The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976)

“How old do you have to be before people start treating you like a person? ” – Rynn

Number of Times Seen – 1 (5 Nov 2020)

Brief Synopsis – A young girl, living in a house by herself keeps a dark secret from her neighbors.

My Take on it – This is a film that I never heard about until I was recently having a podcast discussion about Jodie Fosters career with my good friend Richard from Kirkham: A Movie A Day and one of the shepherds at the LAMB for the Acting School 101 monthly podcast.

Check out the podcast here.

This is quite an intriguing idea that works quite well largely due to the very mature persona that 13 year old Jodie Foster imbibes in this movie.

The film’s plot deals with some very powerful and chilling themes and manages to do some very unexpected things with it along the way while still keeping things realistic enough as story unfold.

Besides Foster, this film has another great performance and that is by Martin Sheen who plays a character evry unlike anything he usually plays.

He is quite creepy and it works partially because of the fact that he resembles his son Charlie so much here and that helps make his performance even more palatable for a modern audience.

The plot moves along in a very deliberate and slow fashion which is able to add lots of suspense to the story.

Bottom Line – Intriguing story that is enhanced by the very mature performance by a very young Foster. The story deals with some very powerful themes in ways one might not imagine and it all comes across in a realistic fashion the whole way through. In addition to Foster, Sheen gives a great performance here that is quite creepy and very different from the kind of roles he usually plays. The fact that he so much resembles his son Charlie helps make things more believable. The story is told in a very slow manner which helps add to the suspense of it all. Recommended!

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – Even though he is never actually seen throughout the entire movie, the word “father” is spoken exactly 80 times within the first 75 minutes of the movie, an average of more than once every minute. (From IMDB)

Rating – Globe Worthy (7/10)