The Bad Seed (1956)

Written by Jennifer Manriquez, Editor-In-Chief, Paddy Jack Press

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.

Bloody Birthday (1981)

Written by Jennifer Manriquez, Editor-In-Chief, Paddy Jack Press

A spoiler-free review!

I enjoyed The Other so much, I thought I would do an entire retro series on "killer kids." Everything I can find from the 80s and before. So, here we go with Bloody Birthday. It’s a 1981 horror flick that combines Village of the Damned with Day of the Triffids. There’s an eclipse, and the three babies born in this one hospital, in this one city, during this freaky eclipse, become killers right before they turn 10. Why? Who knows? It’s a mind-numbingly flimsy premise, but it’s easy to shrug off because the film is just so much fun! 

We start with the kids just a few days before their tenth birthday, which they all celebrate together every year for some reason. Much like the kids in Village of the Damned, they seem unusually bonded, always around each other, always traveling in a pack. They aren’t family, but to an outsider they seem like they are. They can communicate with each other using only nods and glances. And, while there’s no indication that they are communicating telepathically, they always seem to know what the others are doing or planning. 

The kinder-killer trio consists of two boys, Steven and Curtis, and one girl, Debbie. Steven is blond and is several times seen wearing a denim vest and jeans get-up that transports me right back to my elementary school yearbook, where that same outfit can be seen ad nauseum. He’s a little blond terror, who doesn’t say much, but seems to act as more of a henchman, leaving the clever strategizing up to Debbie and Curtis. 

Speaking of Curtis, Curtis wears glasses. That’s how you know he can figure out anything having to do with electronics. They’re those fake glasses from old movies with the flat lens in them, which I’ve always found really distracting, but I get it. How else would I know that he’s smart if he wasn’t wearing them?

And that brings us to Debbie. Debbie’s my favorite of the three. First of all, my mom’s name is Debbie. Secondly, Debbie has fluffy blond ponytails and a face full of freckles, which are both flawlessly tied together by her cute, little upturned nose. She’s a darling kid, but the eyes. She has dark, beady eyes that she can squint together to make her entire countenance change from “cute kid” to “evil kid” in a nanosecond. Debbie is clearly the ringleader of the crew. She rarely gets her hands dirty. She lets the boys do most of the work, and when they get caught, she starts yelling, “Stop! Stop!” Debbie is an evil mastermind.

I watched this movie on the Shudder channel and was a touch hesitant when the description stated that the film “contains violence and gore.” I’m a huge horror fan, but believe or not, I tend to eschew gore. It’s not my favorite thing. I can handle the average smattering of blood and guts, but I hate that torture-y stuff. So, I was admittedly a touch nervous. But it turns out the “violence” and the “gore” are nothing more gruesome than what you might see on an episode of Knot’s Landing. What the description should have said is, “contains lots and lots of titties.” So many boobs in this movie. And butts. And even some frontsies. There’s a lot of making out, with closeups on nipples. And, everytime you see this, one of the kids is watching! Debbie likes to charge a quarter to let the boys watch her sister (played by 80s-icon, Julie Brown) undress. The “undressing,” however, turns out to be more of a striptease, wherein Julie slowly takes off her underwear while dancing around her bedroom, then inexplicably puts on pants and a shirt, with no underwear, afterward. To quote the musical, Bye Bye Birdie, “KIDS! I don’t know what’s wrong with these kids today.”

In addition to Julie Brown, I recognized a handful of other faces as well. Curtis is played by Billy Jacoby, whom 80s kids might remember as the perverted younger brother of cross-dressing-for-equal-rights Terry in Just One of the Guys. The older sister of one of the trio’s playmates (a kid named Timmy that they’re always trying to murder) also played the doomed older sister in The Day After. Remember the gal who runs out of her family’s bunker and goes skipping through the fallout screaming that it’s a beautiful day, gets chased down by Steve Guttenberg, and later dies from radiation poisoning? Yeah, that’s her. Her name is Lori Lethin, and IMDB said she did all of her own stunts in Bloody Birthday, but there are a couple of shots where a car is chasing her through a junkyard that I’m pretty sure weren’t her. The linebacker-shoulders and the bad wig kind of gave it away. Timmy is played by K.C. Martel, whom you might remember as Eddie, from the comedy duo of “Eddie and Boner,” on Growing Pains. 

