I Start Counting
I Start Counting was a British film made in 1969 and starring Jenny Agutter in one of her first serious roles. It was based on the novel of the same name by Audrey Erskine Lindop.
The film was moderately controversial because of Agutter's squeaky-clean image, her youth (only 16 in real life, she played a 14-year-old), and the film's sexual content.[1] It also included Simon Ward's first major film role.
[edit] Plot summary
Jenny Agutter plays Wynne, an adopted 14-year-old girl who has a crush on her 32-year-old stepbrother, George, played by Bryan Marshall. While spying on George in the bathroom, Wynne notices George has several scratches on his back, and finds a bloody sweater she made for him that he threw in the trash, which leads her to suspect George of being the serial killer of several local teenage girls, who is still at large. Despite this belief, Wynne continues to have romantic sexual fantasies about George and dreams of marrying him when she comes of legal age.
Wynne hides in George's trade van, thinking she will catch him in the act of murdering a young girl. Instead she discovers he is having an affair with a suicidal older woman, played by Lana Morris, whose blood was on the discarded sweater from slashing her wrist in a suicide attempt.
Wynne's best friend Corrinne, played by Clare Sutcliffe, teases Wynne about her crush on George, and when the family goes out on a picnic Corrinne even flirts with George, who gets angry at her for acting like a "pathetic little mini-tart" and pins her down roughly on the ground. Corrinne runs away from the picnic, and later telephones Wynne to tell her she's staying out all night with a boy she met, who turns out to be the true serial killer, a bus conductor played by Simon Ward. Wynne gets worried about her friend, goes searching for her, and finds Corrinne's dead body; when the bus conductor see Wynne he intends to make her his next victim, but the police arrive on the scene in time.
The theme song, also entitled "I Start Counting", was sung by Lindsey Moore.
[edit] References
[edit] External links
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