Almost Worthless: The Paper Man

This will be my last review for a while, or possibly forever. While the YouTube page is doing pretty well, the HubPages are not. And while I hate to have such a bad movie as the subject, loose ends should be probably be tied. I present to you The Paper Man, the second half of the double feature that also included The Mind Snatchers.

The Paper Man is not to be confused with the 2009 short film or the 1990 UK TV series of the same title, nor is it an English-language version of the 1963 Mexican film El Hombre de Papel. No, according to my trusty source imdb, this Paper Man is a 1971 US TV movie directed by Walter Grauman and starring Dean Stockwell.

Like The Mind Snatchers image it shares on the DVD cover (unfortunately, I could not crop the whole thing out), everything looks a bit waxy. Stefanie Powers in particular looks a bit corpse-y. We'll pretend that the boxy silhouette in the corner is James Stacy.

And now for its half of the back cover:

Ah, yes. The old prank-gone-wrong movie. Except credit card fraud isn't exactly a prank. So that would just make it a crime movie, only it's about a crime that is typically punished with fines, community service, and/or probation, according to lovetoknow.com.

Gosh, that sounds horrifically boring. At least the stills on the back cover look promising--lots of fearful faces, a gun, and some surgeons. True, The Paper Man doesn't look like a cinematic masterpiece, but it doesn't look like a disaster, either.

It isn't fair to expect a lot of excitement in the first nine and a half minutes of a movie, much less in a movie centering around credit card fraud. I apologize to those who remember a time when credit cards were impossible for college students to get, but now, credit card companies are constantly calling and mailing cards to college students. It's not all that uncommon for young adults to declare bankruptcy due to credit card debt.

What makes this movie even weirder is that the students not only stole a credit card, but they opened up an account and they pay their bills on time. Yes, they're technically committing fraud and they revel in cheating The Man, but they're going about it in the lamest way possible. And since they are using their own money, their shopping spree isn't too extravagant. These four are so dull that their idea of a wild time involves arts and crafts:

The gang soon faces some problems, however. The Man's almighty computer is about to bust them. Yet like Ocean's 11 or the X-Men, these kids each have a singular skill that will see them through. We have The Charismatic Leader, The Prodigy (though we don't know exactly what kind), The Linguist, and The Sexy Redhead. Now with Avery The Computer Nerd, the group is complete.

Maybe, just maybe it will get better. Maybe the beginning is supposed to be so boring that the upcoming events will be all the more thrilling.

Computers! They can do anything! Even MURDER! That's the lesson here, kids.

Eventually the nose-drips who started this mess realize they can't afford to pay their credit card bills, so they create an identity for their fictitious cardholder. Naturally, entering into this kind of depravity comes at a cost, and someone has to die.

Okay, I'm just going to reveal plot points because it really doesn't matter. Mercifully, the first to die is the one I could most do without:

He gets an insulin overdose, but the next two deaths are more unconventional. The Linguist gets crushed by an elevator door:

Charismatic Leader dies at the robotic hands of the medical department's practice dummy:

And those are the three highlights of the movie. The whole things ends when it turns out that the real Henry Norman programmed the school computer system to kill everyone. He jumps out a window and dies when he's caught by the police, but the report of his death was sent by computer to the police station the day before he jumped. Maybe it was the computer all along!

I don't mean to make light of credit card fraud or identity theft, but in this particular case, it isn't a believable catalyst for murder. Henry Norman's true motive didn't have much to do with the students, but that's why the whole thing doesn't make sense. The Paper Man probably was never meant to be anything more than a Movie of the Week, but that's the biggest problem with it. It's disposable. Even with its dated qualities and low budget, it had the potential to be something classic, like a Twilight Zone episode. All 2001: A Space Odyssey needed was a blinking light and a monotone computer voice to build tension that it still palpable today. Instead, The Paper Man just has shallow characters and performances and a story that's too underdeveloped to be suspensful.

I can't end the project like this. I'm not going out with this used Kleenex of a movie. There will be another. I'm sure of that.