Movie Review: The House on Sorority Row (1983)

Okay, Netflix. We are going to start having a serious problem in our relationship unless you quit with the lying to me. You made me think The House on Sorority Row was going to be a great slasher. You said in your oh-so-deceptive description that "this gleefully low-budget 1980s horror flick features ample doses of sex and gore." Well, the sex part I don't really care about because I'm not a dude, but you were so totally wrong about the gore part. I'm only going to forgive you for this just this once because although the gore in The House on Sorority Row sucks (a lot), I really liked the rest of the movie.

Seven graduating seniors of the Pi Theta sorority decide to finally get back at their evil house mother Mrs. Slater when she refuses to allow them to throw a graduation party at the house. They come up with a horrible idea for a prank that ends with Mrs. Slater's death, which the girl's smartly decide to cover up. But either she didn't really die or someone else knows what they did because the girls start getting picked off one by one (in ways that are so totally not gory at all).

So for anybody with half a brain, you can figure out the end of the movie pretty much from the very beginning. A title card says it's 1961 so this must be a flashback to the house mother's life. She has a back-alley baby basically and we're led to believe that the child died but it's pretty obvious that it didn't and that it's going to grow up to be the person who kills all the sorority girls. I mean, DUH. And of course, he also ends up being a deformed mongoloid like Jason whose mother has hidden him up in the sorority house's attic all his life. Annnnd, also like Jason, he sees his mommy killed by the girls and gets revenge and kills them. He also wears a mask. His name is Eric.

But I didn't really mind that I basically knew who the killer was from the start. I had a good time watching these sorority girls (whom every complains about not being as "hot" as sorority girls should be, but fuck that) try to deal with the situation. Speaking of the situation - children, NEVER try to hide or cover up an accidental death. YOU WILL DIE FOR IT. Just sayin'. I actually liked all these characters, though I was fully prepared not to, and the ones that I didn't really care for are thankfully pushed to the wayside anyway. There are some recognizable faces such as Harley Kozak, of Arachnophobia and Parenthood fame; Eileen Davidson has been on both Days of Our Lives and The Young and the Restless; and our final girl Katherine is played by Kate McNeil from the genre classic Monkey Shines. They all play their roles in House on Sorority Row well, and though they each to play to some sort of slasher character cliche, they are good enough actresses to pull it off. This could very well be the only 80s slasher I've seen where I do actually like the main characters - especially when they are all girls. 

The plot continually surprised me by not going the predictable way and throwing different stuff at me from time to time. There is a lot of stealing from other films, though - Diabolique, Friday the 13th, Black Christmas - but that's to be expected I guess from an 80s slasher. One thing that I really liked they did was the scene after Katherine is given the drugs by Mrs. Slater's doctor. Sitting in an armchair, she has this funky hallucination of dead Mrs. Slater and her dead sorority sisters standing in the open French doors, with Slater's can spinning on the ground by itself. Is this scene out of place in this movie? I don't know, but I loved it, and it looked really good. The one stupid-character-idea move I hated was after Jeanne is first attacked by Eric and she escapes and gets inside where she runs into Katherine. Katherine is all, "Oh you were just attacked and he could still be nearby? Stay here by yourself so he can finish the job" - then she leaves Jeanne and goes to help or whatever. Soon after, Jeanne is killed (she's the one with the head in the toilet). Bah! Such an annoying stupid character move. 

Now, the biggest downside of The House on Sorority Row is the death scenes. They suck. They're boring. The gore is nonexistent. Eric uses his mother's cane as the instrument of death, but he was hardly as inventive with it as he could have been. There's a stabbing through the throat and one through the eye and one fantastic shot of a head in a toilet - but that's about it. Two deaths are off-screen and in another, where Liz gets her throat cut, there is no blood. How can you slit somebody's fucking throat and not have there be blood?! So lame.

The House on Sorority Row is definitely better than its remake, which I hardly remember seeing at all, and more than on par with some similar films released during the same time period. It severely lacks in the gore department and the ending is frustratingly ambiguous, like they just gave up or something, but the acting is great and I liked where the plot went. Good movie.

