"(The leading foe of horror comics) Fredric Wertham's dishonest, bullying 'science' also had much in common with the increasingly sophisticated and cynical efforts of Madison Avenue to control the attitudes, anxieties, and consumption patterns of American women. And expanding postwar incomes was enabling psychiatry to make vast inroads into outpatient-land. The as yet unnamed category of drugs to be known as tranquilizers was already on the drawing boards, and would soon permit the psychiatric medicalization of a whole class of postwar discontents, many essentially social and economic in origin." (David J. Skal,
The Horror Show: A Cultural History of Horror, p. 237)
The Bad Seed (one and a half stars total) My middle brother and the guys we grew up with had an inside joke about the way my dad talks. We used to say that anytime he opened his mouth, he was "gettin' technical." As with most men, my dad's not big on chitchat. If you ask him a question, he'll tell you everything he knows with relation to that question and then that topic will be exhausted. Sometimes I catch myself "gettin' technical." This blog is the perfect example. The dialogue on
The Bad Seed (1956) works the same way. It's all exposition. None of it flows naturally. The characters might as well be reading passages from Dr. Spock's book,
Baby and Child Care (1946), like newscasters with a teleprompter. For those of us that didn't grow up with the revolution that was the antiwar protester, Dr. Benjamin Spock, he was the first pediatrician to
apply psychoanalysis to child-rearing.
The Bad Seed might be the first horror movie to apply the word psychoanalysis verbally to a family line of female serial killers. It was definitely the first horror movie to be nominated for (count 'em up) four Oscars, including Best Actress in a Leading Role, two for Best Actress in a Supporting Role and the most surprising to me, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White. The movie takes place mainly indoors and features people sitting on couches for much of its running time, so I'm not sure what cinematography it was nominated for, unless it's the "grace of God" lightning scene at the end. I've already mentioned the acting, but I must specifically mention Nancy Kelly in the leading role. Her hoarse, smoker's voice is so weak and whiny it's
like nails on a chalkboard. While most audiences were probably thinking the bad seed's character just needed a good spanking, I was wishing I could grab the mother's character by the shoulders and shake some sense into her. The daughter's character, played by Patty McCormack, may act like she's been spared the rod and spoiled for sure, but she doesn't look like she's been spared the ugly stick. She has the same wild-eyed unibrow and bad teeth as Ernest Borgnine's title character from
Marty (1955), which swept the Oscars the year before. Back to spankings, the moment of triumph on
The Children's Hour (1961), another movie based on a play with similar themes, comes when a proud old woman finally disciplines her rotten granddaughter, who is partially responsible for a lesbian schoolteacher committing suicide. Such a scene only comes to those who wait till after the "curtain call" styled closing credits on
The Bad Seed, and by then it's too late.
The Bad Seed (one and a half stars total) My middle brother and the guys we grew up with had an inside joke about the way my dad talks. We used to say that anytime he opened his mouth, he was "gettin' technical." As with most men, my dad's not big on chitchat. If you ask him a question, he'll tell you everything he knows with relation to that question and then that topic will be exhausted. Sometimes I catch myself "gettin' technical." This blog is the perfect example. The dialogue on The Bad Seed (1956) works the same way. It's all exposition. None of it flows naturally. The characters might as well be reading passages from Dr. Spock's book, Baby and Child Care (1946), like newscasters with a teleprompter. For those of us that didn't grow up with the revolution that was the antiwar protester, Dr. Benjamin Spock, he was the first pediatrician to apply psychoanalysis to child-rearing. The Bad Seed might be the first horror movie to apply the word psychoanalysis verbally to a family line of female serial killers. It was definitely the first horror movie to be nominated for (count 'em up) four Oscars, including Best Actress in a Leading Role, two for Best Actress in a Supporting Role and the most surprising to me, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White. The movie takes place mainly indoors and features people sitting on couches for much of its running time, so I'm not sure what cinematography it was nominated for, unless it's the "grace of God" lightning scene at the end. I've already mentioned the acting, but I must specifically mention Nancy Kelly in the leading role. Her hoarse, smoker's voice is so weak and whiny it's like nails on a chalkboard. While most audiences were probably thinking the bad seed's character just needed a good spanking, I was wishing I could grab the mother's character by the shoulders and shake some sense into her. The daughter's character, played by Patty McCormack, may act like she's been spared the rod and spoiled for sure, but she doesn't look like she's been spared the ugly stick. She has the same wild-eyed unibrow and bad teeth as Ernest Borgnine's title character from Marty (1955), which swept the Oscars the year before. Back to spankings, the moment of triumph on The Children's Hour (1961), another movie based on a play with similar themes, comes when a proud old woman finally disciplines her rotten granddaughter, who is partially responsible for a lesbian schoolteacher committing suicide. Such a scene only comes to those who wait till after the "curtain call" styled closing credits on The Bad Seed, and by then it's too late.
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