Viking Night: The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane
By Bruce Hall
October 25, 2017
BoxOfficeProphets.com
I don’t mean to say that I worry about Martin Sheen coming to my door next week wearing nothing but a pumpkin. What I’m saying is that The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane is the first motion picture I can remember seeing, and I was WAY too young to see it.
As I recall, my mother and a friend went to the drive-in when I was very little, and this was the movie they decided to see. I was in the backseat, and I assume they thought I’d sleep through the boring grown-up movie that’s actually rated PG but should totally be rated R. I did NOT sleep, and therefore witnessed one of the most notorious scenes in the film, when a character does something especially cruel to a defenseless animal.
To my recollection, I screamed for DAYS. In reality, it took my mother several hours to convince me that no, when someone dies in a movie they are not really dead and that this goes for animals, too. After that, I was fine. Or was I? No lie, I have specifically avoided watching this film ever since then, for fear seeing that scene again would trigger some long dormant lizard-brain trauma, and I would end up quacking like a duck or hanging off the edge of a clock tower covered with peanut butter (me, not the tower). And for the kids out there, a “drive-in” is just like a movie theater except you would stay outside in your car.
Sometimes people on roller skates brought you food.
But now in this, the season of terror and darkness, I have finally chosen to face my Waterloo and watch the Jodie Foster movie that broke my brain before I was even old enough to NOT fall asleep at 3 p.m. every day.
The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane is an awkwardly titled film that opens on a not particularly scary Halloween night. A 13-year-old Jodie Foster bakes herself a birthday cake, and lights a cigarette on the candles. She even checks out a chipped tooth in the mirror, as if to accentuate her precociousness. This is not just expositional (this is a young-but-tough kid), but startling as well. It’s immediately apparent, less than two minutes in, that nothing about this child’s life is normal. Moments later a lubricious, middle-aged Martin Sheen comes to the door cradling a super-creepy Jack-O-Lantern...WITHOUT any kids.
Think about that. Look up the word “lubricious” if you have to. Then wait for yourself to die a little inside, and then we’ll continue.
Good. The girl’s name is Rynn (Foster), and she lives alone in her father’s cinematically oversized suburban home. It’s obvious her father isn’t around though, and Rynn seems to spend a lot of time doing things that make it look suspiciously like she’s raising herself. She dotes on the very pet hamster that changed the course of my life, buys her own groceries and even does her own private banking. But she’s also polite, well read, and extremely clever. Because her father is a well known poet and it’s the 1970s, her peculiar situation initially goes unheeded. But eventually people start to take notice, beginning with the aforementioned creepy neighbor, Frank Hallet (Sheen).
Frank’s mother happens to be Rynn’s landlord, and she’s not a whole lot less completely disturbing than her son. Hallet is suspicious, but mostly indulges in freestyle henpecking while obsessively rearranging all the furniture.
It’s pretty clear that in addition to being insane, Halley is a racist xenophobe, her son is a publicly known pedophile and Rynn is easily the smartest person in town (yes, everyone in this story is broken). It’s obvious that the girl is hiding something, but the charismatic little tyke continually outfoxes the nosy townsfolk who constantly drop in on her. Honestly, most of the first act’s tension comes from the fact that Halley is an insufferable battle axe who deserves to be suffocated with her own smugness.
I guess I’m implying that the film isn’t exactly subtle with its characterizations. Everyone isn’t just who they are, they’re who they are IN CAPITAL LETTERS. It would be more distracting if not for the fact that some well written dialog pops off like it was written for a play (it was). Roundly strong performances stay toward drama rather than camp. The sleepy little town around them has a definite Stephen King vibe to it. And while yes, Rynn is definitely hiding something, it turns out not to be exactly what you thought it was.
Don’t get the wrong idea, though. This has often been marketed as a horror film, but it’s more of a small-town drama/domestic thriller/teen sleuth adventure. The only thing horrifying about it is how chill everyone is about an acknowledged sexual deviant wandering around town, creeping on gap-toothed kids. Films made before political correctness turned everything into dry white toast are often jarring, and the '70s were perhaps the apex of this. It bears mentioning that Jodie Foster’s other big movie that same year was Taxi Driver, where she played an underage prostitute. That’s a tough slate for anyone, let alone an actress her age, and she’s nothing short of outstanding in both roles.
In fact, an interesting second act devotes itself to the development of Rynn’s arc, as she befriends an intuitive local boy with a penchant for stagecraft. This is great because not only is the film’s central “twist” indeed a little surprising, but the real secret is far more interesting. That’s not to say it doesn’t require a hefty suspension of disbelief, but it’s a hell of a lot better than having gone with the obvious. I always appreciate it when a film takes genuine risks, whether they work or not. This is no different.
There’s even an amusing scene just after the one hour mark where the kids discover they have feelings for one another. They inadvertently play out an adult moment in a grimly amusing way, and it’s a remarkably successful moment in what really is a very unique film. I can’t say I’ve ever seen anything quite like it. All this is capped by a final scene which, while I obviously can’t reveal, should probably have won someone Oscar consideration all on its own.
I really enjoy The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane, despite how challenging it was to write an article about a movie while avoiding the stupidly long title as much as possible. It’s a dark, unsettling and surprisingly reflective story. Outside the morbid subject matter, several plot twists and occasional hamster murder, this could have been just another paint-by-numbers thriller. But the imaginative way the story sets your expectations and then sidesteps them entirely makes it a trip worth taking.
It does bother me however that Martin Sheen, America’s favorite ex-President, is so utterly convincing in this role.
Forget the freaking hamster. That’s the thing that will keep me up tonight.