evanston_dad
Before Valerie Harper created the character of Rhoda on television, Patty McCormack created a very different character with the same name in this trashy shocker from 1956. She's the bad seed of the film's title, a child who is born with a genetic predisposition to do evil. She gets those genes from her mother (Nancy Kelly), you see, who finds out over the course of the film that she was adopted and that her real mother was a notorious criminal. Now she has to make a decision about her own daughter -- does she have a responsibility to expose the girl for what she is, or will a mother's love trump all?This film was no doubt pretty shocking stuff for 1956 audiences, but I can't help but think that it missed a whole heap of opportunities to be even more lurid than it is. It could have gone to some dark places in exploring the psychology of Kelly's character and her relationship with her daughter once she finds out that her kid is a cold-blooded murderer, but it instead decides to give Kelly a fairly straightforward character arc. She never seems overly conflicted about what she should do; she just seems to struggle with how hard it is to actually do it. And the film's look could have been much darker and gothic. How cool it would have been if the film's visual style grew gradually more distorted as the secrets emerge and the characters' psyches become more confused, but no. The film disappointingly has that flat studio look so common to movies from this time period. Kelly acts up a storm as the mom, and McCormack doesn't have to do much but read her lines since her character is such a whack job to begin with, but it's Eileen Heckart in a smaller role as the mother of one of Rhoda's victims who steals the show. She gets two scenes and plays both of them as a drunk mess. She overacts to the high heavens but somehow manages to be mesmerizing and devastating.Kelly, Heckart, and McCormack all received Oscar nominations for their performances, and Harold Rosson received a nod for his black and white cinematography.Grade: B+
Richard Dominguez
Unlike The Many Remakes That Came After This Classic The 1956 Version Still Captures Horror And Fear Like None That Came After ... The Story Was Well Written And Had An Excellent Cast Of Actors For Support ... I Liked The Opposite Roles Played By The Two Mothers ... The Misery Of One Over Her Lose And The Misery Of The Other Over What She Knew ... Although Nancy Kelly (Christine Penmark) Was Nominated For An Oscar For Her Role (Which Was Phenomenal) I Was Taken By Patty McCormack (Rhoda Penmark) ... Her Role As "The Bad Seed" Was Startling To Say The Least ...
BA_Harrison
Nature or nurture? Can a person be born evil or is wickedness always the result of a bad upbringing? These are the questions that arise as 8-year-old Rhoda (Patty McCormack) proceeds to bump off anyone who gets in her way.The first few scenes of The Bad Seed drip with an exaggerated saccharine sweetness that is difficult to stomach ("What will you give me for a basket of kisses?" asks Rhoda; "A basket of kisses? Why, I'll give you a basket of hugs!" comes her father's reply). Some might believe that director Mervyn LeRoy was deliberately aiming for high camp. Others have surmised that the over the top theatricality was the result of a stage cast unused to performing in front of a camera.Another possibility, and one that I he subscribe to, is that LeRoy intended for the excessive fawning of his central family to catch his audience off-guard, the cloying sentimentality at complete odds with the harrowing emotional pain and suffering later endured by those most affected by Rhoda's unspeakable acts. It certainly had that effect on me, the breakdown of Rhoda's mother (Nancy Kelly) and the anguish of Mrs. Daigle (Eileen Heckart), mother of dead child Claude, coming as quite a shock given how unbearably happy everyone is at the start of the film.Extremely daring for the day, the film not only deals with the touchy subject of child murderers (rare, but not unheard of), but also depression, mental breakdown, alcoholism, and suicide, ultimately making it quite the traumatic experience despite the staginess of the acting. It also manages to deliver not one, but two twist endings, the first very effective, the second bloody ridiculous, but oh so entertaining. And to cap it all off, we get a cast call that sees each performer taking a bow, closing with Kelly putting McCormack over her knee and giving her a good spanking. WTF?!?!
Antonius Block
A seemingly prim and proper 8-year-old girl is suspiciously near a classmate who earned a medal instead of her when he drowns, thus setting off questions about her involvement in his death. The concept of an evil child is inherently eerie, and the film likens the possibility of one who can commit murder to Mozart showing his talent for music at a very young age. There are a couple of chilling moments as the mother's suspicions grow and the past unfolds, her own as well as the child's, but the film drags in places, lacks tension, and is too long at 129 minutes. It also suffers from a ridiculous ending which was not present in the novel or play, and entirely due to the Hays Code. Nancy Kelly is reasonably good in the role of the mother, but it's surprising to me that she and a couple of co-stars were nominated for Academy Awards, including Patty McCormack, the child, who was mediocre. I suspect the acclaim was due to the content being more shocking in 1956, but today, the film is just barely passable. As a side note, though, it's interesting that the band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds got its name from the novel.
AD
