Jodie Foster doesn't like this film. "When people are there to simply do a job they don't have any passion for," she is reported as saying, "those are nearly always bad films." Presumably, her unhappy memories of the shoot (she refused to do a nude scene; she was 14 at the time) prejudiced her against the movie. This is a shame, because The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane, based on the novella by Laird Koenig, in no way disgraces a fascinating CV. Fortunately or otherwise, we are merely spectators to the end result - a flawed, genuine oddity, with a lot going for it.

A post Taxi Driver Foster plays 13 year-old Rynn Jacobs, the eponymous, wildly precocious 'Girl' living alone in a rented house by the New England coast, surviving on travellers cheques and misdirection. We gradually discover that her celebrated poet father has died, though this fact must remain a secret, lest she be taken into care.

We also learn that she is disliked by her horrid landlady (Smith) and the feeling is mutual ("This is my house," she whispers defiantly at Mrs Hallet's retreating back), although her bad wolf of a son Frank (Sheen) would certainly like to see more of Rynn.

There is a secret under the trap door in the living room. Soon there will be two secrets. And there are two innocents, a kindly local policeman (Shuman) and his teenage nephew, the polio-crippled amateur conjurer Mario (Jacoby), who are drawn into her desperately self-contained world. The certain tragedy is that, like some barbed exotic insect with an impenetrable defence mechanism, Rynn seems destined for a life of eternal, wintry desolation.

Though originally promoted as a horror by perplexed distributors (tagline: "Ask Her No Questions And Nobody Dies!") the film defies pat categorizing - at various junctures resembling a stagey, Hitchcockian suspense thriller in the Rope vein, an existential drama, even at times a romantic comedy, albeit a distinctly unsentimental one.

Its closest cinematic neighbours are The Cement Garden and Hard Candy, although there is practically no bloodletting and, whether through design or fluffed direction, few sudden shocks. It might also be read as an allegory of anti-Semitism, with the Jewish, Hebrew-studying Rynn fiercely protecting her culture and lifestyle from the local, close-ranked WASPs: "Thirteen and brilliant, as so many of your people are," sneers Mrs Hallet; 'brilliant', the equivalent of the Oriental-directed 'inscrutable'.

Mostly, as suggested by the title, with its echoes of the playroom, The Little Girl is steeped in the dark, tangled stuff of folk and fairytale; the domain of evil witch queens who must be vanquished; of ogres who threaten pubescent, tower-bound princesses; and of heroic young wizards who come to their rescue. Archetypes that grow up alongside us, becoming wilder, more dangerous and more unpredictable as we reach our teens.

"How old do you have to be before people start treating you like a person?" complains Rynn, no longer an infant, but still possessed of the vulnerability of adolescence; it is touchingly, appallingly sad that Rynn believes she might be able to deflect Sheen's advances by telling him she is a year older than she actually is; 14 not 13. If the courageous Mario has sworn to uphold her honour with his dazzling sleight of hand, all his tricks are rendered powerless in the face of this thirtysomething predator ("Be a good little magician would you son, and disappear yourself") who even drops by on Hallowe'en; two years before Michael Myers.

It is up to Rynn, drawing on all her resources, to defeat the monster with her magic potion by the end of the story. All performances here are exemplary, from Foster's wise-beyond-her-years title role to Sheen's bullying child molester, a brave and potentially career-burying role coming so soon after Badlands.

There's great support too from Smith, Jacoby and 'Viva Las Vegas' songwriter Shuman, also responsible for the lovely main theme - though hopefully not the dreadful incidental wah-wah, familiar from 1970s cop thrillers.

Such incongruous intrusions, along with some flat, TV-movie direction and the queasy sight of Foster (or rather her body-doubling elder sister Connie) jumping naked into bed with Mario, don't do the film any favours; between this, Taxi Driver and Bugsy Malone, poor Jodie had by 1976 become as prematurely sexualised as a Bratz doll. And for a movie dealing with paedophiles, this seems dreadfully close to an own goal: no wonder Foster would prefer to forget Little Girl. Yet ranged against the standard 1970s psychothriller, this haunting little picture is in a class of its own.