Candleshoe was a Disney live action film from
1977, directed by Norman Tokar and based on a book by Michael Innes, a.k.a. J. I. M. Stewart.
Fourteen-year-old
Jodie Foster, already with "Oscar-nominated" attached to her name thanks to
Taxi Driver, is Casey Brown, a street smart juvenile delinquent living in
Los Angeles. One day, she is discovered by con man Harry Bundage (Leo McKern), who realizes that she is the perfect double for the long-lost granddaughter of Lady Gwendolyn St. Edmund (Helen Hayes). Bundage thus brings Casey with him to England to meet Lady St. Edmund, whom she successfully fools. You see, Lady St. Edmund's old manor house Candleshoe is alleged to contain a hidden treasure and Bundage, along with his partner-in-crime Clara Grimsworthy (Vivian Pickles), need someone on the inside to go through the
Linked List Clue Methodology.
But after joining the household, Casey discovers a terrible truth. Lady St. Edmund is an
Impoverished Patrician and doesn't even know it. Her only servant left is the butler, Priory (David Niven), who pretends to be all the rest of the household staff by being a
Master of Disguise. A group of local orphans taken in by the Lady (Veronica Quilligan, Ian Sharrock, Sarah Tamakuni, David Samuels) do most of the upkeep on the house and keep Candleshoe in the black by selling food grown on the estate at the local market. Of course, Casey couldn't care less about any of this and is only concerned with finding the treasure...
at least for awhile anyway.
Tropes Associated With This Film Include:
- Absurdly Ineffective Barricade: The group does the usual "toss the villains out and move the furniture to block the door" stunt, only to have the baddies reappear through the open door at the opposite end of the room.
- Actor Allusion: The plot is rather similar to Anastasia (the 1956 Ingrid Bergman version, which would later inspire the Don Bluth film). Helen Hayes played the grandmother in both films.
- All-Star Cast: Not the entire cast, but it's amusing to note that the three main stars (Jodie Foster, David Niven, and Helen Hayes) are all Oscar winners. (Foster was only nominated at the time, but she would later win twice.)
- Becoming the Mask: Casey
- Brick Joke: Casey originally agrees to help Bundage in exchange for ten percent of the treasure and a red Ferrari. Later, while she's recovering in the hospital, Casey is looking at a car catalog with a red Ferrari on the cover.
- Broken Bird: Casey
- Cat Fight: Casey has one with the other girls at the manor, complete with the Rule of Pool (it's actually a lake in this case) being obeyed. There's also an All Asians Know Martial Arts moment, courtsey of the younger Asian-looking girl, which is cued by the stereotypical "Oriental riff".
- Covers Always Lie: Look at the castle in the picture on the right side of this page. Yeah, Candleshoe looks nothing like that in the actual film.
- Defenestrate and Berate
- Driving A Desk: Used when Bundage is driving Casey to Candleshoe for the first time. When they get onto the actual property of the manor, the interior shots of the car change to being real, making the fakeness of the earlier shots all the more obvious.
- Fake Brit: Helen Hayes as Lady St. Edmund
- The Family for the Whole Family: Bundage's gang of crooks at the end of the film are exactly as competent as you'd expect a gang of crooks to be in a Disney film.
- Genre Savvy
- Grande Dame: Lady St. Edmund
- Have a Gay Old Time: "Listen, Miss Clever Dick!" "Clever dick" is a British expression meaning roughly the same thing as "smart alec".
- Hidden in Plain Sight
- Hollywood Darkness: Some day-for-night filming is used in the scene when Bundage steals the tax money.
- I Choose to Stay
- Impoverished Patrician
- Land Poor
- Linked List Clue Methodology
- Obfuscating Stupidity
- Old Retainer: Priory
- Riddle for the Ages: The ending leaves one wondering, is Casey actually the girl she pretended to be?
- Technology Marches On: One of many films in which the plot only works because DNA testing wasn't invented yet.
- Trash the Set: Candleshoe in the climax
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