The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane

Love it.

(and Scott Jacoby was a sweety.)

Only time Jodie ever had chemistry with a man.

I once caught this film on TV while home sick from work. It's one of those movies that are perfect for those sort of occasions.

[Uh spoilers, I guess? For those who worry about spoilers for obscure, mostly forgotten arthouse films from four decades ago.]

The bitch landlady's death is one of the most satisfying I've ever had the pleasure of witnessing in a movie.

And Jodie somehow managed to take what is usually a corny and obnoxious archetype (creepy, precocious child) and turning it into a fairly sympathetic character. And she does it while wearing a godawful wig.

[quote]The bitch landlady's death is one of the most satisfying I've ever had the pleasure of witnessing in a movie..

I was just going to mention that. The head bonk is classic.

and Sheen was really scary.

Jodie was a great child actress. I just watched her in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore on TCM and she just steals every scene she is in.

I forget one part. SPOILER

Does Officer Migliori (Jacoby's uncle) ever figure out Wren is alone?

The character's name is Rynn, people.

Do they pronounce it Rynn or Wren in the film?

This came out three months after Taxi Driver. I wonder why John Hinckley never mentioned it as inspiration.

They fool Migliori by having Mario disguise himself as Rynn's father.

A few years prior Sheen played Scott Jacoby's gay step father in That Certain Summer.

Jacoby won an Emmy for that r10. He also received a Tony nomination as a kid. Sad he gave up acting. Those Golden Girl appearances seem to be among his last credits. His brother Billy Jacoby stuck with it longer (but changed his name for some reason.)

It is GREAT!!

One of my favorites. Jody may have gotten a little off course later in her career (Nell still makes me gag) but she was a helluva good child actor.

Can someone summarize this for me? Yes, I am aware of Google.

r14 there is this little girl and she lives down a lane.

"The plot focuses on 13-year-old Rynn Jacobs (Foster), a child whose absent poet father and secretive behaviours prod the suspicions of her conservative small-town Maine neighbours,"

Was scott’s Brother Mikey on Parker Lewis? I think PL is a $cientologi$t now

That was Scott's brother Billy. He also played Blanche's bratty grandson on GG. Corin Nemec was a $cientologi$t but I think he came out recently.

The book this was based on is so, so much better. The title is the same and the author is Laird Koenig. An excellent story to read in the autumn when it starts to get cold in the evenings.

^One of those "the book is always better" bitches.

Martin Sheen was so much hotter than Charlie or Emilio.

OMG, this and the knowledge of "Let's Scare Jessica to Death" are why I love DL! I remember this movie vaguely and remember it was creepy. Did the landlady have gaudy red nails and one broke and was found by the cop? I remember that part and now I want to download the book r19.

It was Sheen who found the red fingernail in the cellar. He tried to use it to blackmail Rynn into sex.

The score was fucking awful. If they hired someone like Bernard Herrmann to write the music this film would have been an instant clasic, but that horrible funky score they used not only sounded totally inappropriate but also makes the movie seem badly dated today.

I think it's the sex scene between a 13 year old and her 16 year old bf that makes it seem dated.

r24 is not one of us

It must have been really awkward for Jodie to film that scene. Has she ever talked about it?

Her older sister was her stand in and filmed the love scene.

“The tea tastes of almonds.”

R28 she did the same for Jodie's more provocative scenes in "Taxi Driver." Wonder if Connie was tired of always having to fill in for her kid sister's sexualized roles.

Great ending. It really haunted me as a kid.

SPOILER

The slow close up of Jodie's face with that sly smile as you could hear Martin Sheen next to her coughing from the poison.

"Foster went on record as saying one of the producers on this film was "nuts", explaining that he wanted her to show more skin and she refused. Foster had a terrible time with the sexual scene upstairs with Mario. Although her older sister did the shot, Foster was very upset that viewers would think this was her and fought and cried with the producers, to no avail."

I haven’t seen it - is she a killer? That sort of makes me want to see it for being so purely 70s.

[quote]Corin Nemec was a $cientologi$t but I think he came out recently.

Came out of what?

He came out in support of the Facts of Life reboot Rose.

Billy was fantastic in Just one of the guys. The creator said she wanted to do a back-and-forth with the siblings as a nod to the back-and-forth powder and older movies. I thought he did a great job. The woman that played her sister said even though she was about 10 years older she was at his maturity level and they got on great. HBO used to play that nonstop when I was growing up. I love the cans that say beer on it since no beer company wanted teens drinking. I guess this is before solo cups? In cool and random trivia the guy who played Kevin her a-hole boyfriend is an author.