Project Terrible: The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987)

Quite honestly, I could not have picked a better movie myself to help me back into the world of blogging. The credit for achieving that feat belongs to Alec over at Mondo Bizarro who apparently thought I could do with a good dose of the 80s. So he made me watch The Garbage Pail Kids Movie, otherwise known as Who The Fuck Thought THIS Would Be A Good Idea?. But that title was too long and inappropriate for children. Damn censors.

Anyway. Having still just been a rather small bundle of joy when The Garbage Pail Kids trading cards were at their (fleeting) height of popularity, I have no nostalgia to speak of for this movie. So I apologize to anyone who might love it, although I can't think of a reason why anyone would even remotely like The Garbage Pail Kids Movie because it is crap. Pure, Project Terrible crap.

Teenager Dodger loves to spend time in the local antiques shop with owner Captain Manzini when he's not pining for his beautiful neighbor Tangerine or running from Tangerine's greaser boyfriend Juice and his two cronies. One day Dodger knocks over a mysterious garbage pail in Manzini's shop and sets loose a group of ugly midgets from outer space (no, really). The Kids and Dodger become friends and they help each other and stuff. Ugh.

Now one problem I have with this movie (Ha! Just one?) is that nothing is properly explained for anything that happens. Why does Dodger claim to be "almost 15" when he's clearly no older than 12? Why does a group of tough teenagers apparently spend all their time finding and beating the crap out of a kid for no reason? The credit sequence implies that the Kids are aliens of some kind: How did Manzini get the garbage pail and what the hell kind of aliens are these? How do aliens know so much about fashion? Why does no one in this town seem the least bit affected when they see a talking midget alligator?

And on and on and on AND ON. Seriously, this was the stupidest plot that anyone could have come up with for a children's movie. I was expecting lots of gross-out comedy what with characters like Valerie Vomit, Messy Tessie, and Windy Winston. Messy Tessie does indeed have snot always running out of her nose and Windy Winston does fart a lot, but Valerie Vomit only vomits once in the whole movie at the end, and Nat Nerd actually is the only one to get the real gross-out play as he pees on himself several times... and never seems to clean it up. By the way, how is Greaser Greg a Garbage Pail Kid? There's nothing really gross about  him at all - he's just a 50s greaser guy with sideburns and a leather jacket. Anyway, there's a severe lack of gross-out goodies which probably would not have really helped the movie in any way but as it stands, the movie is so not funny EVER, only painfully stupid and at times seriously inappropriate for children.

The Kids are portrayed by little people wearing giant animatronic heads that don't ever seem to work properly and it really makes me feel bad for all the actors. The only really good part of the whole movie is English actor Anthony Newley as Captain Manzini who for some reason decided to take this role somewhat seriously and actually gives a pretty charming and endearing performance. It definitely helps the movie at least a little bit to have one person in the whole cast and crew who seems to know what the hell they are doing.

No wait, I lied. The best part of the whole movie is when the Kids go out on the town one night and Ali Gator and Windy Winston end up making some biker friends at

Bahaha! "The Toughest Bar in the World"??? You have to admit that that is slightly awesome because of its hilarity. 

No wait, I lied again. The best part of the whole movie in a really inappropriate (seems to be the word of the day for this movie, huh?) way is the whole thing having to do with The State Home for the Ugly. No, really. The whole time that Dodger and the Kids are making clothes and helping Dodger get in good with Tangerine, Manzini is working on a magic trick that will get the Kids to go back into the garbage pail. Now, he wants them back in the pail because they are in danger of being caught and taken to the aforementioned State Home for the Ugly. And when I say "caught," I mean caught, as an earlier scene shows two guards from the home in a truck cruising for ugly people. They actually throw a dog-catcher net over an ugly little girl and plan to take her away before they realize she was just wearing a Halloween mask. Wow. What kind of message is this for kids?

Eventually, the Kids are taken to the home by Juice and his friends. The place is strangely much smaller on the inside than it looks on the outside and is merely a warehouse with straw on the floor and cages along one wall that houses all the ugly people. So here is where some really non-PC stuff comes out. On the cages are signs for why that certain prisoner is in the State Home for the Ugly. Santa Claus is there for being "Too Fat," Abraham Lincoln for being "Too Skinny," Mahatma Gandhi for being "Too Bald," Albert Einstein (I think) for being "Too Old," and most shockingly, a hunched-over man with a cane is there for being "Too Crippled." Whoa. I'm really surprised the filmmakers were able to keep that little bit in there. 

