13 Nights of Shocktober: The Bad Seed (1956)

 by A.J.

Night 3: Psycho Killer Night

“It’s just that they are bad seeds. Plain bad from the beginning”

The Bad Seed

The “creepy kid” or “killer kid” movie is an entire subgenre of horror with entries like Village of the Damned, The Innocents, Bloody Birthday, The Good Son, and Orphan to name a few. The Bad Seed (1956) has a firm place as a classic, if not the classic, creepy kid/killer kid movie. Based on a novel by William March and its stage adaptation, the killer kid here is 8-year-old Rhoda who is outwardly sweet, privately snobby, and also quite evil and murderous. Though The Bad Seed is not at all violent, it feels delightfully subversive and transgressive, like a movie that got away with something, especially for being made during the 1950’s.

The trouble begins when Rhoda loses a class award to another student. Then on a field trip that boy drowns in a lake after hitting his head. The medal goes missing but later Rhoda’s mother, Christine (Nancy Kelly), finds it hidden in Rhoda’s room and begins to suspect that her daughter caused the boy’s death. She also starts to wonder if Rhoda may be responsible for the death of their last landlady, a nice old lady who promised to leave Rhoda an heirloom when she died…and then suddenly died. Christine is also dealing with the knowledge that she was adopted and her biological mother was a notorious serial killer. There are some debates about nature vs nurture, likely one of the first times the topic was addressed in a major film. 

Young Patty McCormack does an excellent job playing Rhoda. She seems completely capable of causing the deaths that happen off screen, which are plausible as accidents or murders–they are not grand or elaborate “kills.” She is also convincing as a little kid. Rhoda is smart and clever, but is not an evil genius. When the creepy groundskeeper, Leroy (Henry Jones), who sees right through her façade, taunts her about having evidence against her, she believes him the way a child believes an adult, even one they don’t like. This exchange makes Leroy Rhoda’s next target

You might hear that The Bad Seed is a campy movie, and after seeing it you might even agree, but this does not diminish the dark, disturbing nature of the movie. Many of the performances seem just a bit over the top, but a better description is that they are heightened stage performances that were not turned down for the movie version. This makes sense since most of the cast from the stage production reprise their roles for the movie. They are still great performances, however, and it is no surprise that Nancy Kelly received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress and Patty McCormack received a nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Eileen Heckart, who plays the mother of the dead boy, really makes the most of only two scenes and also received a Supporting Actress Oscar nomination.

The real camp value in The Bad Seed comes from how totally oblivious the adults, except for Leroy, are to Rhoda’s malevolent side. When Nancy asks Rhoda about the death of their previous landlady the entire scenario is so obviously murder that Rhoda’s continued good girl act becomes humorous. I think director Mervyn LeRoy knew what he was doing in allowing these exaggerated, or camp, moments into the movie. The stylized performances and dark humor take the edge off an otherwise disturbing premise. 

Of course the novel and play end differently than the movie, which had to tack on a new ending to satisfy the requirements of the puritanical Production Code office. This is the most outlandish and campy scene of all, yet even this scene is so over the top that it feels subversive too. It is as though the filmmakers decided that if they had to add an ending where Rhoda gets her comeuppance, they would tack on the most ridiculous “moral” ending imaginable. Also, a Warner Bros. executive insisted on including a “cast curtain call,” not common in this era when movies had no closing credits, with the cast happy and smiling, including Patty McCormick and Nancy Kelly, just so audiences could rest easy with the extra assurance that they had not been watching a documentary. Though it may not be exactly scary, The Bad Seed is a dark and creepy and entertaining film.

The Bad Seed airs on TCM on Sunday, October 22nd at 1PM CT and is also available to stream on Hoopla.

13 Nights of Shocktober: Mark of the Vampire

by A.J.

This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month-long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. So, for the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some horror movie recommendations to help you celebrate Shocktober.

Night 1: Vampire Night 

"The vampire. He is still somewhere within this house."

Mark of the Vampire

If you’ve seen the Universal Studios 1931 classic Dracula enough times, consider the 1935 film Mark of the Vampire for a change of pace. Many things about Mark of the Vampire are similar to Dracula, beginning with the director and vampire: Todd Browning and Bela Lugosi, respectively. Aside from Lugosi playing a vampiric count who lives in a castle, there is also the character of the eccentric occult expert, Professor Zelin, who is similar to Dracula’s Professor Van Helsing. As many similarities as there are to Dracula, this is actually a remake of the silent film London After Midnight, which Browning also directed. MGM was known for star studded prestige movies, not for horror movies and with Mark of the Vampire they were no doubt trying to recreate Universal’s success with the genre. This would explain the copycat elements, which are not as irksome as they might seem. Mark of the Vampire is still very enjoyable and its entertainment value is its own.

