Night Of The Living Dead’s Karen might have a lot to do with it.
After Rhoda in The Bad Seed, best/worst film “scary little girl” is Bonnie from The Godsend (1980). The book, by Bernard Taylor, is even more horrific. The character is not repulsive or deranged looking, nor is she the “rip your guts out” type that’s shown up in films lately. She’s described as angelic and sweet. Adults love her; so do the other children, for a while.
Where is there a scary little girl in The Grudge?
I’ve only seen the first half hour of the American version (and after that I’m finding myself less than entirely inclined to bother with the rest), but there is no scary little girl in the first 3 Ju-On movies (which The Grudge remade)…a scary grown woman, a little boy who’s creepy about half the time he’s on screen, but there’s no scary little girls until the 4th movie when Kyoko gives birth to the Grudge-Baby, at the end. (From what I’ve seen, the American sequel has nothing to do with the Japanese.)
Actually, your description of the ‘scary little girls’ matches Kayako quite well. But little girl, she is not.
The look of Kayako, or Sadako or other similar spirits in Japanese horror, is based on the depictions of ghosts from ukiyo-e prints and kabuki theater.
http://users.aol.com/emarko/gorey.html
It might be a little older than you think… Gorey’s work is at the very least a neo-Victorian sort of thing. The counterpart to Alice in Wonderland.
There was that Twilight Zone episode with the evil doll. I don’t remember what it’s called.
Telly Savalas is in that one, playing the mean father. GREAT episode.
The idea of malevolent children is an old one in European folklore.
The episode was called *Living Doll *. In the Twilight Zone episode the doll is called “Talky Tina”; she was based on the “Chatty Cathy” doll made by Mattel.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned Alia from Dune. She was a scary little girl. Basically an adult in a child’s body and she killed several times (like a good Fremen child).
I also thought of the movie “Don’t Look Now”. Of course the little girl in the red raincoat turned out to be something more scary than a little girl, but mood of the whole movie was really creepy.
The Exorcist isn’t really about a creepy little girl - it’s about an apparently cute and innocent little girl who is possessed by the devil. It’s the devil that’s meant to be scary, not the girl herself.
She says Larry Cohen’s movies are, as you suggest, “among the best of B-movie horror.” Also, there are apparently two sequels to It’s Alive that are worth watching if you liked the original.
We discussed the creepy-little-girl phenomenon a bit today, and while we both agreed that the notion probably goes way back beyond The Bad Seed (thanks for the link, spoke-), she says that if one is specifically looking for its first appearance in American cinema, The Bad Seed is probably it.
By the way, interested parties can find lots of horror-movie info, news, and a message board at http://www.dreadcentral.com/.
See, I think the girl herself is very scary, and the reason for me is that she represents innocence horrifically twisted. The innocence and perceived “angelic nature” of children, especially cute little girls, are a cultural given, and it is deeply unnatural and disturbing to see that innocence turned to evil. Children should not be evil or untrustworthy.
But they are. Every one of them. Whether they are possessed by the devil or not.
It’s a minor FEAR spoiler, but the little girl there:
Isn’t really a little girl. It’s a big, creepy dead woman who just manifests that way early on because that was how she was when she was used/killed.
I think the RING is the first modern instance of the “creepy dark child” phenom, characterized by a young girl figure with dark forward hanging long hair mostly obscuring the face, and her approaching you slowly/jumpily. Creepy kids in general have been around almost as long as horror as a genre.
FEAR had a lot of a great execution as a horror game, but the terribly repetative level design really ruined things. Almost as bad as the “alien building/ship” sections of HALO.
Rhoda is my favorite evil little girl. I’ve always been fascinated by The Bad Seed.
This is off-topic, but you may be interested in this since you like the movie. Kate Bush wrote a song called “The Infant Kiss” based on scenes she remembered seeing from that movie when she saw it as a child (lyrics). In the mid-80’s my husband (and I) made a video to the song using scenes from the movie (taken from a television broadcast). He recently updated the look of it using the widescreen DVD. Here is the updated version if you’re interested in seeing it.
He sent the original version to Kate and she liked it so much she called him from England! I was at work, darn all the luck.
You do realize that Gorey was an American who began writing in the 50s?
The Gashleycrumb Tinies dates from 1963.
Perhaps this is an appropriate 19th century source.
I’m aware of the date of Gorey’s work, I was pointing out that he carries on a tradition of child death and fragility that is clearly victorian-inspired. Tuberculosis and all that. I’ve got a lovely story about a mother and child ghost, by Elizabeth Gaskell somewhere, from the period.
Eve’s first daughter. All little girls have their “scary little girl” moments.
If you want to see the epitome of scarey little girls, watch “The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane” starring Jodie Foster. :eek: