For some reason, it was just one really good movie after another this update cycle. So naturally, I had to break the streak by watching something produced by David Friedman…
Bummer! (1973), which would be indistinguishable from a 1930’s vicesploitaion movie were it not for all the ugly clothes, ugly hair, and ugly music…
The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976), in which Jodie Foster illuminates the gentler side of Rhoda Penmark…
Marooned (1969), in which the Apollo 13 crisis arrives two years early…
Sisters (1973), in which Margot Kidder sadly does not carry around a big wicker basket…
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), which blows my mind by causing me to rave about a Disney movie derived from Jules Verne…
and…
Weird Woman (1944), in which a much more deserving novel is adapted in such a way as to provoke no raving whatsoever.
#1 by Tom Meade on April 13, 2008 - 11:38 pm
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I think I must have read a Children’s Classics version of 20,000 Leagues or a copy with pages missing, because even though everyone always talks about the giant squid, all I remember of it from the book is a bunch of them flopping around on the surface near a river mouth. One day I will have to re-read it, perhaps. Anyway, I feel cheated.
Did you like Around the World in 80 Days?
#2 by JessicaR on April 14, 2008 - 12:42 am
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I *love* The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, always glad to see a new fan. That’s one in sore need of cult rediscovery.
#3 by Joshua on April 14, 2008 - 4:08 am
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My most vivid memory from reading 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea was that every description of every undersea life form, be it fish, mammal, or vegetable, concluded with what it tasted like. I’m kind of glad they left that out of the film version.
#4 by lyzard on April 14, 2008 - 4:24 am
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My last brush with Verne was trying to explain to my uncomprehending local librarians that “From The Earth To The Moon” really isn’t a children’s book….
#5 by hman on April 14, 2008 - 7:45 am
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I read a 100-page version of 20,000 Leagues and enjoyed it. I remember getting caught off-guard by the giant manatee, as I hadn’t remembered that from the film.
So, “The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane” is sort of like a lot of Godzilla movies where we root for the the destructive “protagonist” simply because there are characters (or monsters) even worse than she/it is?
#6 by El Santo on April 14, 2008 - 9:30 am
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“I read a 100-page version of 20,000 Leagues and enjoyed it. I remember getting caught off-guard by the giant manatee, as I hadn’t remembered that from the film.
So, ‘The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane’ is sort of like a lot of Godzilla movies where we root for the the destructive ‘protagonist’ simply because there are characters (or monsters) even worse than she/it is?”
Watching the movie has motivated me into a rematch with 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea the novel, but I haven’t as yet come to either a giant squid or a giant manitee. I find that I’m not hating it quite as much as I did the last time I read it, but it’s still pretty infuriating, especially when Conseil gets started reciting the taxonomies of every critter he sees. Incidentally, my guess is the manitee-thing is supposed to be a Steller’s sea cow, a sirenian about three times the size of the Florida manitee that used to inhabit the extreme northern Pacific, up around Alaska and Kamchatka. We hadn’t quite managed to kill them all yet when Verne was writing, and they were impressive enough that I can easily see why he would want to include one. It will be interesting to see if he was as grossly misinformed about them as he was about dugongs, a predatory specimen of which features in Mysterious Island.
As for The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, no– it’s more complicated than that. Rynn is actually an extremely likeable and sympathetic character when she isn’t actively poisoning anybody, and even there, she’s merely following her father’s deathbed advice. Also, she kills only in what she thinks of as self-defense, and only when she can think of no other way to eliminate the threat. Nevertheless, the fact remains that she’s not merely capable of murder, but able to commit it without any moral or psychological compunctions whatsoever. You might think of her as an ethical psychopath.
#7 by hman on April 14, 2008 - 12:06 pm
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Well, according to Wikipedia, my memory failed me and the sirenian was a Dugong and not a Manatee.
#8 by Loki on April 14, 2008 - 5:21 pm
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“Dugongs of Doom”, a Sci Fi Channel Original Movie, based on the works of Jules Verne.
#9 by hman on April 14, 2008 - 7:50 pm
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“Dugong vs. Megalodon” starring [insert some centerfold/Playboy model] and Dean Cain.
#10 by Tom Meade on April 14, 2008 - 8:02 pm
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“Manatee for Two”, starring Shelly Long and George Segal?
