'The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane' (1976) – Nicolas Gessner.

There are all too few films that generously expose more of their sublimely submerged secrets with each additional viewing, for most, the very opposite is true, and yet, the appeal of Nicolas Gessner's uniquely fascinating, trip-wire taut, psychologically tweaked thriller is timeless, maintaining all the youthful vitality of the  precocious, eternally youthful protagonist Rynn Jacobs (Jodie Foster). The middle-class Jacob family have rented a handsomely secluded property in picturesque Maine, but the inquisitive locals very soon become suspicious about the solitudinous Rynn, especially curious is amiable local sheriff (Mort Shuman), with the luridly lecherous landlord's skeevey son Frank (Martin Sheen) expressing an altogether more unwholesome interest in the erudite, bizarrely worldly 13yr old Rynn and her apparently absentee poet father. Outside of the exemplary acting of a remarkably assured Jodie Foster, and Martin Sheen's disturbingly predatory presence, one of the subversive film's more remarkable facets is the uncommonly intelligent, insightfully humane and consistently surprising screenplay by novelist Laird Koenig; his deliciously dark humour, wickedly well-observed social commentary and bracingly three dimensional characters ensure that rather than dulling the film's efficacy, the 40 years since its original release, the eternally beguiling enigma of Gessner's oblique masterpiece remains no less intriguing today, 'The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane' resides magically in a genre all of its own!