Hider in the House: The Troubled Story Behind Gary Busey’s 1989 Thriller

Cody

There are few movie concepts more terrifying than the idea of a dangerous criminal secretly living inside your house. You’re going about your daily life, making dinner, watching TV, going to bed, completely unaware that somebody is living above your head. That’s the nightmare at the center of Hider in the House, the 1989 psychological thriller starring Gary Busey. And when you think about that premise, there are few actors who could make the idea more unnerving than Gary Busey. Nobody wants him in their attic.

But there’s a fascinating story behind how this movie came to be, because the Hider in the House we have isn’t really the movie screenwriter Lem Dobbs originally wrote. The production went through multiple rewrites, a change of directors, competing visions for the story, and a major change to the ending. And then Vestron Pictures ran into financial trouble just as the movie was supposed to be heading into a major theatrical release.

So why did Lem Dobbs think Gary Busey was completely wrong for the role? How many other writers worked on the screenplay before Dobbs ultimately had to fight to retain his credit? And what was the original ending that Matthew Patrick and producer Steven Reuther eventually agreed would have made a better movie? Let’s find out what happened to Hider in the House, and whether Gary Busey really was miscast.

The idea for Hider in the House came from an observation. Dobbs was staying in London, and a neighboring home was being remodeled. The properties shared a back fence, and while watching the construction, Dobbs realized something: if you had access to a house while it was being built, you could potentially create a hidden room inside it. The idea was that somebody could move into a family’s house before the family ever moved in.

That’s an excellent idea for a thriller, and one of the reasons it was appealing to studio executives is that it’s cheap. You don’t need a huge cast, expensive locations, or elaborate action sequences. You only need a family, a house, and a guy hiding somewhere inside.

Lem Dobbs’ Original Vision

Dobbs wrote the script, making sure to keep the whole thing plausible, step by step. He had become friends with producer Stuart Cornfeld, who really latched onto the Hider in the House idea and wanted to direct the movie himself. Cornfeld eventually got the project set up at Vestron Pictures, but he and the head of the studio apparently had very different ideas about what the movie should be. They were, as Dobbs puts it, oil and water. And their visions for Tom Sykes were very different.

Dobbs and Cornfeld saw the story as a kind of tragic romance, which is why Tom Sykes is a much more sympathetic character than most viewers might expect. He grew up in an abusive household. His parents treated him horribly, and as a child, he found a safe space beneath the kitchen sink where he could hide from them. Eventually, when Tom was fifteen, he escaped by setting his family’s house on fire and killing his parents. He was then institutionalized for eighteen years.

So when Tom eventually gets out, he’s not a serial killer looking for his next victim. He’s a man who has never had a normal life. He never even had the chance to understand what a normal life is. But he wants one. The first step: finding a house to live in. And rather than take the proper avenues to move into a house, he just picks a newly constructed place in suburbia and builds himself a little room in the attic before the owners move in.

Oddly, he chooses to build his room in a space that has a window, which seems like a bad idea, since I’d assume the owners would wonder why they can’t reach that window when they go into the attic. But they never do.

The house belongs to the Dreyer family, and they’re pretty clueless. There are a few times when there’s a threat of Tom’s presence in the attic being revealed, so he has to kill the family dog, an exterminator, and a family friend to keep his secret. But for the most part, this living situation works out for him. Even when the little girl spots him moving around in the house at night, her talk of a man being in the house is brushed off as childish nonsense. Tom blows it for himself when he becomes obsessed with family matriarch Julie Dreyer and starts manipulating situations so he can try to make himself part of the family.

First, Tom sabotages the Dreyers’ marriage, which is already shaky because Julie’s husband, Phil, is stressing out over finances and having an affair. Phil, you just had a huge house built for four people to live in and had a massive in-ground pool put on the property, and you’re short on cash? Gee, I wonder where all the money went?

Who Was Supposed to Play Tom Sykes?

When Dobbs was writing the script, he envisioned a Tom who could be a potential romantic partner for Julie. And he didn’t think Gary Busey was right for that version of Tom. There were conversations about Scott Glenn taking on the role, although Vestron wouldn’t approve him. The studio had names including Ray Liotta, Val Kilmer, Aidan Quinn, and Andy Garcia on its wish list. Cornfeld really wanted John Travolta. Vestron vetoed that, too.

Those are actors you can imagine playing Dobbs’ version of Tom. They can be physically imposing or dangerous, but they can also plausibly walk into the house and become part of the family’s world. You can understand why the writer thought Busey wasn’t a good fit. He’s not exactly the guy you cast when you want to make the audience think, “I could see this troubled man becoming a member of this family.” He’s a large, intense, unpredictable presence. As Dobbs has pointed out, he’s a hulking guy. He doesn’t seem like someone who could stealthily and quietly move around in a house without being noticed. And there’s always something off-kilter about him.