In a way, I guess the guys behind this movie were actually trying to send some kind of message about people being prejudiced or something against ugly people, but um... they do a really bad job of conveying that message. They do a really bad job at everything, to be honest. The Garbage Pail Kids Movie is truly terrible and not worthy of anyone's precious little time on this world. Those Topps trading cards may have been fun to collect when you were a kid, but trust me, a live action movie based solely on trading cards is most definitely never a good idea. 

Movie Review: The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)

This movie, and its sequels, was one of those 80s goodies that just wasn't at my disposal for the longest time, so I never cared all that much about getting around to seeing it. And Slumber Party Massacre, despite the ambitious title, is not something I'm going to call a "classic." I liked it a lot though, and it is without a doubt a great example of all those formulaic 80s slashers movies.

Eighteen-year-old Trish decides to invite some friends over for a slumber party one night when her parents are out of town. The pretty, new girl Valerie, who lives next door to Trish, is invited to the festivities but declines to take care of her younger sister. It's going to be a long night for all of them, though, because a crazed murderer armed with a power drill is in the neighborhood - and he wants to join the party.

One of the cool things about Slumber Party Massacre is that it was both written and directed by women (not the same woman, though). The uncool thing about this is that I couldn't detect a woman's influence hardly anywhere in this movie, with the exception of one scene. I mean, in the first few minutes there is a tit shot as Trish changes her clothes in her room, and then not too long after that, there is a bevy of teenage flesh on display when the girls take showers after playing basketball. Like, of course there's a shower scene. The director even lingers on a shot of one girl's flat ass for a really unnecessary amount of time. And there are more boobs to come later in the movie. Feminist? I don't think so.

Anyway, the storyline here isn't all that bad so there was at least some thought put into making the movie a bit more plausible than some of the other slashers at the time. I mean, the situations just never seemed as farfetched, even though there is a bit of humor sprinkled throughout. Like when one girl gets hungry during their ordeal and they all approach the dead pizza guy cautiously with their knives to get at the delicious pie - that was kinda funny. Valerie running up the stairs with the band saw still plugged in was another good bit. But the humor almost doesn't make sense in this movie. It's subtle enough that you'll get it if you're paying attention but for the most part the movie is rather serious and trying its hardest to be all scary and creepy. So I don't see the point in making it funny unless it's trying to make some point I don't get or to be a comment on something that I don't really care about.

The power drill-loving killer is a rather cliche escaped crazy guy who looks like a guy you'd run into at the Home Depot. I always knew to never trust a guy in a jean jacket. Anyway, I thought it would annoy me that they don't hide the killer's face through most of the movie - probably 'cause that's what I'm used to from these slashers, you know - but it becomes pretty clear that who this man is doesn't matter in the least. He's just a guy using a very obvious phallic symbol to attack women. So the only "feminist" moment I can see is when Valerie comes after him with a big 'ole machete and chops off a part of his drill. Yup, friends, she emasculated him. Hard to miss the subtleties there.

If there is one thing I can say about the other characters in Slumber Party Massacre, it is that they all seem to be suffering from a case of selective deafness. You know what that is, right? It's when the people in a horror all seem to have perfectly normal hearing in everyday situations but for some reason can't hear or ignore those sounds which are most important - like for instance screaming... or the sound of a power drill. This happens several times throughout the movie - first when the boys ignore the phone repair girl being killed in her van, then when the other girls in the house can't hear Diane's screams or the car horn honking several times, then when Valerie can't hear that one guy pounding on the front door - you get the idea. Stupid deaf people in horror movies are about as annoying as just plain old stupid people in horror movies.

So to end this somewhat incoherent and non-flowy review of Slumber Party Massacre, I'll say that I liked the movie. It's got some characters that aren't too annoying (for the most part), a pretty good body count, and it was created by two chicks. A nice, nostalgic look at 80s slashers, and there are better ones out there, but this one is mostly a good time and deserves its place in the cult favorites section of the horror genre - but still not really a "classic."

