Director: Mervyn LeRoy
Cast: Nancy Kelly, Patty McCormack, Henry Jones, Evelyn Varden
Screenplay: John Lee Mahin
129 mins. Approved.

• Academy Award Nominee: Best Actress in a Leading Role [Nancy Kelly]
• Academy Award Nominee: Best Actress in a Supporting Role [Eileen Heckart]
• Academy Award Nominee: Best Actress in a Supporting Role [Patty McCormack]
• Academy Award Nominee: Best Cinematography, Black-and-White

From one bad seed to another, I can honestly say that Rhoda Penmark (Patty McCormack, The Master) is an absolute monster, and I also don’t think the movie is very good.

When her husband is away on military duty, Christine Penmark (Nancy Kelly, Jesse James) continues to dote on her daughter Rhoda, but that changes when a schoolmate drowns in the lake during a school picnic. As Christine questions Rhoda about the events, including the face that the young boy had previously won a penmanship competition over Rhoda, she begins to wonder if her daughter had anything to do with the boy’s death. As she uncovers more and more layers of Rhoda’s lies and deceits, it becomes clear that Rhoda is…a bad seed!

The Bad Seed earns all of its Academy Award recognition, with terrific performances and strong cinematography. Based on a 1954 play of the same name, the film puts together all the elements of the stage work and makes very few changes from what I’ve researched. The score, composed by Alan North, adds a lot of mood to the film. It seems, from all of this, like the perfect adaptation, so why did I find the film so dull and lifeless?

A lot of it comes down to the adaptation of the screenplay and the pedestrian editing, which makes the film feel all too much like a filmed version of the play instead of an actual movie. Contrary to some beliefs, especially recently, accuracy to the source material does not make a great film. Changes, alterations, to facilitate the film format is what elevates the material. While film and stage are similar, especially in the time period of The Bad Seed’s release, but this is a long, meandering, sluggishy-paced narrative that is probably too afraid to really analyze the events of the material. There’s a haunting performance by McCormack in here, and in some ways that bleeds out to Kelly as well, but it feels obvious from the jump where we’re headed and getting there, in this case, is not nearly as exciting as screenwriter John Lee Mahin and director Mervyn LeRoy hope it is.

The Bad Seed is an iconic film for a reason; it attempts to subvert the innocence of a child with some really incredible work from the entire cast, most notably McCormack, and it’s successful at showcasing the shock and awe of the situation, but in adapting the play, too much is included and the film feels bloated in construction and exposition, as though we cannot be trusted with understanding the complexity of its mission, and maybe for audiences of the 1950s, this was true. If that’s the case, though, The Bad Seed has aged rather poorly. Call it the pessimism of living in today’s times, but I just don’t think this production warranted all that extra run time for a pretty standard and rote plot.

2/5
-Kyle A. Goethe