*patter not powder. This was a female director so probably one of the few sets of a raunchy movie that was relatively clean Behind the scenes and will never be a blind item. Although she did talk her in to the nude Scene which she said she never would’ve done if she knew about digital technology in the future. I read an interview with the lead actress done somewhat recently and she said Billy Zabka was the sweetest human being. I always thought he was gay, he only got married 10 years ago

It's the almond cookies.

My siblings and I still use this line on each other for a few laughs.

Oh one thing I forgot about that really made me crush on Scott Jacoby in this is a teen. He has a limp and likes to perform magic. So he is an outcast who meets Jodie who is also an outcast. This outcasted teen loved that.

I remember the movie and the plot line and it was very unusual as you have this young teenager responsible for taking care of several siblings, making it work and living on some sort of month trust fund and then you have this interloper come making a grab for the $ and the nice litttle world falls apart

I haven't seen this film in such a long time, I completely forgot Scott Jacoby was in it.

R40 is thinking of a different movie. This is about a teenage girl whose father has died and she's all alone. *Spoiler* Her estranged mother comes to visit and Rynn poisons her with cyanide in the tea. The landlady finds her body in the cellar. Rynn kills her by bashing her head in with the cellar door. At the end of the film she kills Martin Sheen because he's trying to blackmail her into sex.

Watching it now, why the wig? Ugh. But r42, she didn't kill the landlady, the bitch bashed her own head in when she tried to go in the cellar, the door came down on her head. Please tell me Gordon the hamster doesn't die!

IIRC the landlady goes into the cellar to and you hear a scream. Then you see her coming upstairs and Rynn bashes her head in with the door.

Also Gordon the hamster is a goner. Sorry.

Did Corin Nemec actually come out? As in of the closet? How did I miss that?

Foster was also upset by the scene where Gordon is thrown into the fireplace. It was a real hamster but he was already dead.

Maybe the reason Jacoby quit acting is because of the way kids were treated behind the scenes. Nobody on the crew seems to have given a shit how Foster felt.

Alexis......post bonk

This was Jodie's best career performance.

Rynn did not intentionally poison her mother. Her father had given her a powder and instructed her that if her mother ever came looking for her, she should put it in her tea because it would calm her right down. As Rynn noted, it calmed her right down alright.

She also didn't kill Mrs. Hallet. Mrs. Hallet discovered Rynn's mother in the basement and in her panicked rush to climb out, she accidentally knocked away the wood peg that was holding the door up, sending the door down on her head.

I started teaching myself languages after seeing the scene where Rynn was teaching herself Hebrew from a record.

Where is the film set? I'd love to live in a beautiful house and small town like that.

Alexis Smith's post-Follies facelift looks fab in R49, although they skimped a bit on the neck.

The story was set in Maine but filmed in Knowlton,Quebec.

My parents let me watch this movie on TV when I was very young. Fucked me up.

r54 Me too! I got to watch whatever I wanted and I have been a horror junkie since then. This didn't fuck me up but Kim RIchards getting capped in "Assault on Precinct 13" did!

Poor Alexis. The cover of Time magazine and this and a lesbian love scene with Melina Mercouri was all she got for it.

Notice Alexis isn’t wearing nail polish at r49. Was the red fingernail Sheen finds supposed to belong to her or Rynn’s mother?

That look on Rynn’s face when she realizes what happened to the landlady....

Seared into my brain!

He finds a hairpin which smells of his mother's perfume and the red fingernail that belonged to Rynn's mother.

[quote]Corin Nemec was a $cientologi$t but I think he came out recently.

[quote]Came out of what?

[quote]He came out in support of the Facts of Life reboot Rose.

[quote]Did Corin Nemec actually come out? As in of the closet? How did I miss that?

Nothing to miss because it didn’t happen. That's why I was asking what he came out of...

Ah but what a cover it was, r56!

Scott Jacoby caused me to finger bang myself into oblivion

R61, the letters to Time were almost all unfavorable about the show. One said that he thought Alexis Smith was campaigning for the George Blanda award.

I hope that R62 is a woman

Did Scott Jacoby's character die at the end??

I wonder that too r65.

I love this movie. It never gets old for me. And it's on YouTube

I saw this when I was 15. I saw the Jodie character as something of a role model at the start of the film.

Imagine my surprise as it ended.