#11 by Matthew Fudge on April 15, 2008 - 3:18 am
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‘Twenty Thousand leagues below the Sikh’ starring Mark Dacascos for Asylum films.
#12 by The Rev. D.D. on April 15, 2008 - 10:39 am
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“Sirenian”, about dugongs mutated by toxic waste dumped by an eeeeeeeevil corporation who can now create illusions, drawing people into the water where the now-carnivorous dugongs devour them?
#13 by The Rev. D.D. on April 15, 2008 - 10:44 am
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I am hereby changing that title for my film. Too intellectual for the DTSFC crowd. I should have thought of that sooner.
But I am making amends now, to ensure my script is picked up.
MANATEE RAGE!!!!
And I’m still keeping them dugongs so people like Ms. Kingsley (and, frankly, myself) can say, “Hey that’s not a manatee!!”
Like we do when “poisonous snakes” are portrayed by boa constrictors. (She does that, right?)
#14 by El Santo on April 15, 2008 - 10:53 am
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“(She does that, right?)”
Surely.
#15 by hman on April 15, 2008 - 12:01 pm
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I have a nerdy question. My book on Mythological Creatures says that the Manatee was the grandmother of the mermaids. Fair enough. So what are the parents of the mermaids? And the grandchildren of mermaids? Do mermaids turn into Manatees later on in life?
#16 by The Rev. D.D. on April 15, 2008 - 12:23 pm
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I’ve never heard mermaids being referred to as the grandchildren of the manatee…I know it’s assumed people mistook dugongs and manatees for mermaids at a distance, but I’ve never seen a myth that combined the two that way. And I read a LOT of world myths…what country is that story from?
#17 by hman on April 15, 2008 - 12:35 pm
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It’s from the book “Mythological Creatures” by Paulita Sedwick (it was published in the 1970s). That book had a profound impact on my life, and not just because it was a kid’s book that had all of the female mythological creatures with breasts and nipples drawn on them.
#18 by Elizabeth the Ferret on April 15, 2008 - 12:53 pm
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I don’t remember where I read it (though it might have been The Book of Ratings), but I saw something that suggested (jokingly) that maybe the whole mermaid/manatee thing was due to some sailor who had a major thing for manatees and was too embarrassed to admit it.
#19 by lyzard on April 15, 2008 - 4:18 pm
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Worse: she goes “Oooh, oochie-woochie-woochie-wittle-boa-constwictors!”
You DO NOT want to be around when that happens.
#20 by The Rev. D.D. on April 16, 2008 - 10:41 am
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hman: I don’t know if I will have access to that book. Was that myth from a particular region or country, or was the book just a mishmash of things? Knowing where it originated from would give me the chance to track down more information, and I have to admit this new twist on things has my hunger for knowledge all up and active…and the internet’s not helping much right now in my search.
Ms. Kingsley: Actually, I think I do. I would probably giggle with sheer delight and join in. However, our concurrent, ridiculous babytalk at the animals on the screen would no doubt drive all others near us to flee from the room in horror, lest they be driven mad. MAD I TELLS YA!!
#21 by hman on April 16, 2008 - 11:01 am
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If you’re interested, you could find it here: http://www.amazon.com/Mythological-Creatures-Pictorial-Dictionary-Sedgwick/dp/003012946X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208365171&sr=1-3
The book is a mish-mash and I don’t recall Sedgwick defining where the myth came from.
#22 by Chadly on April 17, 2008 - 1:01 am
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Santo, if you haven’t seen “The Pick-Up” (1968) yet, you really owe it to yourself to try and track it down. (Something Weird has it on DVR). Dave Friedman may have been all about pushing the tease, but when he teamed up with Lee Frost, Wes Bishop and Bob Cresse — neither of them having any shame whatsoever — no boundary was safe, resulting in the penultimate Sleaze-Noir classic.
#23 by maggiesmith on January 23, 2022 - 7:35 pm
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The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane : I don’t see Rynn as a “killer child” like Rhoda Penmark. She didn’t know what she was putting in her mother’s tea was cyanide, since her father told her “it was something to calm her down”, and Mrs Hallet’s death is an accident. The trapdoor falls on her head; Rynn doesn’t slam it down. Her only deliberate murder is Frank Hallet, who deserves it, and even then, she puts the poison in her own cup of tea and leaves it to fate. If Frank hadn’t switched cups, she would have drunk it herself, because better dead than Frank’s sex slave.