - the standing stones advancing on the house particularly.

The set of the house was very good, literally like a child's drawing come to life, the Hans Zimmer music fit perfectly in with the theme of the film.

With the right director a remake of the book could be something quite special, especially if the director kept to the storyline and didn't leave any large parts out like what was done with Paperhouse, from what I remember of the book the standing stones were the real meanace not the blind father figure. There was a BBC tv series in the 70s that apparently followed the book more closely than Paperhouse but I've never seen it and don't have much hope of the BBC digging it up for a re-airing or DVD release ever.

I'll have to track down the Marianne Dreams book one day to read again, as well as the follow-up book Marriane and Mark.

Living in Canada, I have patiently waited for a region one DVD of this movie to be released. I finally gave up and spent a few hundred bucks on a region-free DVD player and purchased a region 2 (UK) copy of the Paperhouse DVD on Amazon. It sounds like a lot of trouble and expense to go to, but I think the machine will eventually pay off. I also got an Italian DVD of Elio Petri's "Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion" (the only winner of a Best Foreign Film Oscar that was never released on VHS or DVD in North America).

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