n the fall of 1962, Willowpoint Falls is an idyllic little town—but also a haunted one with a dark secret. For 10 years, a killer has lurked in the town's midst, preying on its children. When young Frankie Scarlatti (Haas) gets locked in the school cloakroom on Halloween night as a prank, he nearly becomes the killer's next victim.
Frankie's father (Rocco) arrives just in time, and Frankie narrowly escapes with his life. The school's janitor, father of what is apparently the town's only black family, is arrested for the attack and the other killings. And life in Willowpoint Falls goes on.
But before Frankie was attacked, he saw the ghost of the killer's first victim, who died in that cloakroom. The young girl is doomed to experience her murder over and over again while pining for her lost mother. Frankie, who's recently lost his own mother, feels compelled to help her.
Frankie's connection to the murdered girl will drag him into Willowpoint Falls' other ghost story, the mysterious, wailing Lady in White who roams the cliffs at night. It will lure him to creepy haunted houses and introduce him to some frightening living characters. And finally, it will once again bring him face to face with a killer who, in a small town like Willowpoint Falls, is closer than anyone thinks.
This DVD edition of Lady in White features about six minutes of additional material cut from the original theatrical release. The disc also offers 35 minutes of deleted or revised scenes in rough-cut form, a photo gallery, the original trailer and 15 minutes of behind-the-scenes footage shot during the production in 1986 and 1987. A commentary track offers insights from writer/producer/director (and even composer) Frank LaLoggia.
A scary sense of nostalgia
Lady in White is an odd, flawed jumble. It's most obviously a ghost story. And it's a complicated one. In addition to the murdered girl, Willowpoint Falls has not just one but two Ladies in White roaming around.
However, the film is just as much about LaLoggia's nostalgia for the innocence of childhood among his beloved Italian-American family. In these deeply autobiographical sequences, the cast, especially Alex Rocco, deliver excellent performances. But LaLoggia's dewy-eyed writing frequently drives the movie way over the line into mawkish sentimentality—until it flips back with one creepy, surprisingly dark snap after another.
The result is a weird mixture of A Christmas Story and Poltergeist with a subplot about that railroaded janitor that's straight out of To Kill a Mockingbird. The tone is so confused it's a miracle Lady in White doesn't simply collapse.
But somehow it mostly works. The cornball family comedy, the ghost story, even the social injustice subplot are all effective examples of their genres. In some ways they even reinforce each other. The best example is the cheesy ghost effects, a result of 1980s technology and the film's $4.7 million shoestring budget. Somehow, the schmaltzy family sequences make the fakeness of the effects seem right, as though the whole thing's being remembered through the lens of nostalgia, as, in fact, it is.
It's easy to see how a studio would have wrecked Lady in White trying to make it more marketable. It's not edgy enough for teenage horror audiences. Yet it refuses to flinch from some dark subjects and is too scary to market as Disney-style family viewing. DVD is the natural medium for this film, and hopefully audiences will seek it out here.
