Trick or Tuesday: The Woman in White (1997)

I’m kicking off October’s Halloween season with a series of historical costume horror flicks of sorts that I’m calling Trick or Tuesday, since Halloween ends the month on a Tuesday. First up is The Woman in White (1997) based on a Wilkie Collins novel written in 1859.

This isn’t so much a spooky, screaming kind of horror — instead, it’s a horror brought on by misogyny, which is pretty fucking nasty in its own right, and feels frighteningly relevant today. In this movie (like in much of life), everything awful happens because men are shitbags to women, and only after putting these women through absolute hell do the women survive and evil is vanquished (which we hope would happen in life).

While some of these themes are evident in Collins’ story, this production really runs with it and emphasizes the sinister plot to ruin the women’s lives, plus adding a few more tragic details. Yeah, as the literary purist here at Frock Flicks, I tend to complain about messing with the books, but this version of the novel worked on a visceral level for me. It reminded me of Gaslight (1944) in terms of psychological horror, and the plot changes fit quite well. The performances by Tara Fitzgerald, Justine Waddell, James Wilby, and Simon Callow are top notch, and that helps me not care about this movie not hewing to the novel’s plot.

As a BBC production, the look of the thing is excellent, with gothic English mansions as the backdrops and lots of moody lighting. The costumes suit the characters, and they’re by Odile Dicks-Mireaux, who had previously worked on the first Blackadder (1983) and has designed for many productions since including See How They Run (2022).

While the novel is set from 1849 to 1850, this story is moved out past at least 1864 because the death of Elizabeth Siddal and her husband Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s painting “Beata Beatrix” figure into the movie. Also, there’s a scene near the very end that indicates the date is 1870, so I’m guessing the events take place in the late 1860s. This time period is just past the massive crinoline era and before the bustle, bordering on our death of fashion, sure, but there’s enough done nicely here to keep it interesting.

What do you think of this adaption of The Woman in White?