Today’s review is for the 1956 movie about a child psychopath, “The Bad Seed”. This was based on the play and novel by the same name and directed by Mervyn LeRoy. Despite the warning at the credits not to spoil the ending for other viewers, I will absolutely be spoiling it, since the ending factors in to my score. So if you feel the need to avoid those for this nearly 70 year old film you may want to skip this one (or come back to it after you’ve watched). Let’s dig in.
October Review Challenge – Day 30
The movie starts with a very traditional 50’s style family scene with parents Kenneth (William Hopper) and Christine (Nancy Kelly) doting on their 8 year old daughter Rhoda (Patty McCormack). Rhoda tells them and their neighbour/landlady Monica (Evelyn Varden), about a writing medal that she should have won, but some boy won instead. Rhoda has a mini tantrum over this but cheers up quickly to say goodbye to her father who will be away on business for an extended period. She then heads off for her schools picnic at the lake.
Tragedy strikes during the picnic as one of the boys dies on the old pier, an area where the children were not meant to be. The boy in question is “Claude”, the one that won the writing medal, which he had with him on the trip. Though it was not recovered. Rhoda returns home but seems in a buoyant mood, not at all impacted by the loss of her classmate. Indeed her main interest is in the fact that they didn’t get to have the picnic and so she wants feeding.
The Little Terror
Christine finds from Rhoda’s teacher that she was apparently the last person seen with Claude and was apparently trying to steal his medal off him. Meanwhile the creepy caretaker Leroy Jessup (Henry Jones) is teasing Rhoda about the boys death saying he knows she did it, assuming she used a stick and saying that water won’t wash off blood and the police will find it. Rhoda then asks her mother if this is true, which confuses Christine.
Later Christine finds the medal in Rhoda’s room and starts to suspect. Something that comes to a head when she catches Rhoda attempting to dispose of her shoes and she admits that she killed the boy. Christine also realises that she killed an old neighbour of theirs too because she wanted to inherit a snow globe the old woman had promised her. Christine is distraught but determined to protect her girl. She tells her to put the shoes in the furnace and says she will dispose of the medal (Which she later tells Rhoda she did at the lake).
Death and Judgement.
Leroy teases Rhoda again, this time Rhoda reveals she used her shoes and not a stick and that she burned them, to which the caretaker claims to have rescued the shoes from the furnace. To which Rhoda gets made and threatens him if he does return them. It finally dawns on Mr. Dalgie that she isn’t just playing along with him but is actually a killer. Scared, he admits he doesn’t have the shoes, but Rhoda doesn’t believe this. This of course spells the end for Dalgie as Rhoda sets his makeshift bedding alight as he slept in the basement and locked him in.
This turns out to be the final stray for Christine that decides the only thing to do is to kill her daughter. She tricks her into taking an overdose of sleeping pills and then heads to her room and shoots herself. Unfortunately her neighbours hear the shot and save both their lives. However while Christine is recovering in hospital. Rhoda goes down to the lake during a stormy night to try and find her medal and is struck by lightning.
Oscar Worthy?
First and foremost we have to talk about Patty McCormack and Rhoda. The little 11 year old actress puts on an incredibly convincing performance of a psychopathic 8 year old child. Children in horror isn’t totally unheard of at the time (Night of the Hunter was only a year earlier) however, the idea of a child as the villain in a horror was as far as I can tell unheard of. That would make Rhoda a ground breaking character and even more impressive for the performance of McCormack who would have had no frame of reference. By the 1970’s we’d have Village of the Damned, The Omen and The Exorcist, but those were a long way off when The Bad Seed came around.
While Harvey Spencer Stephens was only 6 when he played Damien Thorn in The Omen, I can’t help but feel that role was a lot simpler, most of the time he just had to look moody while the effects dealt with the actual horror part. McCormack however actually isn’t seen doing any of the crimes, so selling her evil is entirely down to her actions and dialogue on screen and her performance was top notch. Linda Blair on the other hand had a few extra years of maturity before she played the possessed Regan (She was 14 I think, which is probably still too young for what that role required). Rhoda isn’t as scary as Regan, but the fact that The Bad Seed feels like something that could happen in real life means the film is on some levels more unsettling.
Minor Issues
However you frame it, it was a very impressive performance and one for which she was nominated for a Oscar as best supporting actress. I’ve not seen “Written on the Wind” so I can’t just say if Dorothy Malone (the winner of best supporting actress that year) deserved it more than Patty McCormack, but this is another performance that certainly was good enough for a win. One of the things I noted in the film was how much more convincing her performance was than her nemesis’ the families handy man “Leeroy”, played by Henry Jones. In their scenes together 11 year old Patty is acting rings around the 44 year old man. Fortunately Nancy Kelly as lead holds up better and the pair had a great chemistry together.
The story itself is mostly good but isn’t without problems. Rhoda has clearly been evil for a while, but the film relies on her mask slipping just over the period of the film, so much so that her mother starts to suspect her. While there is a trigger event and a few of the other character suspect she’s not what she pretends to be, the amount the mask slips during the film makes it hard to believe it hasn’t slipped before (and regularly). On top of that Christine’s side plot with her fears of being adopted fits uneasily into the story by trying to find a genetic cause for Rhoda being a sociopath. Of course this thread leads to the name of the film and possibly Christine’s final solution, but it could probably have been dealt with faster.
The Hays Code And The 1950’s Audience.
Speaking of Christine’s solution, the ending of the film unfortunately has “The Hays Code” written all over it and in an unfortunate way. The code would have called for Rhoda to be punished for her crimes. That, I don’t especially have an issue with but how it was done felt false and tacked on. They actually had a perfect ending already in the bag but instead of allowing the very sad ending of a mother killing her own child and then herself, they played it out, then had both miraculously survive and then had the movie end with Rhoda randomly get killed by lightning while trying to retrieve the medal she was so covetous of. As satisfying as it was to see Rhoda basically get blown up, it felt a painfully contrived.
This then is followed up by a cast parade and a little scene where Rhoda gets a spanking from her mother. Clearly they wanted to remind people this was only fiction. Clearly the film was considered too dark and that is likely too why they had both characters survive Christine’s murder/suicide. I understand that in 1956 this may have been shocking to the audience but for me it just seemed sloppy. I can’t help but feel if they didn’t want Christine to succeed but did want Rhoda to die they should have found a more natural way for one of her schemes to backfire. I mean the Hays code had been in place for a long time by now, so they must have known the ending was an issue going in.
Conclusion
Overall, this is a pretty good film, but one severely limited by the time it was made. Had it come out 12 years later it wouldn’t have been restricted by the Hays Code and wouldn’t have had the messy ending. The movie is ahead of it’s time, but there is a point where you can be too ahead of your time (Sega Dreamcast anyone?) and The Bad Seed is at the very least right up against that line. However, despite the ending and some minor pacing issues (and some bad acting from the supporting cast), this is a compelling story with great performance from Patty McCormack, a very gifted eleven year old (Who is now in her late 70’s of course) along with a strong lead performance from Nancy Kelly. Even with the Hays code stuff, this is still a strong 6.5/10
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