I remember sneering at most of the ABC After School Specials back in the 1970s. I used to dismiss most of them as nauseatingly preachy, and I used to laugh at the ones that tried to be the most serious and "very special." I saw this one when I was probably about 15 or 16 years old, the same age as the kids in the movie. Nobody but Wendy Jo Sperber (God rest her soul) could have played this whiny, overeating, yet emotionally neglected teenager better. June Lockhart (Mrs. Robinson from Lost in Space) played her upper-middle class mother who freely gives Dinky almost anything she wants, including all the food she can eat to fill the emotional void due to her own disinterest in Dinky's emotional upbringing. Mrs. Hocker is much more interested in her pet charity projects with getting teenage smack (heroin) addicts clean and "rebirthing" them. Dinky decides her mother loves them more than her and devises a befitting "revenge" on her mother at the end. This movie was pretty close in staying true to the novel.
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