Celia on AllMovie

Ann Turner wrote and directed this genuinely creepy amalgam of Father Knows Best and Death Wish. Celia Carmichael (Rebecca Smart) is a lonely nine-year-old girl growing up in the Melbourne suburbs in the late 1950s, who is the victim of several traumas with horrific results. She first finds her grandmother's dead body. Then she has nightmares from a book read to her at school. For a spell, her troubles are abated when a new family moves in next door with three children for Celia to play with. But her parents forbid her to play with the children because the parents are members of the Communist Party. It all comes to a head when, because of a national plague of rabbits, the Victoria State government orders a turning over of all domestic rabbits. When her uncle confiscates her beloved pet rabbit and discovers that it has died in the Melbourne Zoo, Celia explodes in violent revenge.