The Bad Seed
The Bad Seed
NR | 12 September 1956 (USA)
Watch Free for 30 Days

Stream thousands of hit movies and TV shows

Start 30-day Free Trial
The Bad Seed Trailers

Air Force Colonel Kenneth Penmark and his wife, Christine, adore their daughter Rhoda, despite her secret tendency for selfishness. Christine keeps her knowledge of her daughter's darker side to herself, but when a schoolmate of Rhoda's dies mysteriously, her self-deception unravels.

Reviews
Ameriatch

One of the best films i have seen

StyleSk8r

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

View More
Calum Hutton

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

View More
Marva-nova

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

View More
zardoz-13

"Little Caesar" director Mervyn LeRoy's controversial film "The Bad Seed" concerns a bright, well-behaved, 8-year old girl who qualifies as a sociopath because she displays no qualms about killing anybody that interferes with her lifestyle. Nevertheless, she maintains an innocence that nobody could impugn on the surface of things. This Academy Award nominated melodrama came about after novelist William Marsh wrote "The Bad Seed" in 1954 and the Broadway play written by Maxwell Anderson followed. The idea that such a youngster could commit such murderous acts is still rather sensational, and it wasn't until 1985 when television finally caught up with it and produced it as a made-for-television movie. Of course, neither LeRoy nor his scenarist John Lee Mahin, best known for "Scarface" and "Quo Vadis," could depict the grisly killings in complete detail owing to the rules of the Production Code Administration. The cast is good, especially Nancy Kelly, Patty McCormack, Henry Jones, and Eileen Heckart. Of course, Patty McCormack stands out because she has to convince us that she could perpetuate these crimes. Nancy Kelly suffers throughout because she isn't sure that she wasn't an orphan, and things get complicated for her because she discovers that her cute light girl is in fact a murderer. The initial evidence comes out after Rhoda Penmark (Patty McCormack) grows incensed that another school mate--Claude Daigle--has won the spelling bee contest that she believed that she should have won. Later, the school that Patty attends takes the students on a field trip near a lake, and the little boy drowns under mysterious circumstances. Mind you, this tragedy takes a drastic toll on Claude's mother, Hortense (Eileen Heckart of "Heartbreak Ridge"), and she visits the Penmarks and tries to extract every bit of information that she can get out of Rhoda about Claude's last hours alive. Meantime, the man who serves as a groundskeeper, LeRoy Jessup (Henry Jones of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid"), suspects that Rhoda is a little dastard, and the two have a contentious relationship until Rhoda's well-meaning mother Christine (Nancy Kelly) warns him to back off. Imagine her surprise after she finds the spelling bee medal in Rhoda's belongings and later suspects that her darling daughter killed the groundskeeper. Naturally, Christine cannot handle this revelation any more than she can deal with the news that she was a orphan taken in by a kindly couple. The chief problem with LeRoy's adaptation is its reliance on standard-issue theatrical staging of the action. The film confines most of the action to the Penmark's rental apartment, occasionally going outside so Rhoda and Jessup can have their quiet confrontations. Altogether, despite the drawback of static staging, "The Bad Seed" hasn't lost any of its potency, and Patty McCormack is first-rate as the homicidal little girl. Although he doesn't have a major role, William Hopper walks in and out of the action as Christine's husband and Rhoda's father who has left them to take a job in Washington, D.C., in the Pentagon. The ending is a real chiller, too!

View More
Siliw

this movie is a criminal and horror movie. But it is a child criminal movie which has been released to public at that sensitive years of movie production. this is the biggest challenge for this movie. And also there is a rumor says that the ending for this movie has been changed because of the strict movie production rules. The real ending is: mother died but the daughter survived. Personally speaking, I like this ending better. Because this is the ending that keeps the continuity of the whole movie genre. Also this new ending will have more impact to viewers. But ignore the ending, it still a good movie. It shows a young potential antisocial killer's movement. Somehow psychological factors are always associate with those suspense, horror and criminal movies. But it is a big challenge for director to perform this topic.

View More
Adam

A great film about the psychopathic Rhoda. Although some acting leaves something to be desired, the film still holds up well. It is surprising how suspenseful some scenes are 60 years later. I would think that it would not hold up well to a contemporary audience, and although some aspects don't, the film as a whole really does. Perhaps one of the more memorable scenes is when Monica and Christine both incoherently talk to themselves after seeing a man burned alive. The overlapping sound was just unnerving. The ending of this film shows evidence of the production code of the time. The clear good coming out better than evil felt bland. Although I still enjoyed the film, I would love to have seen the unhampered result.

View More
Hitchcoc

Patty McCormick spent her whole life being referred to as "The Bad Seed." This is a study in how much something evil can manifest itself in the world when left unchecked. The clueless adults in the girl's life are at the center of everything. A friend once told me that if you act like a worm, someone is going to step on you. Patty (Rhoda) is utterly evil. She will do anything, including murder because she is psychotic. She also has the wherewithal to pull the wool over the eyes of others. I'm giving this an eight because I think the ending is one of the stupidest things I've ever seen. There is no evidence to say that this is an act of the supernatural. If they were going to pull that out, they would have needed a little bit of foreshadowing.

View More