“She was only a little girl. She lived in a great big house… all alone. Where is her mother? Where is her father? Where are all the people who went to visit her? What is her unspeakable secret? Everyone who knows is dead”.
It’s Halloween and Rynn Jacobs (Jodie Foster) is a 13-year-old that is seemingly living on her on in a big old house. People keep looking for her father but he always seems to be away. Naturally people are starting to become suspicious.
People like the landlady Mrs. Hallet (Alexis Smith) and her creepy son Frank (Martin Sheen) who keeps unwanted advances to Rynn. Fortunately for Rynn she befriends young Mario (Scott Jacoby) who wants to be a magician and is also the nephew of Officer Miglioriti (Mort Shuman) who starts looking into things once people start disappearing.
It’s Jodie Foster’s first top billed starring role and she hated the experience. Foster was only 13 at the time and the movie’s producers gave her a hard time and wanted a nude scene that Foster’s older sister ended up body doubling for.
This film was made during the start of the Canadian tax credit push of the 1970s in an effort by the Canadian government build up the Canadian film industry. The tax credits worked and there were a ton of movies suddenly getting made and shot in Canada. This film was also a co-production between France.
