CHECK OUT THIS MOVIE: Matt Olsen is surprised by The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976, directed by Nicolas Gessner
Everything about The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane screams, “b-movie”. Awkwardly long title? Check. Made in the late seventies? Check. Canadian co-production? Check. And in many (probably most) ways that’s exactly what it is. But then the cast makes one seriously reconsider that first impression. Led by a 13-year-old Jodie Foster – this came out the same year as Taxi Driver, Bugsy Malone, and Freaky Friday! – and co-starring Martin Sheen – post-Badlands and pre-Apocalypse Now – in one of the most unsettling roles of his career. In addition to those two future superstars, the vastly underrated 70s stalwart child actor, Scott Jacoby, appears as an alienated amateur magician. Consistently cast as an “emotionally disturbed young man”, Scott Jacoby’s filmography could carry its own festival headlined by the still shocking Rivals (1972) and, in my opinion, his best film, the deliriously fascinating Bad Ronald (1974).
The posters and taglines misleadingly suggest this may be a standard-issue horror movie centered around a spookily angelic blonde girl. That’s partially true but it’s kind of like describing Disneyland as a big parking lot. Little Girl feels something like one of those mid-seventies Stranger Danger ABC Afterschool Specials mixed with a particularly gruesome Tales from the Crypt story. Possibly, there are even echoes of Hitchcock at his most nihilistic. It’s also sort of a coming-of-age story about two teenagers knocking on the door of adulthood and independence.
The film begins on Halloween which coincides with the 13th birthday of the precocious title character, Rynn Jacobs (Jodie Foster). Rynn and her father, a frequently absent poet, have recently moved from England to a small coastal village in Quebec. They live in a large, rented house, a long walk away from the center of town, and haven’t mingled with the community at large. Apparently alone, Rynn lights the candles on her birthday cake but is interrupted by a knock on the door. Slithering his way through the partially opened door, Frank Hallet (Martin Sheen) wanders through the front room, cornering Rynn and leaving no mistake to his ultimate intentions. Sheen is absolutely, awfully captivating in the role of an abuser terrorizing his targeted victim. He’s an avatar of pure disgusting malice right up to but never crossing the point of camp. Realistically sinister, led by clear and repellent motives.
Under threat from Frank Hallet and, eventually, also his mother – who happens to be the woman who leased the house to Rynn’s father – Rynn finds support from Mario Podesta (Scott Jacoby), the aforementioned teen magician. As the story unwraps and turns, Rynn and Mario are bound together by dark secrets and a young intimacy.
Little Girl is probably accurately rated as a surprisingly effective minor-canon thriller. It’s well performed suspenseful fun; entertaining, upsetting, and rewarding. It won’t ever be included on any list of the Hundred Greatest Movies of All Time but then what kind of wretched fool would ever limit themselves to only a hundred movies?
Matt Olsen is a largely unemployed part-time writer and even more part-time commercial actor living once again in Seattle after escaping from Los Angeles like Kurt Russell in that movie about the guy who escapes from Los Angeles.