I recommend this as the bottom half of your double-feature!

I agree R68, Jodie presented as so 'together' that the way things turned out was a big surprise.

R69 - I call your Crowhaven Farm and raise you this . . .

R71 - I remember David Ackroyd. I always thought he was kind of cute. But he never seemed to get many parts except for guest shots on TV shows.

I have not seen or thought about this movie since I was a kid (on cable? years and years after it was released). Now, I want to rewatch it and read the book.

I remember greatly enjoying the score. And as for this...

[quote]The slow close up of Jodie's face with that sly smile as you could hear Martin Sheen next to her coughing from the poison.

...my memory is that it was more of a flat look of resignation, which made it more consistent with the character (as portrayed) and much more sinister because it was Rynn's first deliberate kill.

[quote]They fool Migliori by having Mario disguise himself as Rynn's father.

Even as a kid, I noted that the cop (if memory serves, he was Mario's uncle) was a bumbling idiot for not noticing that Mario had the hands of a teen, even though he had the face of an old man.

I love the extremely white bread way Jodie says "Mario" with a long a sound so it sounds like Areole.

Im looking this up.

This is one of my favourite films of all time. I loved the seventies, and this movie takes me straight back there. I coveted evil landlady's car too.

The scene in this film that left the biggest impression on me was the scene where Rynn went to the bank. I was in awe of the authoritative manner and which she handled the incredulous teller, and of how savvy she was to request the scrap piece of paper the teller had asked her to sign her name on. As a young gifted child, I felt outdone by Jodie.

I love her house. (It is hers). Not too big and by the ocean.

Call me creepy, but I recall being 10 years old watching it on the Saturday Night Late Movie on KHOU Channel 11 and getting so turned on by Martin Sheen, hoping he was MY neighbor....

Martin Sheen played some really oddball roles.

Mrs.Hallet killed herself. ...being nosey. An trying to blackmail Jodie for elderberry wine.....because her son was the neighborhood pedo.I liked when Jodie turned those tables by suggesting the sheriff be called about Mrs.Hallett's nasty son.

bump

Some of you have some really interesting memories of this movie that are completely inaccurate.

As already mentioned, she doesn't kill Mrs. Hallet, she does herself in. The trap door falls on her head. Rynn has nothing to do with it.

Rynn also doesn't have a sly smile at the end. She's flat and deadpan.

None of the deaths in the film (aside from the father's) is deliberate. Rynn doesn't mean to kill Sheen, she means to off herself so she doesn't have to go through with whatever he subjects her to. Fortune just smiles down on her as he decides to make him give her his tea.

WRONG R83. Rynn purposely kills the Sheen character. She makes the tea and hands it to him. She does have a wry look on her face when he mentions the unusual taste of the tea (almonds?).

Wrong, R84. Go watch it again. She does not hand him the tea. He makes her give him hers.

Here’s the aforementioned scene

[quote]Rynn purposely kills the Sheen character. She makes the tea and hands it to him.

WRONG!!! She doesn't hand him shit!! He TAKES her tea from her!!!!

This was also a novel. In the book, Rynn is more sociopathic than Foster was in the movie version. In the book, she knows she's giving her mother cyanide. In the movie, she says she didn't know and was just following what her father told her to give her mother, supposedly a sedative. In the book, she kills the landlord Mrs. Hallet rather gruesomely by locking her in the cellar and feeding a hose into the cellar, blows out the pilot light to the heater and directs the escaping gas into the cellar, killing her.

I remember catching this movie on HBO as a child. It stuck with me. I thought Foster was amazing. She was always the best child actress in Hollywood in the 1970s, and the rare child actor who transitioned to adult stardom. Even as a kid, though, I could tell she was a lesbian, especially in Candleshoe.

I disagree r83. I don't think she has any intention of killing herself. She knows he'll suspect her of putting something in the tea and that he'll switch it. It is an old movie plot device you see a lot.

Still holds up well. Jodie was brilliant and quite pretty in that 70s natural girl way. Because of this movie I started making tea and served it in lovely old china !

[quote]I disagree [R83]. I don't think she has any intention of killing herself. She knows he'll suspect her of putting something in the tea and that he'll switch it. It is an old movie plot device you see a lot.

It was in an episode of The Golden Girls, when Sophia sets up Dorothy to drink from a dribble glass.

A couple of years earlier Scott Jacoby was in a good (TV?) movie, Bad Ronald.

Bad Ronald was quite good but somewhat less sinister in tone.

