I doubt if very many of you recognize the name Pamelyn Ferdin. But if you grew up in the 1960’s and 1970’s, you would have seen her in countless television shows. Younger kids would know her face if they ever watch Brady Bunch reruns. She was the voice of Lucy Van Pelt in many of the Peanuts movies and specials although she didn’t do the Charlie Brown Christmas Special. She also played a dead girl in a TV movie called Daughter of the Mind. At the time, this was the scariest movie I had ever seen.
Early in the film Ray Milland is driving down the road and he comes up on an image of his daughter. He stops and talks to the ghostly image. He is convinced it is the ghost of his dead daughter. One of the freakiest things she says to him is “Oh daddy, I hate being dead!”
There are scenes where he sees her in the bedroom of his house. There is also a dollhouse in this room. I have a lifelong aversion to dollhouses because of those scenes in this movie. I’ve also been creeped out by Pamelyn Ferdin because she played the dead girl.
Today when I watch the film, it doesn’t pack the same punch. I think of Ray Milland with Rosey Grier in The Thing With Two Heads and with the frog in Frogs and I laugh. Seeing Ed Asner, who plays a cop in the movie, takes me out of the story too. Pamelyn Ferdin still gives me chills when she delivers her lines. When I found out that she did the voice of Lucy in the Peanuts specials, it made those seem a bit scary too.
