Bad Movies We Love: Jodie Foster in The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane

I know there are important movies coming out this week like X-Men: X Marks the Suck, so forgive me for blowing off new releases when choosing today's Bad Movie. Truth is, I've been thinking about the star of next week's huge debut, Super 8's venerable Elle Fanning, and the merits of child actresses as a species. Why do child actresses rule? Or do they? Do we reward them for their raw abilities or for acting like pocket versions of adults (and therefore, ourselves)? I'm steering this train of thought back to the greatest kid thespian of all time, Jodie Foster, and a weird movie she made in 1976 called The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane. Have you heard of it? It's about being 13, matching wits with a pedophile played by Martin Sheen, killing some lady, and befriending a teenage magician. Gawk with me.

First, the trailer. If you haven't seen Jodie Foster get slapped today, here's a fix.

Jodie Foster is power. As a preteen, she exhibited the grit of a fierce Wimbledon champ, possessing Chris Evert's scrunch-mouthed angst in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore and Martina Navratilova's crackling reflexes in Taxi Driver. That's what makes The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane a lovable misfire; Foster is a committed pro in bangs and corduroy. It's the story that feels like a series of unfair backhands from an out-of-his-depth screenwriter -- some Tracy Austin with a typewriter, if you will! Jodie manages to eke ferocity out of her character's precocious actions, and I'll now enumerate those superheroic moments for your clickety-clicking pleasure.

1. Fending for herself

Like all great child roles, Jodie's here is about being on her own. Thirteen-year-old Rynn Jacobs has just moved from England with her poet father, but he's nowhere to be seen. For some reason, his absence sparks interest in the tiny town, and several crazy-ass denizens stop by to offer... dialogue? Things to do? The point is, Rynn can't just exist happily in her home, otherwise this is a Real Simple centerfold and not a movie.

2. Dealing with a pedophile who keeps inviting himself into the house

I hate when pedophiles played by future West Wing stars welcome themselves into my New England home and expect me to play witty games with them! Rynn Jacobs concurs, because the town creep Frank Willet (Martin Sheen), who happens to be the landlady's son, keeps sliding inside Rynn's house and making gross double entendres at our little Nell. He's not quite assaulting her, but -- well, what is he doing? He says odious things and then excuses himself. It's like Martin's son Charlie on the Twitter!

Pedophilia is a revolting and sensitive topic, so you'll be glad to know it's handled with hilarious idiocy in this film. In the opening scene, Frank Willet steps inside Rynn's abode on Halloween night and harasses her wearing a trench coat that the stalker detective from "Billie Jean" would covet. He flees when he sees that his own children are trick-or-treating at Rynn's house. Senseless? Yes. But senseless moments are the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups in the bursting trick-or-treat bag of Bad Movies We Love. Later, in another bit of bizarre behavior, Frank throws Rynn's live hamster in the fireplace to scare her. We wouldn't see this type of animal-unfriendly villainy again until the first Beethoven movie.

3. Watching a woman accidentally kill herself with a door

Rynn's landlady Mrs. Willet (old Hollywood star Alexis Smith) also snoops around Rynn's property. She's the town gossip, and she doesn't believe that Rynn's father is really gone in New York, so she begins arguing with Rynn. Then she slaps her! That's a good moment. But then, in a moment of haste, she rips open a trapdoor located under the dining room table and rushes downstairs to investigate. Poor Mrs. Willet finds something that startles her! -- but oh no, the trapdoor accidentally comes crashing down on her head and kills her. That's likely after all. A door bonking you and ending your life right then. Bonk and dead. Plenty of people have died that way, and soon I'll think of one.

4. Befriending a weird teenager in a cape who accepts that Jodie's situation is crazy, but sleeps with her anyway and helps dig graves in the backyard.

And now for the strangest entrant in this movie: Mario, a cute teenager with a polio-induced limp and a magician's cape (of course), sees Rynn trying to start a car in front of her house. He doesn't realize that Rynn's trying to move Mrs. Hallet's vehicle because Mrs. Hallet died in a terrible bonk accident, but he's intrigued enough to hang around awhile. They strike up a precious friendship, and Rynn shares secrets with him like, "School is having people tell you what life is and never finding out by yourself." That's one secret. Another is that Rynn's father paid for her to live on her own, and yet another is that Rynn killed her own mother with cyanide after she went crazy -- and that's the corpse Mrs. Hallet saw in the basement before she died. Oh! The magician understands. God, this movie is effed.

Then the 17-year-old Houdini and the 13-year-old Rynn sleep together. In one astoundingly uncomfortable scene, we watch Rynn strip down to nothing and get into bed with him. Don't worry, it's not the real Jodie Foster there. It is -- and I'm betting this is a piece of cinematic trivia you didn't know -- Foster's real-life older sister Connie who bares her ass. I'd have liked to watch that off-screen discussion with Jodie's parents. "Don't make our magnificent Jodie defrock on camera, you mangy Hollywood types! We are disgusted! But here, have our talentless kid with the slope nose."

5. Tricking an adult with poison!

And in the final act, Rynn gets revenge on Frank "Peskyphile" Willet soon after he discovers his own mother dead in Rynn's basement. A bracing lungful that must've been! Using the cyanide trick that ended her zany mom's life, Rynn poisons a glass of tea, fends off Frank's advances one last time, and stares off into the night upon ending President Josiah Bartlet's life. The end! It's like Gone With the Wind.

With this supremely bizarre and stupid movie, Jodie Foster showed her vulnerability, smarts, and a stiff jawbone, but most of all she proved what makes child actresses ranging from Tatum O'Neal to Hailee Steinfeld to Patty Duke to Elle Fanning compelling: If a kid actor looks aware enough in the eyes, we believe everything he/she says regardless of circumstance. Regardless of dialogue. Regardless of infeasible door accidents. Maybe within that strange awareness, kid actors are the only thespians we're ever truly afraid of as moviegoers -- and maybe that's why The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, in all of its hokey, polio-riffic limping, succeeds in being creepy. Jodie Foster: carrying entire films since elementary school. That's real magic, Mario.