Movie Review: Slaughter High (1986)

Slashers from the 80s are more than a little guilty of being way too formulaic and not doing a very good job at getting the formula right. A lot of them do work, though, either because they manage to add in a little something different and exciting to the formula, or because it's just so much fun to ridicule people in 80s movies. The hair is usually enough to get a chuckle out of me. Slaughter High seems like it's kind of trying to be different here, but um... it's really not.

Marty is your typical science nerd with glasses who can't go one day in high school without somebody tormenting him. A group of the popular kids decide to play the ultimate prank on poor Marty, who ends up burned, disfigured, and crazy as a result. Years later, the popular kids return to the school, now abandoned, for a little reunion. What they don't know is that Marty is their host - and this will be a reunion they may not survive.

Right at the beginning, the filmmakers do things all wrong. The prank is played out far too long, for one thing. It does allow the audience to get to know both Marty and the rather large group of friends that torture him lets us see how horrible and cruel their crime was, but we needed to see more scenes of them in the present rather than in the past. We need to see how these people have changed since high school, if at all. That way we can at least have some kind of sympathy for these douchebags. Alas, it seems that when they all get together again, these guys are still rather unlikable and they also don't seem to give a crap about what they did to Marty. Shocking, I know.

So anyway. Carol, Frank, Joe, Stella, Nancy, Skip, Shirley, and later Susan (seriously... too many characters there) show up at the old alma mater for the reunion and soon realize that they are the only ones there. They enter the cobwebby and dirty old building and eventually find a room that's all decked out for the party - complete with all their old lockers, holding an item that they each thought they had lost years ago. Marty's locker is there too. Hmmmm, I wonder what that means. Nothing about this situation seems to bother them - like why no one else was invited to the "reunion," or why a reunion would be held in the high school if it was abandoned in the first place.

The kills aren't that bad and there are a few inventive ones. The first guy gets it when he drinks a beer with acid in it and his stomach explodes outward. Shirley, the Asian chick, gets blood on her from this and when she decides to take a bath (um, a bathtub in a school? Sure. Why not?) and the water suddenly turns to acid too which proceeds to melt her body. She actually tries to turn off the water while still in the tub instead of like, trying to get out, which would have been my first thought. There's also death by lawnmower blades, drowning in a pit of what I can only guess to be poo, and an electrocution while Stella and Frank are enjoying some coitus on a bed in another room (um, a bed in a school? Sure. Why not?). Basically, they all die and you don't care because you don't like any of them and they do all kinds of stupid stuff, so really, they deserve it.

The one cool bit in Slaughter High was the choice of joker/jester mask and hat for Marty the killer. It's actually really freaky looking, and reminds me a bit of a clown, which we all know is the scariest thing on earth. But that's about all that Slaughter High has going for it. The characters are too unlikable and annoying - even Marty, whom we're supposed to have a bit of sympathy for, is just a frustrated dork who goes completely insane. The performances are even worse, with some of the most uninspiring dialogue and delivery I've heard in a long time. The camera work is sloppy and there were several scenes that were almost completely pitch black. Most reviews seem to hope that the prank sequence in the shower was pitch black too. Why do men always have a freak out when they see another man's weenie in a movie? I mean, every time I see boobs, do I go, "Oh gross, another chick's tits! Ew, get it off the screen!" No. You know why? Because I'm more mature than that. And because the human body is beautiful.

Believe it or not, this was a British movie trying to pass itself off as American. And in some places it doesn't translate well at all. All the events of the film take place on the eve of April Fool's Day, and the murders don't start until midnight on the morning on the holiday. Two characters have a conversation about how they only have to survive until noon on April Fool's Day because the jokes stop at noon. Huh? Since when? In America, we'll prank your ass all day, we don't stop at noon. But that seems to be the rule in several countries throughout the world, including the UK.

Anyway, lame movie. I'll check it off my list of culty 80s slasher movies, but it's not my favorite. It could have better if they tried harder - or if some of these guys took an acting class or two - because the story has real potential, although the whole prank-gone-wrong revenge story has been done a couple times before. Nice try. Do better next time.

Movie Review: Night of the Creeps (1986)

Oh, joy! Another 80s horror classic! Did I love this one as much as most of the others I've watched while to play catch-up? Hell yes, I did! Night of the Creeps has again made me think that I've just been wasting my time with all the other shit that I've been watching lately and that I need to get my hands on more classics like this.

