The Lady in White (1988; dir. Frank LaLoggia [also writer]; starring Lukas Haas, Alex Rocco, Len Cariou, Katherine Helmond)
Frankie is an introvert, a kid who loves horror movies -- models of the Universal Studios monsters decorate his bedroom-- and making up scary stories. A couple of classmates trick him, locking him in a schoolroom overnight and while there Frankie sees the ghost of a young girl reenacting her death, a ghost connected to the local legend of the Lady in White, and the first in a series of child murders. Shortly after, the killer, his face hidden by a hat, enters and tries to find something in a floor air duct until a noise alerts him to Frankie's presence and he tries to kill Frankie.
This film has problems: It begins with adult Frankie, a horror writer. returning to town, though I don't recall the why of that being mentioned, and this leads to occasional voice-over reminiscences; we never return to adult Frankie. The story indicates the killer had years to go back and find what dropped down the grate but waited to return until a new furnace was scheduled to be installed and so consequent duct work; why so long? A Black janitor has been accused of his most recent child murder, and thus a sub-plot on racism; while that ties into an effective portrayal of parental grief both for the dead child and for the family of the accused, it also feels a bit tacked on, the Black family rather generic (through no fault of the adult actors whose reactions add a degree of realism) and tangential to the rest of the movie because it doesn't tie in specifically to Frankie (to his father yes, but not Frankie). Given when it was made, the movie wears probable influences on its sleeve: Spielberg-like camera use (though more low-key than Spielberg) and kid hi-jinks, Stephen King-like set-up and small town supernaturalism mixed with plot points from To Kill a Mockingbird. (It's hard to differentiate between Spielberg kids and King kids, since they seem drawn from similar materials.) Unfortunately, its budget also shows, with a good deal of back-projection special effects that sometimes give it an otherworldly feel, but more often looks cheap and under-done.
And yet, I like this movie, if grudgingly. Watching it for the first time in years, I'm still drawn in by the young Haas as Frankie, and the warmth of his family life, particularly Rocco as the good-natured father, and Cariou as a close friend of the family. It's not in the top tier of the sf/f/h movies from the 1980s, but it very much draws on the sources that others were, and partially does them justice. If asked, I'd call it an ingratiating failure.
