October 10th - Lady In White (1988)

As Halloween approaches the more I'm drawn to watch Halloween themed movies, which brings me to my next choice...Lady In White. For those who have seen it, I know what you're saying to yourself: "It's not a horror movie!"

And it's not, but it's good Halloween ghost story, that's touching and at the same time, too much for kids to handle. If you liked Something Wicked This Way Comes then you're in for a treat if you haven't seen Lady In White.




The film follows Frankie Scarlatti, an elementary school student who tells a spooky story in class on Halloween day. When he searches for his hat he shortly realizes that he's been set up and his friends end up locking him in a cloak room as a prank. After being there for quite sometime he witnesses the ghost of a girl reenacting getting murdered by an adult. Frankie then witnesses a man come into the cloak room looking for something that fell into a vent during the murder. He quickly realizes Frankie is watching and attacks him. Fortunately for Frankie, he makes it through the ordeal but his attacker his unknown and uncaught. He begins being drawn into what happened to the little girl, whose ghost begins to haunt Frankie...The story from here gets more and more complex.



What to expect. This film doubles as a ghost and mystery movie but stands a little too graphic and complex for children to welcome as a kids movie or even understand. Watching a ghost get murdered would make any 5 yr old pretty spooked. The film is delightfully narrated by a grown up Frankie who is now a successful writer (of spookyness of course). As he recounts his past it's hard not to get pulled into the story and his concern to understand and solve the supernatural happenings around him. It plays on ghostlore and the concept of a lady in white which is not a new idea to film, or folklore. There has been tales of ladies in white haunting places all over the world for quite sometime.It also touches on issues of race of the time (1962)which is interesting for this sort of film, as it's not typical for the genre. It's a fun, delightful Halloween fun.



With that I leave you to go watch "The Lady In White."