Night of the creepy plot (that's terrible I know): Two college friends, Chris and J.C., inadvertently release slug-like aliens onto their campus when they unthaw an infected man who has been cryogenically frozen since the fifties. Now with the help of a sorority girl that Chris is crushing on and an aging, cynical detective, they have to stop the slugs from infecting their friends before the whole campus turns into murderous zombies.

The thing I loved the most about Night of the Creeps is that it is a B movie, and it loves the fact that it is a B movie. In fact, it is quite clear that this is a B movie that actually strives to be the best B movie it can freaking be. This is evident in the first scene (well, the scene after the weird little wrinkly aliens are running around) which takes place in 1959 when the alien slugs first come to Earth and attack a boy out on a date with his girl. This part is shot in black and white and looks like the most cliche 50s drive-in movies ever. There are sweaters, ponytails, and words like "dreamy" and "neato," plus the main guy in this story is named Johnny, just like every other hunky stud was named in the 50s, apparently.

Flash-forwarding to the present (well, 1986) and we meet the two dorks Chris and his unexplainably handicapped friend J.C. One minute into this scene with these two and I knew I was going to love the rest of the movie. From Chris's line, "Her! The vision, the angel, the goddess!" to J.C.'s seemingly unending tirade of one-liners, this movie isn't just 80s awesomeness, it is actually well-written and entertaining all the way through and the actors are surprisingly good. Some of the dialogue might be intentionally cheesy and ridiculous but the way that the actors delivered them made it all highly enjoyable.

There are several elements of the horror genre alive and at work here in Night of the Creeps. It's a little bit sci-fi, a little bit creature feature, a lot horror-comedy, and even a little slasher at times. The final battle with the slugs also reminded me a little bit of Carrie, as it takes place on the night of the school dance and all the college kids are dressed up in formal wear. The gore was a little disappointing but there definitely a few great moments - zombie cats and dogs are definitely included in that!

And here again we have another movie that decided to show its horror chops by naming several characters after famous horror film directors. Cronenberg, Romero, Cameron, Miner, Raimi, Landis, Dante and DePalma are all in there, plus a double whammy since J.C.'s full name is James Carpenter Hooper. Perhaps in a future homage-y movie and somebody wants to do the same thing, they can include director Fred Dekker's name in there as well. Although he only has a few titles under his belt as the big cheese of the movie, Night of the Creeps and The Monster Squad are enough for me to believe that this guy deserves a bit of recognition.

The characters are awesome. The 'Thrill Me' detective, Chris and J.C. are all hilarious and even the blonde-coiffed dickhead Brad is not as bad as he could have been. Cindy was not your typical girl-in-peril, which I liked very much. She put on that flamethrower and gave it to the alien-infected zombies with all she was worth.

This was quite a strange little movie but I'm always up for a movie that seems to love itself and what it is and Night of the Creeps is that kind of movie. Fun and entertainment are not far off with this gem so run to see it if you haven't yet! Though most of you probably have... I'm always the late bloomer.

Movie Review: Dead and Buried (1981)

Shouldn't have let this little gem sit in my queue unwatched for so long! Dead and Buried (I'm nixing the use of the ampersand in the title because sometimes they show up all funny on Blogger) is not without its problems - and really, what movie isn't? - but heck, was it a fun, gross-out good time. It has a surprisingly different take on the "zombie" film, is very gruesome at times, and seems to be quite underrated, despite the fact that its plot is so much different than other horror films that were coming out at that time.

Dan Gillis is the sheriff in the small Eastern seaside town of Potters Bluff who becomes increasingly suspicious and curious about his neighbors when several visitors are brutally murdered. Things get even weirder when the dead people start showing up around town, apparently alive and well and living amongst the townspeople.

The movie's opening scene is delightfully misleading. There is a photographer on the beach, "Freddy", snapping away at all the beautiful scenery, when he spots a pretty lady through his lens. The two start chatting and flirting, and Freddy starts taking sexy pictures of "Lisa," all while this annoyingly romantic music plays in the background. I thought the whole scene was ridiculous bullshit and that if it went on any longer I was going to turn the darn thing off. But just as Lisa is propositioning Freddy for sex, the scene suddenly changes and about a dozen people turn up, beat the snot out of Freddy, tie him to a pole with a big fishing net, and freaking set him on fire.

