The Woman in Black (1989)

By Mr. Tropnevad

Summary

An old widow dies and a young lawyer is sent to her estate to settle her affairs. When the lawyer arrives in the seaside town he discovers that everyone is hesitant to discuss the woman, her house, or the woman in black that he keeps seeing. Deciding that he needs to do his job, he goes to the house and soon discovers its history...and becomes obsessed with finding the truth.

Expectations Going In

I have never heard of this movie until my wife told me that Daniel Radcliffe was going to be in the remake. When I did a search on IMDB I found out about this movie. I read about it on a few websites and found out that several people seemed to like it. I did learn that it was a made for TV movie, so this could have its ups and downs.

The Bad

I really dislike it when haunted house movies copy from one another and this one did just that. This movie was made in 1989 and the book was made in 1983. I have never read the book so I am unaware of what was taken from there, but they did a direct rip off of The Changeling (1980) for one of these scenes. /*Spoiler. In both films we have a door that is locked and the protagonist cannot enter. When he tries to enter at designated time (when we hear a noise) he is able to open it. Upon entering in this movie we see a ball drop from the ceiling. Not scary in the least. In The Changeling it is very similar but I will not spoil that movie here. Spoiler *\

/*Spoiler. They do something else that I find not in the least bit scary. We get the camera panning over the room and then we get a child’s voice. The child does not even sound scary. The voice is calm like the kid is next to you. This may scare some people but if you want to make something eerie then have the child laugh creepy and then scream or have them throw something at you. /*Spoiler.

Another issue I have with haunted house movies is the swinging light fixtures. It wasn’t scary in the 80s and I don’t think it ever was. I get it the house is haunted there is so much more you can do than swing some light fixtures, especially after you reenter the house from outside. My assumption would be that a gust of wind did it and went on with my business.

I was into this movie and it kept me wanting more until the last twenty minutes. When Arthur (Adrian Rawlins) goes back to London I became bored and while I did enjoy his slow turn into madness I was wanting it to be more interesting. It seemed like they just started putting filler in since it was a TV movie and they had to find time for certain scenes. Characters began to stand around for longer moments, dialog was taking longer than normal, and the extra scenes of Arthur at home were way too long. Even the ending became boring to me.

Speaking of the ending, the effects on the last scene are atrocious and could easily have been done better. The end did make me think less of the movie. While reading about what was changed from the book I found out that the ending was different and I think I would have preferred the original to what was given. I hope that the ending to the remake is different than this movie.

Good

For a TV movie the film makers did a great job at recreating the era. My assumption is late 1800s because of the use of horse drawn buggy and the house has electricity. The people are wearing the attire for the time; the houses looked old and muggy on the inside and the overall style of the movie helped make it look old.

The film makers use foreshadowing several times in the first twenty minutes of the movie to prepare you for the house and the woman in black (Pauline Moran). Everywhere Arthur goes the towns people ignore him when he mentions the woman in black, or look at him like he is crazy when mentioning he is going to the house. A part that sticks out for me is when Arthur meets a man in a pub, sits down next to him to eat some soup and they have a discussion.  The man says that Mr. Toovey is buying up all the property around there and then asks why Arthur is in town. Arthur says he is going to the house and the man laughs at him, saying that no one would buy that house (especially Mr. Toovey) and no one in their right mind would go near it. At this point you would figure Arthur would be scared from all of the town people telling him not go there.

The first time Arthur notices the woman in black is at Mrs. Drablow’s funeral (the owner of the house). The moment I spotted her I knew she was the ghost. Then he sees her again outside in the graveyard and is just curious who this woman is. At this point in the movie I was not scared but became curious of why the ghost was so far from home. This piqued my interest and made me want to watch more. I was glad that the first scene for the woman in black was not something annoying like a jump scare.  It was something casual to keep me interested and to lead up to when all the bad things start to happen.

I’m sure the filmmakers did not make the causeway just for this movie and whoever found it should be given an award for finding such a spooky location. The causeway leads to the house and we get a nice widescreen shot of it. It is a narrow dirt road with rocks on both sides and the marsh is all around it. To make matters worse on anyone crossing it, the fog is so thick at times in the movie you can barely see Arthur or the horse and buggy. Arthur is taken to the house by a Mr. Keckwick who tells him that the causeway is called the nine lives causeway because you will need them to make it to the house.

When they arrive at the house I did not find it creepy, but I found it interesting by its design and its age. When Arthur and Keckwick go inside the house I wasn’t surprised that it looked gloomy because the old lady lived there by herself and Keckwick just brought her things she needed and did repairs. Arthur discovers the house has electricity and becomes excited that he will be able to use something new to him. They go out back to start the electric generator and we get a better feel for how creepy this place is on the outside. Out back you can notice how foggy it is and that a small cemetery is adjacent from the house along with the ruins of an old building. I thought the this scene out back did a good job of leading up to how spooky this location was.

When Arthur is in the old lady's graveyard by the house we see a close up of the woman in black. She is scary with her pale face and the make up around her eyes. Alive or dead I would have ran away too. It’s kind of creepy because she wasn’t there when he was looking at a grave and then when he turned around he felt like he was being watched and there she was. They did a good job of building up the suspense to lead to this moment.

There seems to always be a locked door in these haunted house movies and naturally the protagonist seems to never have a key for it. Since Arthur does not have a key he goes and finds an axe, which is exactly what I would have done after I discovered I did not have a key for it the first time I tried to open it. After all you can buy a new door.

When Arthur goes back to London he does a great job at falling into madness. Showing his fall made me curious of what did the old woman do every night when she had to deal with the woman in black.

I thought Adrian Rawlins did a good job at acting in this since this was one of the first movies he had done. For those who are unaware of who he is, he plays James Potter in the Harry Potter movies. Pauline Moran did an excellent job at being creepy in this movie even though she really didn’t have to do anything but stand there and look at the camera. My favorite character of all, though, would have to be Spider the dog, because he reminded me of my dog.

Overall Thoughts

Overall this is a haunted house story that has been done before. This is not the best of the haunted house story movies by any means, but I could definitely see myself watching it again. I did enjoy it even though it had its faults. I did some research after watching the movie and discovered that some of the movie was changed from the book, but not much. I think if they would have stuck with the book it could have been a much better story and the ending would have been better.

I am interested in reading this book to see all the differences. The real question on my mind is will this remake that is coming out next week make this version look better or worse? After watching the trailer for the new one I think they might be going for the jump scare tactic and I hate that (not scary and predictable).

No one seems to know who has the rights to this movie anymore because it was bought in the early 90s by an American group who is unnamed. I had to watch this on YouTube and that is the only way you will be able to watch it, too. This disappoints me because I would like to have this in my collection to show people. If you have $150 then you can buy the dvd that is available on Amazon or if you want to go old school spend $40 on VHS. One more note on the remake: Hammer Films is producing it, so I am sure they will try and find a way to acquire the rights to the original, but only if the remake does good at the box office. If you are unaware of Hammer Films, then sometime soon I will review some of their horror classics.

Overall- YouTube