But that’s part of the charm of Hider in the House. The basic idea is plausible enough to scare you. The details occasionally make you wonder how this guy got as far as he did. And then Gary Busey walks into the room and you stop worrying about the logistics.

The casting of Julie was less controversial. Mimi Rogers was actually a Vestron mandate. Her husband at the time, Tom Cruise, had read the script and recommended her for the role. Nobody’s going to ignore the casting advice of Tom Cruise.

Alec Baldwin, Sam Neill, Peter Fonda, Terry O’Quinn, Peter Coyote, Rick Rossovich, and Joe Mantegna were on the wish list for the husband. That’s a fairly wide range. Michael McKean ended up getting the job.

Bruce Glover was cast as Gene Hufford, the Dreyers’ deeply creepy neighbor. He deserves a mention because Hider in the House occasionally becomes a competition of “Which man is more uncomfortable around Julie?” There’s Gary Busey secretly living in her attic, and then there’s Bruce Glover next door. Julie has some very strange men in her life.

Dobbs and Cornfeld also had ideas for some pretty impressive actors to appear in a smaller role. Names discussed for a cameo as Tom’s therapist included John Lithgow, Albert Finney, Leonard Nimoy, Buck Henry, Rob Reiner, Richard Benjamin, and the most famous Psycho of all, Anthony Perkins. But the role was written down, so it didn’t end up being suitable for a special guest star.

The Screenplay Goes Through Major Rewrites

That was the least of the changes made to the script. There was a mad scramble to get rewrites done before the Writers Guild strike of 1988, and eventually the script was taken out of Dobbs’ hands. Multiple writers took passes at it. Dobbs has referred to them as “scabs,” since they continued working on the script during the strike. There were reportedly three or four other writers involved, and the writing credits eventually went through arbitration. Dobbs ultimately retained the sole screenwriting credit, but the movie was no longer entirely his.

Some of the rewrites altered the Tom character. In Dobbs’ original script, Tom’s violence was connected to his distorted belief that he was protecting his family. He kills a burglar who breaks into the house. In the movie, he befriends the Dreyer kids and teaches the bullied son how to defend himself violently. In the original script, he took matters into his own hands and murdered the school bully. The character was more brutal in some ways, but the brutality had a purpose. Tom believed that people who threatened the family had to be eliminated. He wasn’t thinking like a villain, but like a violent, damaged man-child. That’s an interesting character.

When Cornfeld expressed displeasure with the rewritten script, Vestron hired Matthew Patrick to replace him as director. Studio executives had been impressed by a short film Patrick made and offered him the chance to make his feature directorial debut with Hider in the House. Patrick jumped at the chance and approached the material with the intention of making Tom as sympathetic as possible. So some aspects of Dobbs and Cornfeld’s vision remained. At least the script didn’t end up in the hands of someone who wanted to turn Tom into a complete monster.

Patrick also wanted the movie to be more psychologically nuanced than the title might suggest. The director says he oversaw ten to fifteen drafts of the screenplay. He took the material to a therapist because he wanted to understand the psychology of Tom Sykes and make sure the character’s behavior felt believable from scene to scene.

The Original Ending Was More Tragic

One of the most difficult parts of the script to crack was the ending. Dobbs’ original ending was pure tragedy: Tom set the house on fire, essentially recreating his childhood trauma. But rather than leave the family in the burning home like he did with his parents, he chooses to save the Dreyers. He gets them out, then stays inside the burning house himself. It was a sad and fitting ending. Tom finally understands that he can never become part of this family, but he can at least save them.

Patrick wanted something along those lines. One alternate ending involved another psychiatric patient following Tom and attacking the family. Tom saves them from this maniac, but dies in the process. That fellow patient character was ultimately removed about two weeks before shooting because the filmmakers needed to cut fifteen pages from the script.

Patrick wanted the climax to involve Tom saving the family in some way, but the studio had a different idea. They wanted something more commercial. A Fatal Attraction-style ending. So they put a rule in place that Tom couldn’t kill himself. He couldn’t decide to stay inside a burning house. Somebody else had to take him out.

So the ending we get is more conventional. Tom becomes increasingly dangerous. The threat escalates, Julie fights back, and eventually the police arrive and Tom is killed.

It’s not the ending Dobbs wrote, and it’s not the ending Patrick wanted. Years later, Patrick actually ran into executive producer Steven Reuther at the Academy Awards. During that interaction, Reuther admitted that Patrick had been right: the original ending would have made a better movie. Tom deserved a tragic redemption. Patrick said he admired Reuther for being able to say that.

That says a lot about the making of Hider in the House, because everyone involved seems to have had a slightly different idea of what the movie was supposed to be. Dobbs and Cornfeld were planning a tragic-but-brutal romance. Vestron wanted something commercial. Patrick wanted more of a psychological thriller than a violent horror movie, a study of a damaged man.

