Lady in White [Extended Director's Cut]. 1988. USA. Written and directed by Frank LaLoggia. With Len Cariou, Lukas Haas, Katherine Helmond, Alex Rocco. World restoration premiere. DCP courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios and Park Circus. 124 min.
It’s a mystery that Poltergeist and Gremlins should remain the standard-bearers of 1980s kiddie horror—Stranger Things will remain forever in their debt—while films like Lady in White and Something Wicked This Way Comes are only cherished within the most rarified of Gen X cult circles. To Save and Project presents the world premiere of a new 4K digital restoration of Lady in White in its director’s cut. With more than a passing reference to Ray Bradbury’s tales of the supernatural; the darkling poetry of postwar films like Val Lewton’s Curse of the Cat People, Robert Wise’s The Haunting, and Jack Clayton’s The Innocents; and his own Italian American childhood in upstate New York circa 1962, Frank LaLoggia’s elegantly crafted ghost story—based, apparently, on the legend of a White Lady who haunts Durand-Eastman Park in Rochester—is seen through the eyes of an inquisitive nine-year-old boy who has seen too much (Lukas Haas, the impressionable Amish boy in Witness). Visited by the apparition of a little girl, he uncovers a series of unsolved child murders that strike rather close to home. Securing finance through an unprecedented penny stock scheme, LaLoggia (Fear No Evil) wrote, produced, directed, and scored the film, recruiting Russell Carpenter (Titanic) to shoot it so that each lovingly storyboarded scene would strike the right balance between wistful nostalgia for the middle-aged viewer and something that might scare the bejeebers out of a tween.
New 4K Restoration by Vinegar Syndrome.