This is one of my wife's favorite 80s horror memories, but somehow the movie had escaped my notice for decades. While rifling through bootleg selections at a recent horror con, my wife was elated to find a copy and share this treasure with me. My immediate reaction, though, is maybe you have to have been there.Lucas Haas was all over 80s movies and this was the film that introduced him. The tale of a young Italian boy, living with his father, brother and grandparents after the loss of his mother. The movie definitely plays out the theme of loss in many different ways. The boy is trapped in a coat room as a prank and comes to find horrors, both spectral and real. He sets in motion a chain of events that will bring to attention a dozen murdered children, a family of ghostly women and a murder surrounding a molester.The things that I am going to hold most against this movie are not fair to hold against it. I admit that readily, yet cannot pretend that they don't skew my view of the movie towards the negative, mostly the budget, which brings a harsh light on the quality of the effects available at this time in cinema. I am not against indie horror, in any way. I love it, in fact, but when going back 30 years to watch a low budget horror, it does make the budget all the more noticeable. The movie feels blatantly 80s. While that should never be held against a movie, the best films feel timeless. Yes, Universal's monsters have bad effects that are signatures of their time, but they transcend those limitations to create movies that don't feel so much like products of their time. This movie, though, has many trappings of the 80s. This plays out a LOT in the effects used for the ghosts. They have that cheap, see-though quality that probably looked hokey at the time and looks downright terrible now. At one point I swear you see wires. Lovers of the film will shout that I am being a modernist here, but it removes the viewer from the picture too much to see a blatant look behind the curtains of the effects.The budget limitations also reflect on a lot of the other aspects of "film making" here, such as the score and the camera-work. They feel empty and do nothing to help heighten the tension or mood of the picture. On the other hand, though, the acting is pretty good for a movie of this caliber. The child actors are never cloying. The grandparents are funny and the adults in the movie, though never given that much to do, play their roles well.Many movies have the same limitations, though, some that I love and adore. One thing that can help a movie rise above those limitations, though, is a quality script and I think that's what this movie is missing more than anything. I don't feel that the movie ever quite knew what it wanted to be. There are plenty of tame, family-friendly horror films that don't need blood and gore and focus on child characters and end up being greatly successful at creating a good film. This movie, though, seems like it wanted to hide from that moniker of the child movie, creating some moments that are far too dark for the average kid-friendly spook and never hints at the pure magic that helps kids and adults alike love a movie of that tone. The movie never truly succeeds as a ghost story, either. It spends too much of its' time on a half-baked racial injustice angle and the mystery of the molester to ever give its' frights enough buildup and mood to be effective. Though the kids frequently tell tales of the Lady in White, we only ever get one real scene of an actual terror involving the specter and its' played almost more for laughs than scares.If you want a good ghost story, I can names dozens that are better. If you want a family-friendly frightener, I can name you plenty that are better. This movie isn't terrible by any stretch, but it's painfully average and really not worth your time.

This is simply Frank LaLoggia's masterpiece. A wonderful ghost story that holds up well, considering it was released in 1988 but it doesn't feel dated even though it is rich with nostalgia and really captures the feel of the era. It's not exactly a horror film although it has elements of horror and a few really well done supernatural scenes. But the film really has heart as well as having you on the edge of your seat trying to solve the mystery. Although it is the perfect Halloween movie it isn't just a movie for the Halloween season. I think that this is one that the whole family can enjoy except for the most sensitive younger viewers. I've seen the film several times but it was just re-released in Blu-ray and I'm eagerly awaiting it's arrival as it has never before released footage. Do yourself a favor and watch this film!

The first thing you will notice in the film are all the kids - yea it's kid's film. The next thing you will hear are racial slurs coming from the mouth of one of the kids, of course the kid got punched in the face but why all this for a kid's horror film? I had to fast-forward and when I did I heard more racial slurs out of adults and this quickly tore it for me. Why should one be subjected to racial slurs for a film - even if the point is 'unity among the races'? Why not just show unity or friendship between all races in a film instead?! Yes I quickly found this film repulsive and I quickly turned this off this awful film.Do yourself a favor and watch a much better kids horror film instead of this trashy mess of a film - at least I wish I would have read that in reviews before I ever tried watching this.1/10

I may be the odd dissenter here, but I don't think this is really a kids movie. IMDb rates it as R, yet other places list it as PG-13. For a movie from 1988, it suffers from extremely poor special effects. The movie itself seems to suffer from having green mile and sling blade ambitions, but gets confused and a instead, ends up a goosebumps style, Saturday afternoon special that is little more than a train wreck of styles and themes. There's a racial subplot and a subtle theme of pedophilia that run throughout the movie and sadly, the former never ends up being resolved and the latter does little more than skew this movie away from being for kids, despite its B grade special effects and the fact that most of the main characters are children.It is a good movie an it's directed quite well, however the movie sadly feels like it was caught in a tug of war between the director, writer and the people financing the film. It falls too far short to be an entertaining film for adults and yet contains too many adult themes and language for kids.