The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane (1976) We don't know if it's fate or coincidence that we stumbled upon this strange little '70's oddity while Netflix weathered a firestorm of disgust over their marketing of the French-Senegalese film "Cuties"........
Is that possible? 44 years after 14 year old Jodie Foster supposedly strips naked for a murderous child thriller, we still get another movie that sexualizes little girls?
Uhhh......okey doke.
We'll post on "Cuties" eventually (maybe after swallowing half a bottle of anti-nausea medication) but for now, we'll deal with "The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane", a mild, but defiantly perverse little suspenser slapped together by French-Canadian filmmakers fishing for a fast buck.
No wonder the movie got picked up for distribution by shlock-shleppers American International......who sold it as a kind of 'Bad Seed'-Lite, featuring America's most precocious teen, fresh off her controversial triumph as the baby-faced hooker rescued by Robert DeNiro in "Taxi Driver".....
But when it came to portraying lethal children, gone were the days of Patty McCormack's Bad Seed, loudly overplaying her psychotic tantrums to reach the upper balcony.
The new breed of monstrous kids, like Linda Blair in "The Exorcist" and Foster in this film, played naturally and easily to the camera, looking and sounding like the little girls next door........
Until, of course, they didn't look and sound like the little girls next door.......heh, heh, heh.....
Foster, by her innate talent, elevates this negligible movie, which can't wait to open a can of worms involving pedophilia and implied teen sex.
Playing her signature role, a child older and wiser than her years, Foster's mother is long gone, her Jewish poet father had died but left her with resources to live independent of any adult supervision........as long as she can successfully maintain the ruse that her father's still alive and well.
To pull this off, she's forced to fend off a tag team of intrusive, formidable foes. These include the notorious town pedophile (an appropriately odious Martin Sheen) and his enabling, imperious mother (Alexis Smith), a vicious harpy who fires off a few anti-Semitic cracks at Foster,.
But an ally appears in the form of a polio-stricken amateur teen magician (Scott Jacoby) and it's a credit to Foster and Jacoby that they make you instantly root for these two terribly vulnerable lost young souls........(except for the fact that one of 'em isn't quite so vulnerable.....or lost)
There's good work all around from the actors (Sheen preens and snickers through his appearances as if waiting for a live audience ovation).......but ultimately this movie's got nothing on its mind but throwing out the WTF moments........such as having Foster's 20 year old sister stand in for her to perform the infamous stripdown before Foster herself hops into bed with Jacoby.....
And since the filmmakers seem to express little or no interest in the deaths and/or murder part of their story, you wonder why they bothered at all.......
Oh right.......the exploitation bucks.
On behalf of Foster, Sheen, Jacoby, and Smith, we're tempted to rate this movie way higher than it deserves........but we decided to stick with our gal Jodie, who publicly despised the movie.
Ultimately, we're with her. 1 & 1/2 stars (* 1/2)........
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