 Guy Maddin (Sullivan Brown) reluctantly returns to his childhood home, an abandoned Canadian island, where his parents ran an orphanage. As Guy fulfills his dying mother s request to paint the lighthouse which served as the orphanage, memories of strange events there overpower him. An undercover investigation by child author/detective Wendy (Katherine Scharhon) and a revolt by the repressed children, blew open a cover-up by Guy s parents. Wendy disguised herself as her brother Chance and discovered that Maddin s inventor father performed outré scientific experiments on the orphans. In black and white, with title cards, plus narration by Isabella Rossellini. In the film s opening weeks, some showings included live narrators (such as Crispin Glover, Lou Reed, Barbara Steele), an orchestra, a castrato, and costumed sound effects techs.