I couldn't believe it! This movie was going to be awesome!

Dead and Buried actually has some great talent behind it. I haven't seen anything else that director Gary Sherman has done but he seems competent with this one. Dan O'Bannon, creator of Alien, also co-wrote the film and the special effects come courtesy of none other than Stan Winston. The effects especially are a big part of why I think this film is noteworthy, not to mention the interestingly original plot.

The zombie mythology in Dead and Buried is more akin to the Haitian voodoo mythology of zombie creation and how all the zombies are under the complete control of their creator. The quirky mortician Dobbs uses voodoo and dark magic to bring bodies back to life after he has restored them, because he believes so much in the beauty of his "art" and can't stand burying people after he has worked so hard to make them look like they did when they were alive. The funny thing in this movie, though, is that the zombies are not brainless flesh-eaters but rather just rebuilt and reanimated corpses who then go on living their happy and quiet little life in a small town.

This film can boast that it gave me probably the biggest freak-out of my horror life. After poor Freddy has been burned at the stake, Sheriff Dan and others are at the scene investigating. Dan (oddly) asks the mortician to determine the cause of death and when he goes in for a closer look at the body, we are treated to a nice effects shot of Freddy's gooey and burned-up-beyond-recognition face. The freak-out comes when the obviously dead guy suddenly screams in our faces! HO-LY SHIT. I almost fell out of my chair. Little hard to believe that anybody who looks like that could still be alive, but that's obviously where the shock comes from. Later on, poor Freddy is also the victim of another freak-out scene when Nurse Lisa pays him a visit in the hospital and stabs a needle into his eye.

All the other effects are quite well achieved with the exception of one. One of the victims of the Potters Bluff Zombies meets his demise by having tubes full of acid shoved up his nose. The prosthetic head is way too obvious and almost ruins what could have been yet another great gross out scene - although the flesh bubbling and bursting is still rather disgusting. The real stand out sequence is when Dobbs is reconstructing the head of a young hitchhiker (who was bludgeoned with a big rock) and they show, layer by layer and using dissolves, how she goes from looking like a bruised and bloody mess to looking just as she did the day before.

The acting by all the main leads and everybody who plays one of the townspeople is pretty good - nobody is as "80s annoying" (as I like to call it sometimes) as I thought. Melody Anderson as Janet, Dan's wife, became my favorite in her final scene, when she's talking to Dan after Dobbs has revealed his secret to him. Did I mention there's also a young Robert Englund in a small role here? The random townspeople are great at acting zombie-like, or carrying out the wishes of their master, especially in the scene pictured to the right when they go after a vacationing family cruising through town.

The aforementioned scene also showcases the film's likeness to a movie that came out the previous year, John Carpenter's The Fog. The family is driving through a thick fog; the residents are walking down the dark street surrounded by fog (and perfectly backlit as well); and in the scene right after this, Dan chases after the man he hit with his car through the foggy and misty alleys. I just couldn't help but think of Antonio Bay during this part. And since Potters Bluff is in Rhode Island and Antonio Bay in California, we now know that there is a creepy fictional seaside town on both coasts.

Now the ending is a small problem. The "twist" at the end seems like it was just tacked on there last minute  just for shocks, without the filmmakers really thinking about it. It doesn't make any kind of sense with the rest of the story and essentially just ends the movie without resolving anything.

On the whole though, Dead and Buried was quite the surprise. I liked the plot and at times darkly humorous script, and of course I loved pretty much all the killing sequences. Give this one a look if you haven't yet!

Movie Review: Lady in White (1988)

So I don't think I've mentioned it yet this week, but did you all know how much I loves me a good ghost story? And I was ready to have an 80s style ghostly good time with this flick, Lady in White, even though I didn't really know that much about it before seeing it. Not the most talked about movie out there but it seems to still have some pretty damn loyal followers, so I hope I don't inadvertently piss any of them off with this review.

In 1962, young Frankie Scarletti is locked in the school's coat closet on Halloween night, the victim of a little prank by some fellow classmates. It's one hell of a night for Frankie as he witnesses the ghost of a young girl reenact her murder from 10 years ago and is also attacked himself by the same man. Frankie therefore gets himself smack dab in the middle of a murder mystery too big for his small town.

