The Guardian (1990) on Netflix
Phil and Kate Sterling hire Camilla, an English nanny, for their infant son Jake in Los Angeles. Camilla is an ancient Hamadryad who serves a gnarled tree in the forest.
- Netflix2.0/5
- IMDb5.4/107,253 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes25%
Trailer
Plot summary
Molly and Allan Sheridan leave two children with their new nanny, Diana Julian. Diana, an ancient Hamadryad, carries the family's infant daughter into a forest and gives the child to a giant, gnarled tree, which needs the offering to live; her reflection in a pool turns into a wolf. Three months on, Phil Sterling has moved his wife Kate and himself from Chicago to Los Angeles for an advertising post. Kate bears a son, Jake, and the pair look for a nanny so both can keep their jobs. An agency sends two women, Arlene and Camilla. After Arlene dies in a bicycling accident, the Sterlings take on Camilla, a caring Englishwoman who soon becomes part of the household.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Guardian (1990)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- William Friedkin said he related to The Guardian's story of a baby in danger because of his own experience with a nanny: he and his wife came back from a two-day trip to find the nanny and her girlfriend had picked up three men in a bar and brought them into the couple's bed while their baby was in the room.
- Screenwriter Stephen Volk reportedly suffered a nervous breakdown and left the production, leaving William Friedkin to finish the script's loose ends after filming had already begun; the tree in Camilla's backstory grew out of Volk's suggestion to borrow from the M. R. James story "The Ash-tree".
- The film's killer tree was built by the special effects department in Burbank, California, and transported to the nature preserve in Valencia; it held tubes of circulating fake blood so it would bleed when cut, and Friedkin fired the original effects crew over how the tree looked.
SPOILER
The television version ends with Camilla alive and naked at the tree; William Friedkin disapproved of the cut, removed his name from the credits and was credited instead as "Alan von Smithee".- Uma Thurman was originally a candidate to play the nanny Camilla before the script changes, after which British actress Jenny Seagrove was cast in the role.
- Screenwriter Stephen Volk first rewrote the nanny as Lilith, the child-stealing demon of Jewish mythology, but William Friedkin dismissed it; when Volk turned the script into a psychological thriller instead, Universal Pictures objected and demanded a supernatural horror film, citing Friedkin's reputation for The Exorcist.
- Jenny Seagrove recalled visiting William Friedkin at his Los Angeles home during the shoot, where he told her he had been reading about Druid mythology and wanted it in the film; pages were flying at the cast, and her character turned from a nanny into a Druid who became part of a tree and had to feed it.
