Director: Jeffrey Bloom.

Another movie from that summer of horror with my grandma, watched on TV on some channel like TBS. Later in junior high I read the V.C. Andrews book, which was darker and so sad. I love Louise Fletcher as an actress, but I developed a real fright around her character, Olivia Foxworth. Being around someone so cold and so devoid of warmth was upsetting to me as a child, because my grandmother was the opposite. She adored me. And once you realize what is going down in that house, with the butler bringing those cookies, lord have mercy.

I remember a scene of powdered sugar going onto the cookies, and me being a Cancer obsessed with food, I begged my grandma for cookies just like them. She got mad and said, do you know what is on those cookies, Brooke? That is arsenic. I am not baking you arsenic cookies! Cold steel. Powdered sugar. Flour cookie base. Bitter almond.

Scent Dialekt is an independent art and film-criticism project. Fragrances are original transformative works inspired by cinema; no affiliation with or endorsement by any rights holder is implied.