The Bad Seed

Rhoda is eight and a perfect child: her ribbons are straight, her manners are polite, her marks are good. Her mother slowly works out what her daughter has done after a boy drowns on a school outing. Patty McCormack plays Rhoda and Nancy Kelly the mother; both had played the parts on stage and most of that cast was kept for the film. The ending was changed because of the American production code. The code did not permit crime to go unpunished; in the novel and the play the mother dies and the girl lives on. Mervyn LeRoy reversed it: the mother survives and Rhoda is struck dead by lightning. Then a further ending was added. The studio worried the finale would shake audiences too badly, so a curtain call was included in which the cast take a bow and Nancy Kelly puts Patty McCormack over her knee and spanks her. That coda is now the strangest thing about the film. Who it is for: viewers interested in fifties psychological thrillers and in how censorship shaped cinema. Who it is not for: anyone who would rather not approach the subject of children as perpetrators.