As unbelievable as it may seem, I'd never seen
The Bad Seed before last night. I chose to watch it for a continuation of my "killer kids" review series, and because I already owned it. Yes, I own a digital copy (purchased for $2 during a sale a few years back) and never bothered to watch it until yesterday. I'm self-flagellating because it seems like an obvious film for any horror fan to watch. But I'm always a bit hesitant about watching old black and white films because, unless they're
Psycho or
It's a Wonderful Life, they're usually boring - at least to me - but I was pleasantly surprised by this one!
The story began as a book, then became a stage play, then ripened into a movie (all within a span of just a couple of years). The action of the film, which takes place almost entirely in an apartment living room, feels very stagy. I wouldn't have needed to know that it was a play first in order to know that it was a play first. With the exception of a small handful of scenes that transpire near and around the apartment, the only background we generally see is the Penmarks' living room. There's a staircase outside the front door of the apartment, which we see characters whiz up and down on occasion, and there's a gazebo outside where title character, Rhoda Penmark, plays quietly with her many toys, and where she is frequently confronted by crude apartment groundskeeper, Le'Roy Jessup, who straight-up hates her and lets her know about it. We also briefly see a field where Rhoda and her classmates are picnicking, and we get a brief glimpse of Rhoda's father's office. That's about it for scenery. We also never see any of the action for which Rhoda is blamed. We don't see any of the deaths, we only hear about them via her mother, teacher, landlady, and various outsiders. When an audience can't be shown an action
The Bad Seed, I don't think it's a bad film at all. It's actually very well-written, cast, and performed. There's not a bad actor in the bunch! It's also very well-paced considering it's really not much more than people talking at each other for two hours.
So, this movie is basically nothing but exposition.
I have a background in theatre, so whenever I watch a play, or a movie that was clearly a play first, I always cast myself in it. And if I were going to be cast in
The Bad Seed, I'd want to play Hortence Daigle, the bereaved mother of a boy who drowned tragically at the school picnic. Hortence is so sad you can cut her pain with a knife. Hortence is also scandalously drunk and a bit trashy. And Hortence knows Rhoda had something to do with the death of her son, if she could only talk to the girl... If she could only talk to her for just a minute...
After reading up on the history of this production, I was interested to find that most of the actors in the film originated their roles in the play, which explains how they all had their characters down pat onscreen. It's obvious in the film that these actors are intimately familiar with their respective characters, and it's really what keeps the film moving along so briskly despite the fixed scenery.
I also found it intriguing that the film version ends completely differently from the stage version. I won't spoil the film's ending for you, but I will tell you that the stage version ends with Rhoda's mother dying and Rhoda living to do... well... whatever it is that she does, without interference. The movie takes this general route, to a degree, but goes five steps further with it and ends up doing something completely out of the blue. The ending felt very abrupt, and unnatural. I want to nitpick it for you, but I don't want to spoil it.
