Live Action Disney Movies Don't Get Enough Credit

It's true. Live-action Disney films from the 1950s through the 1970s don't get enough credit. Everyone remembers their animated films--and they should. The Disney animated canon is stuffed with classics. And a few live-action films, most notably Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, are well-remembered. But there's a lot of films that have fallen through the cracks and aren't well-remembered by more than a few brilliant bloggers and other smarter-than-average people.

Candleshoe (1977) is, for instance, an incredibly fun movie. Staring a 15-year-old Jodie Foster, it's about a kid who makes her living as a thief until she's found by British con artist Harry Bundage (Leo McKern). The kid, named Casey, is the right age and happens to have the right scar on her shoulder to pass as the long-lost granddaugther of Lady Gwendolyn St. Edmond (Helen Hayes). Lady Gwendolyn lives at the estate of Candleshoe, where a pirate ancestor has supposedly buried a treasure and left behind the first of a series of cryptic clues that would lead people to that treasure.

So the idea is for Casey to pass herself off as the granddaughter while searching for the treasure. Then she and Harry run for it with the pirate gold.

Casey's subsequent story arc is predictable, but good acting, good script and some beautiful location photography means it all comes together in a funny story that also hits some effective emotional beats

Aside from Lady Gwendolyn, Candleshoe is inhabited by Priory the butler  (David Niven) and four orphans Lady Gwendolyn took in and came to think of as family.

At first, Casey and the other kids dislike each other and Casey isn't planing on being around long anyways. But she soon discovers Lady Gwendolyn is out of money, but that Priory and the kids are keeping this a secret from her while they do what they can to scrape together enough money to pay the taxes and keep the estate from going up for auction. Priory, in fact, is using disguises to keep Lady Gwen from finding out the rest of the staff has long since been let go. (Though we later learn that Lady Gwen might be a little more on the ball than her makeshift family suspects.)

Casey's growth into a true member of the family is indeed predictable, but it extremely well-done, shown through sometimes subtle moments such as when we see her washing dishes after earlier having refused to help with chores. Eventually, after Harry steals the money that had been saved to pay the taxes, she tells the family everything and they get together to solve the remaining clues, find the treasure and save the estate. This will include chasing a train across the countryside to find a particular clue and later engaging in some hilarious slapstick combat against Harry and a gang of hired thugs.

So Candleshoe is enjoyable, funny and emotionally engaging--a live-action gem that should be better remembered than it is.