Gary Busey Becomes Tom Sykes

And in the middle of all that, Gary Busey decided that he didn’t really need to act. Busey met with the psychologist who had been brought in to advise the production, and afterward he was thrilled. He described the movie as an “N.A.R.” movie. No Acting Required. He identified so strongly with Tom, he said, “I am the character.”

And watching the movie, you believe him. This is where I have to disagree with Lem Dobbs. Busey may not have matched the writer’s mental picture of Tom Sykes, but he’s perfect for the Tom that exists on screen. Even if he was the wrong age. Busey was 44 during the production of this movie, but he’s playing 33. The age of his character isn’t relevant; it’s just something you realize when you put the numbers together.

Busey gives Tom a bizarre combination of physical menace and childish vulnerability. There’s a weird sweetness to him when he interacts with the family. He wants to be helpful. He wants to be loved. But there’s always something wrong underneath it.

He’s not hiding in the attic because he’s planning the perfect murder. He’s hiding there because he’s constructing a fantasy in his head. The visual choices reinforce that idea.

The movie was shot in Monrovia, California, a location that could pass for Anywhere, U.S.A. The filmmakers avoided the Southern California imagery, including palm trees, because they wanted the setting to feel more universal. The family’s portions of the house have warmer lighting. Tom’s world is colder. He’s physically inside the same home, but psychologically he’s somewhere else entirely.

That’s one of the reasons the movie has held up: it’s smarter and more detailed than you might expect. As the story goes on, you can feel the walls closing in around Tom. Eventually, his obsession with Julie becomes the thing that exposes him. The very thing he thinks will finally make him part of the family is what destroys the fantasy.

The irony of Hider in the House is that the thing Lem Dobbs thought was wrong with it may be the reason the movie is so memorable. Gary Busey isn’t a subtle actor, but Tom Sykes isn’t normal. He’s not supposed to feel normal. He has spent eighteen years in a psychiatric hospital after surviving an abusive childhood and has emerged with a broken understanding of human relationships.

Busey looks like somebody who could physically overpower everybody in the house, but he also plays Tom as somebody desperately trying to figure out how to be loved. That’s a unique combination, and it works.

Vestron’s Financial Troubles Derail the Release

Unfortunately, the movie’s release was almost as troubled as its production. Vestron got into financial trouble, and the planned American theatrical release never happened. The movie had been scheduled to play in roughly 1,200 theaters in the United States, but that went away.

It did receive theatrical play in other countries, including the United Kingdom, where it opened in October 1989. Then, in the United States, Hider in the House eventually found its audience through television and home video. That’s probably where a movie like this was always going to find most of its viewers.

It eventually developed a cult following, and it’s easy to understand why. It has an incredible premise and an unusual lead performance. It has Mimi Rogers and Michael McKean providing a solid dramatic foundation, and Bruce Glover wandering around being creepy. It has a Christopher Young score. And there’s the Busey of it all.

What Happened to Hider in the House?

Everybody involved was trying to put their own version of Hider in the House inside the same house. Lem Dobbs and Stuart Cornfeld had their version. Vestron had theirs. Matthew Patrick had another. The script was rewritten, characters appeared and disappeared, and the ending changed. The tone shifted. And then Vestron collapsed before the movie could even get the theatrical release it had been built toward. But the movie survived. And now, decades later, Hider in the House has finally gotten the kind of Blu-ray collector’s edition treatment that allows people to hear directly from those who made it about what went wrong, what changed, and what they originally wanted the movie to be.

You can imagine an alternate Hider in the House. The darker tragedy, the Tom who was a more viable romantic partner for Julie. The original ending. The version where he realizes that he has become the monster he spent his childhood trying to escape. That sounds fascinating, but I also wouldn’t want to lose the movie we actually got.

There is something about Gary Busey’s performance that makes Hider in the House impossible to confuse with anything else. The movie isn’t perfect. There are moments when you start thinking about the logistics of somebody secretly living in an attic and realize the Dreyers aren’t the world’s most observant homeowners. But the basic nightmare works: somebody is inside your house. You don’t know he’s there, but he’s watching you. He’s learning about you. And eventually, he decides that you belong to him.

That’s scary, and it gets a lot scarier when Gary Busey is that somebody.

So was Gary Busey miscast in Hider in the House? If you’re talking about Lem Dobbs’ original conception of Tom Sykes, I can understand the argument. If you’re talking about the movie that exists, though? No, not at all. Gary Busey is awesome in Hider in the House. He takes a character who could have been played as a conventional psycho and turns him into something stranger: a physically intimidating, emotionally stunted, deeply damaged man who has mistaken his fantasy of having a family for actually being part of one.

After all these years, I wouldn’t want anybody else lurking in that attic. And that’s what happened to Hider in the House.

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