There are some genuine cringe-worthy moments in this flick, especially if you were a kid in the 80s. Remember the "Refrigerator Scare?" It was an urban legend about a kid hiding in an old refrigerator and not being able to get out. So, that’s how we all knew never to shut ourselves into a refrigerator. This was a genuine fear that each and every one of us had back then! Bloody Birthday played on that fear by locking a kid in a refrigerator. This scene probably doesn’t play as particularly scary to modern audiences, but the 80s-kid in me clinched up her butthole real tight. Ack!

Overall, I really enjoyed this movie. It’s got a handful of cringe-y moments and a heaping helping of 80s kitsch. Plus, if this interests you, a lot of boobies. I’ll definitely watch it again, and I sincerely hope Joe Bob Briggs will include it in a future episode of The Last Drive-In on the Shudder channel. Go watch it!

The Other (1972)

Written by Jennifer Manriquez, Editor-In-Chief, Paddy Jack Press

A spoiler-free review!

The Other was released theatrically in 1972, which is strange because it has the well-established patina of a 70s-era made-for-TV movie. After watching it, I was surprised that it had a theatrical presence at all. Visually, it looks like an episode of Little House on the Prairie. It’s a fairly slow-moving, but well-written and well-acted film, with one twist that is broadcast from the very beginning (it may have surprised audiences in the 1970s, but it will surprise no-one in the early 2000s) and another that even seasoned horror buffs won’t see coming. To put it simply, I watch horror films day and night, and very little surprises me, but something happened in this film that made me gasp and cover my mouth with my hand. Sometimes it’s the little things that get you. 

The boys who play the twins (real-life twins, Chris and Martin Udvarnoky) are boyishly cute, with chubby legs and chili bowl haircuts, which serve to leave the audience conflicted about their true intentions. They do a great job of conveying their inherent evil and their complete naivete toward it, leaving us wondering what fate they truly deserve. They’re only children, after all. 

The very well-known stage actress, and winner of multiple Tony awards, Uta Hagen, stars as the boys’ grandmother, Ada. There is a distinct difference in Uta Hagen’s acting style compared to everyone else in the film. The other actors act, Uta Hagen ACTS HER ASS OFF. She chews the scenery like a starving person who just happened upon a church barbecue. She pours a palatable wash of emotions into every word she speaks. Every part of her face says the words with her. Her hands say the words, her posture says the words. She is a force to be reckoned with, and the audience knows they can trust her. Her love for the boys is evident in every move she makes, every glance at them speaks of her neverending devotion to them. If nothing else, watch the film for her performance. 

Also, in a don’t-blink-or-you’ll miss it appearance, you can spot the late, great John Ritter in one of his first film roles. 

There is a sense of unrealness to this film, the bright but somehow muted colors making it feel dreamlike. As I watched it, I kept wondering if the whole thing might turn out to be a dream in the end (which it, thankfully, doesn’t). The setting is Connecticut in the summer of 1935, and the freedom experienced by these kids evokes love for the summers of my youth (I grew up in the 70s and 80s). We weren’t put into summer camps to keep us busy and out of trouble all day. No sir. We got on our bikes as soon as we finished breakfast and we did whatever we pleased, with total freedom, until dinnertime. “Home by dinner” was the rule for all the kids in my neighborhood. Watching the twins, Niles and Holland, running around in nature completely unsupervised reminded me of those days long ago. Kids today will never know that level of freedom. My own daughter, who’s in a theatre camp as I type this, will never know that level of freedom. Stealing pickles from an old lady’s garage, wandering a wooded area and watching the little critters scurry and fly around, finding a secret entrance to the basement you’ve been warned away from. These are all things the twins get into during the film, and all things I could easily tie to my own past, which is why I think I was able to sympathize with these characters so well. They’re just boys. Let them have their fun. They won’t hurt anyone… until they do. 

I’ve been told that I give these older films more credit than I should, but I disagree. I’ll admit that I have a special, nostalgic sort of love regarding made-for-TV films. And, while I know this had a quiet theatrical run first, I also know that it was aired quite a bit on television in the late 70s and early 80s, with a slightly different ending tailored to TV audiences. That makes it enough of a made-for-TV film for me. I honestly don’t know what I like most about 70s made-for-TV horror. Is it the pancake makeup, the fact that almost nobody plays their age, or is it the silly anachronisms and low-budget special effects? I can’t put my finger on it, but that’s okay because I love it all. Despite their flaws, some of these films are truly very frightening and can easily stand the test of time. This is one of them. I recommend watching it on a warm summer night, with a glass of lemonade and a plate of cookies. Pull out your grandmother’s old lace shawl and wrap yourself in it. Turn off your phone and put it away. Immerse yourself in the colors, the performances, and the story. I think you might just be surprised where it takes you.