She was going to poison herself. He says to her "You know how to survive, don't you?" and she says "I thought I did" and then puts the poison in her cup. She didn't expect him to switch cups.

She does expect him to switch cups.

Jesus R94, how do you know that? The beauty of the ending is the ambiguity. R93 is correct... she places poison in her tea cup and seems prepared to end her life while in the kitchen.

Watch the clip posted above... it's beautiful with no editing... Sheen is simply taking control of the situation and she let's him. Sensing an opportunity, she doesn't try to stop him from drinking the poisoned tea.

The scene is constructed so the audience doesn't know what will happen.

The tuned tables on Sheen is why the close is so effective.

"Jesus [R94], how do you know that?"

Because it's a really old trope.

Oh please. Poison herself? Rynn is a survivor. She's not the little suicidal girl who lives down the lane. She gave that creep the bad tea like a clog gets the Drano. All in a day's work. And by the way, Kim Hunter has something to say:

As others have mentioned, the line, "I thought I did," tells you her intention. She's not planning on killing him.

He is the one who changes the circumstances and she lets him. You can see it on her face.

The entire movie was set up so that Rynn doesn't look like a sociopath and all the deaths around her are accidental. That's why all of the murders from the book were changed to make her passive. They didn't do all of that just to have her become active at the end.

For some reason my parents took me to see this movie when I was 8. Cabaret too. Probably trying to save on babysitting money. TLGWLDTL - I remember thinking it was cool. She was so powerful. At the time I thought she knew he'd switch the cups. Now I'm seeing the ambiguity. She probably thinks she wins either way - his death or hers. End game in both scenarios.

I think the movie makers made the changes from the book deliberately to add that sense of ambiguity, and also probably to make Rynn more sympathetic. I remember even as a kid thinking if Rynn really did know about the cyanide she gave her mother, or at least suspected. Then with Mrs. Hallet, I remember wondering what Rynn would have done if the cellar door hadn't collapsed on Mrs. Hallet and killed her. Finally at the end, ambiguity swirls around the whether she deliberately meant for Frank Hallet to switch the tea cups. There is the line where she says she thought she did know how to take care of herself, which makes it seem like she may have meant the cyanide for herself. But Rynn is also cagey. She's not drinking her tea until prodded by Frank, then he states he wants to take hers because hers has more milk. Then that blank face of Rynn's at the end tells you nothing, or does it actually tell you she's a stone cold killer? I thought it was brilliant the way the movie refused to let you know outright.

In the novel, it was clear Rynn was a sociopath. I think the people behind the movie wanted to hint at it more than make it clear.

I think the "I thought I did" line is Rynn reflecting upon her own despair and how much she's become emotionally dependent on the Jacoby character.

She killed the Sheen character intentionally. The whole point of this film is that Rynn was smarter than the adults around her, and if Sheen was smart enough to suspect she would try to poison him, she was even smarter to suspect that he would suspect that she would try to poison him. As for why should would start killing when she hadn't actually killed in the past, well, I think warding off an impending rape is a good reason.

That's not how character development works.

For those who think she didn't intend to kill the Sheen character but rather herself:

Knowing all you do about Rynn, do you think she would prefer to kill herself over someone else who actually deserved it? NO! OF COURSE NOT.

But if you are dense enough to answer yes to that question, then consider this. Even if she intended to kill herself, don't you think she would want to see the Sheen character get his comeuppance and kill him as well, thereby putting the poison in both cups? The fact that she was only too eager to give him her cup when he asked for it shows she had no problem with poisoning him.

But she only put the poison in one cup, to spare one of their lives. The life she wanted to spare was her own.

[quote]The fact that she was only too eager to give him her cup when he asked for it shows she had no problem with poisoning him.

Of course you'd be eager to off someone who is giving you the opportunity.

r104, if you are eager to off someone just because they gave you the opportunity, you are a sicko.

[quote] if you are eager to off someone just because they gave you the opportunity, you are a sicko.

Again, talk about dense.

r106, I *was* talking about, idiot.

Dense, idiot.

Rynn wouldn't kill herself. She knows Sheen would fuck her corpse.

bump

The Little Fuckable Corpse Who Rots Down The Lane

In R71’s ad, why is there a 6,10,12 at the bottom? Can’t figure it out.

I miss the movies that network TV used to show, especially when they came on about 3:30-4 pm, when you got home from school. I saw a lot of great movies in the 70’s that way.

.....