telegonus wrote:

Nancy Kelly's famously overwrought performance as the mother of the daughter from hell strikes me as right for this particular film. She comes off at times as crazier than her cute little daughter. Patty McCormack is beyond praise as little Rhoda. I agree with everyone who says that the scenes between McCormack and dim-witted Henry Jones are the best in the film. I wouldn't quite class The Bad Seed as a horror film. It could have been had it been made differently. As it is, it's too prosaic in presentation to qualify. The character of Rhoda is a monster, for sure, yet there's so much discussion of the hows and whys she's the way she is that the movie becomes a kind of "think piece" in its second half. 

  

Gosh, I love THE BAD SEED.  In a lot of ways it really was a cutting edge picture (and play) for its day.  Not only does it paint a fairly accurate portrait of a psychopathic personality, it daringly applied that persona to a child.  Incapable of tendering affection, Rhoda mimics it ("What will you give me for a basket of kisses?").   The mimicry is likely learned from observation of people and popular culture around her and, in degree, ably reflects the hyper-maternalism of her mother.  Rhoda's egotism is another classic trait of the psychopath and it is her ego that drives her to murder the Daigle boy for the penmanship award pin.



I agree that the mother's scene-chewing works in THE BAD SEED.  By emphasizing or rather exaggerating the wholesomeness of mother figures popular in 1950's television, her maternalism is subverted through the slow reveal of the monster she brought into the world, making that revelation all the more unsettling.  The mother is convincingly transformed from nurturer to attempted child-murderer and suicide in 129 minutes running time.



I also agree that most of the films best sequences are those with Leroy and Rhoda.  Of course there is all the black humor about blue and pink electric chairs and stick bloodhounds.  But what makes their relalationship interesting is that we believe Leroy is on to her.  He recognizes her phoniness and that she's a mean little girl, sort of a pint-sized female Eddie Haskell.  But he has no idea that her meanness goes deeply into pathology.  One of the best moments of the flm is when Leroy, teasing her about killing the boy, suddenly realizes that she really did do it.  The moment of epiphany is obvious; you can see the look of horror on his face when he's confronted by the monster in front of him. And the same revelation to Rhoda's mother is just as sick-making.



I also love that superbly crafted moment of horror when Leroy runs ablaze across the lawn.  Of course we're not shown Leroy's gruesome demise.  We hear his agonizing screams as we watch the mother's eyes follow him across the yard.  It reminds me very much of the high octane scene from Hitchcock's THE BIRDS when we watch Melanie Danials follow the trail of gasoline to the smoker's car.



THE BAD SEED works so well, that for me it's just as riveting on repeat viewings knowing Rhoda's murderous inclinations because the sequence of revelations is so effectively constructed and well-paced.



GARY L. PRANGE
I'm not all bad, just mostly.

"Sic gorgiamus allos subjectos nunc." 
  
Last Edited By: GaryP11111 Mar 27 11 11:57 PM. Edited 2 times.