While I did like this movie to a point, there are a few things that are amiss here. As the story is told from Frankie's point of view, the movie starts off very cute and seems as if it is more of a kid's movie. Frankie has a funny home life with his older brother Geno, his father, and his constantly bickering grandparents, so all of these earlier moments are quite entertaining to watch - Grandpa lighting his pants on fire and Frankie riding his bike into wet cement, for instance. All the actors here were wonderful, too. It seemed as if they really enjoyed playing their roles and took them seriously while still having fun with them. The movie as whole is similar to stuff like The Monster Squad, with all the childhood hijinks, so that definitely got me into it in the first third.

But the movie also has a very serious undertone as the murder mystery Frankie becomes involved in is not just about the ghost girl he keeps seeing. She was the first of eleven victims, all molested and murdered over the last ten years. The school janitor was the only other person in the school when Frankie was attacked, so he immediately becomes the main suspect - and it doesn't help that he's also black. So then there's a bit of a racism element to deal with, even though that quickly gets shoved to the back burner as the story progresses. When it pops up again, it doesn't really matter too much to the main mystery, since it is quite obvious from the beginning that the janitor is innocent - it's not much of a mystery if the bad guy is caught right away, you know? These scenes really only slow the movie down, and I think it would have worked better if they had been left out.

The murder mystery is actually not that hard to solve if you've watched enough of those kinds of movies. As soon as those two nice-guy, friends-of-the-family dudes show up, Phil and Tony, I was thinking, "Yup, the murderer is one of them." I wish they wouldn't make it so easy sometimes. But the actual reveal of the murderer, and therefore Frankie's devastating realization of who almost killed him, is a very good scene. It's quite suspenseful and a little disturbing, too, because we know what this guy has done to all these other children, and here's our young lovable Frankie, all alone with him, with the murderer also knowing that he's been found out.

Now the effects are another problem. I know, I know, it was 1988 and they really didn't have a heck of a lot to work with effects-wise back then, but they are definitely less effective now simply because they are so dated. I actually liked the effect of the ghost girl, Melissa, as she was just kind of see-through and glowing. It's a classic way to say, "Hey, she's a ghost!" and it works in this movie. But later on, things get really hokey when the ghosts (yeah, there are actually two ghosts in this movie, Melissa and the titular Lady in White, who turns out to be Melissa's mother - I figured that out before Frankie did, ha!) start flying through the air and stuff. The climactic scene in which the two ghosts fly off together in a flash of light is extremely hokey, too, and almost made me laugh. But then I had to remember that this was from a child's point of view, so all these scenes were enhanced with a more fantastical element and it gives them a feel not unlike a fairy tale, which a child would better understand and relate to.

In fact, there are perhaps too many effects in this movie. Then again, that might just be a personal preference. I can get rather picky and overly vocal about my ghost movies, and I know what I like and what I don't like - or at least, what works for me and what doesn't. I understand the use of more exaggerated effects in Lady in White, so it is more fantasy than scary, but I'm of the mind that the unseen is much more chilling and effective. The famous ghost is called the "Lady in White" so of course she's this huge, floating figure, with her billowy white nightgown constantly flowing all around her - the typical ghost image perhaps taken too much to the extreme.

Many have said that Lady in White scared them a lot as a child, but that must just be a kid thing because I didn't see a single thing here that scared me. The only really creepy shot is when the Melissa-ghost is in Frankie's room one night (she's invisible here) and she's just singing and playing around with Frankie's things. She flips through his comics, goes through his drawers, puts on his slippers, rocks in his rocking chair and then BAM! The camera pans to the window where there's the Lady in White standing outside! That was a little unexpected, and I quite enjoy the unexpected so this was a great moment.

I understand that this is probably a movie that if you grew up watching it, you still love it to this day. I guess upon first viewing, I have mixed feelings about it. I'm a bit turned off by the dated effects (not a good enough excuse, I know, but I can't help it) and the story progresses far too slow, with too many characters and red herrings getting in the way. I do love the blend of the classic ghost story and the amusing fantasy world of children, all told from the point of view of a very capable child actor to boot. I suppose I'll have to let the movie simmer for a bit in my brain and then maybe give it another go around in a few weeks.