Horror film 'Paper Dolls' gets Whitefish screening

Bigfoot finally makes its film debut in Whitefish.

The Flathead-based horror movie -"Paper Dolls' -will be shown at 6 and 9 p.m. May 17 and at 6 and 9 p.m. May 18 at the O'Shaughnessy Center in Whitefish. A minimum donation of $8 is asked for admission.

This is to be a slightly shorter film - trimmed from 101 minutes to 93 minutes - from the one that has done well on the horror film festival circuit.

The filmmakers cut several minutes from the movie's first half hour to get into the action quicker and to make the movie more commercially viable, said Adam Pitman, one of the filmmakers.

"We went through it with a fine-tooth comb," he said.

The R-rated "Paper Dolls' is a suspense film set in Whitefish and the forests of Northwest Montana in which 18-year-old boys stumble across a tribe of killer Bigfoots on a back logging road.

The movie was filmed in 2006 in Whitefish, Columbia Falls and the Stillwater State Forest.

Several actors, the people playing the Sasquatches, and many behind-the-scenes workers are local.

Pitman and Adam Stilwell are Whitefish High School graduates who went their separate ways in college. Pitman went to the University of Idaho where he befriended David Blair.

Pitman, Blair and Stilwell formed their own independent film company - Badfritter Films - to create their own low-budget movies.

They put together a $500 ghost film -"Roulette" - which was good enough to convince some Flathead investors to put money into a $300,000 Sasquatch horror movie with professional behind-the-scenes help.

Pitman and another Whitefish High School graduate -Nathaniel Peterson - are the two protagonists. Blair and Pitman directed. Stilwell was a behind-the-scenes producer and the first person killed on screen.

The movie has had nibbles from distributors, but not enough to enable the investors to recoup their money, Pitman said.

The film has been shown on the independent horror film circuit and picked up a couple of awards, including:

n Best film, Pitman as best actor, and Blair and Pitman as best directors at the 2007 Eerie Film Festival in Erie, Penn.

n Best horror film at the 2008 Shockerfest in Modesto, Calif.

n A selection at the 2009 Las Vegas International Film Festival.

The filmmakers currently are working on an Edgar-Allen-Poe-like fairy tale script called "Redwood" and an apocalyptic zombie script for a Web series.

Reporter John Stang may be reached at 758-4429 or by e-mail at jstang@dailyinterlake.com