After an aristocrat is found murdered with two holes on his neck, both his friend and his doctor believe he has been killed by a vampire but Inspector Neumann (Lionel Atwell) believes something else is at play. When the aristocrat’s daughter, Irena (Elizabeth Allan), seems to be the next victim, the eccentric Professor Zelin (Lionel Barrymore) is called in to help. It takes a while for Zelin to enter the story (just like Van Helsing in Dracula) but once he does it is clear that Lionel Barrymore is the real star and he becomes the movie’s driving force. There is not much “action” in the modern sense but Barrymore’s dialogue delivery conveys an urgency that creates its own kind of excitement. Most people today know Lionel Barrymore as mean, old, corrupt Mr. Potter from Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, so it’s interesting to see him as a take-charge hero.

Unlike Dracula, the vampires (Lugosi as Count Mora and Carroll Borland as his “daughter” Luna) are more side characters with the story’s focus on the human characters. Lugosi approached the role of Count Mora as a different take on his signature Dracula. Count Mora is nearly completely silent and comes across as more of a monster, lacking the sinister allure of Lugosi’s Dracula.

There is plenty of old-fashioned spooky atmosphere thanks to the frightened villagers, the sets, especially the abandoned castle where Count Mora and Luna reside, and fog, lots and lots of fog. Of course, many of the effects are dated (fake bats have never looked good in any era), but they are just what you want to see in a horror movie from the 1930’s.

There is a plot twist late in the film which might cause some eye rolls or frustration but it works in large part because it still leads to a satisfying conclusion. Also, it is a trick played on one particular character, not the audience, and helps solve the mystery. Like many classic era horror movies, Mark of the Vampire is just over an hour long but packs in so much it feels like a full-length feature.

Mark of the Vampire airs on TCM Tuesday, October 20^th at 7:45AM CT.

13 Nights of Shocktober: Deep Red

by A.J.

This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month-long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober.  So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some scary movie recommendations to help you celebrate Shocktober.

Night 5: Argento Night

“I can feel death in this room!”

Deep Red     

  

Italian filmmaker Dario Argento is most famous for his work in the horror genre, namely Suspiria, but he began his career writing and directing films known as giallos, an Italian subgenre of violent murder mysteries and thrillers. This genre, which takes its name from pulp novels printed on yellow paper (giallo is Italian for yellow), often skirted the line between thriller and horror. Giallo plotlines would be murder mysteries or who-done-its but sometimes also followed the structure of a slasher movie, with the violence to match. For this reason, many, if not all, giallo films can be considered horror movies, including Dario Argento’s Profondo Rosso, or Deep Red.

David Hemmings plays Marcus, an English pianist visiting Rome who witnesses the brutal murder of Helga Ulman (Macha Meril), a famous psychic. He teams up with a persistent reporter, Gianna (Daria Nicolodi), to solve the murder. They interview potential witnesses, collect clues, and are pretty competent detectives. The police seem to be only slightly involved in the investigation and mostly just help Marcus conduct his own investigation. At the initial crime scene, Marcus asks the police if they touched or moved anything in the dead psychic’s apartment. It’s a peculiar choice but it allows Marcus to be at the center of the action.

Dario Argento’s directorial style is, well, being stylish. The auditorium where Helga demonstrates her psychic abilities for an audience (mentioning that she can only read people’s thoughts and see their past, not predict the future... hence her bloody murder with a cleaver) has lush red curtains and table where she sits is draped in the same bold red. The production design and color palette are bold and eye catching in every scene. Blood in Deep Red, and there’s a lot of it, is actually a bright, bold red bordering on orange-red in certain scenes. It looks completely fake, but it’s stylish to the point of turning the murder scenes into gruesome tableaus. The progressive synth rock score by Goblin is creepy and thrilling in all the right ways and of course, gives the movie a stylish soundtrack. The cinematography by Luigi Kuveiller is a feast for the eyes; every shot is well composed and photographed. Even a scene with not much happening visually, like Marcus and his friend Carlo talking on a deserted street with a Roman statue in the background looks impressive. Light and shadow, close-ups, and POV shots are used to great effect. Not only do they create a distinct look, but they also create an atmosphere of mystery and suspense. In a particularly effective scene, we see extreme close ups of the inner workings of a piano as Marcus composes a song followed by a POV shot of the killer approaching Marcus. Then we see a wide shot of the room and a shadow covers Marcus and his piano.

In its best moments, Deep Red is reminiscent of an Alfred Hitchcock film: an excellent blend of style and suspense. Also like in a Hitchcock film, Hemmings plays an everyman caught in an extraordinary situation that he has to solve (mostly) on his own. Like the protagonists in Argento’s previous films The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Cat O’Nine Tails, Marcus must solve a murder by picking apart his memory. While the supernatural sets up the premise for Deep Red, the rest of the movie is a straightforward mystery. However, the gruesome deaths, an increasing body count, and creepy touches like the killer playing a recording of children singing, a random ghastly faced automaton firmly plant Deep Red in the horror genre. It is not without lighter moments, usually of Marcus and Gianna being at odds, and bizarre moments, like Gianna mistakenly stabbing a bird in midair. All of that style takes the dread out of the violence and makes Argento’s macabre mystery a thoroughly engaging picture.