One of my favorite good bad movies. If you’ve never seen it, grab it! No matter how many times I’ve watched this I get sucked in.
It’s high camp, and awful, but it’s also terrific. Nancy Kelly (I so want her hairdo!), Henry Jones, Eileen Heckert and America’s Sweetheart, little Patty McCormack, acting their hearts out, chowing down on the scenery. But it’s also a terrific story and holds you riveted. You can have Rhoda Morganstern, give me Rhoda Penmark!
(As another third of the high-camp overacting trifecta, TCM is also showing Suddenly, Last Summer at 6:00: “They’re going to cut–out–my–BRAIN!”).
Oh, yay! Thanks for the heads up. I like *Suddenly, Last Summer * (my Mom does a killer impression of Liz Taylor from that film) but I love The Bad Seed.
I love how in Suddenly Last Summer, the Katharine Hepburn drag queen (there’s no way that could actually be Katharine Hepburn!) hires batshit crazy Monty Clift of all people to give Liz Taylor a lobotomy (I wonder if she demanded a receipt?).
Don’t forget William Hopper as Colonel Penmark, father of Rhoda.
There’s one scene that makes my teeth hurt, it’s so sweet:
Rhoda: What will you give me for a basketful of kisses?
Col. Penmark: I’ll give you a basketful of hugs!
Hopper is best known to 50-somethings like me as Paul Drake from the original Perry Mason series.
He was also the son of gossip columnist supeme, Hedda Hopper.
The Bad Seed definitely falls into the it’s so bad it’s good category.
And the ending! I won’t spoil it, but hang with this camp thriller all the way to the end!
I own the special edition DVD set of Valley of the Dolls. It’s just so deliciously campy. (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read the book, as well).
Although, I have a big place in my heart for Peyton Place. Can we make that 1st runner up?
I played The Bad Seed in the video store where I work the other night. People of all ages were just riveted. Kids in awe, young parents bewildered and perturbed, older customers hooting with delight. Definitely one of the greatest accidentally bad movies of all time. Let’s hope the planned remake (no details yet; hopefully Dakota Fanning will outgrow the part before it’s filmed) does it justice. Which of course it won’t.
I read somewhere that the “excuse” for why the acting was so hilariously awful was that most of the cast (and maybe the director?) were lifted right off of Broadway, where they’d been doing the show every night for a very long run. So they were still projecting to the cheap seats.
Another movie that would make a brilliant double feature with *TBS *is Tomorrow, the World!, (1944; 12 years before TBS) in which Skippy Homeier (you can’t make this stuff up) plays Emil Bruckner, a Nazi Youth whose parents were killed in the war. He comes to America to live with his uncle, Fredric March (no really), and insists on wearing his Nazi uniform and preaching the wonders of the Turd Reich at the dinner table. This kid’s acting style makes Patty McCormack look positively restrained. A must see for fans of The Bad Seed.
Never fails to knock my silk stockings off (except for that awful Production Code ending, of course). Nancy Kelly’s performance is downright operatic–can you believe she did that on Broadway every night for nearly a year?! Worn to a frazzle, she must have been!
I saw Tomorrow The World! not too long ago. Little Skippy tries to kill his cousin, who sold her hair to buy him a watch for his birthday. After the li’l psychpath is caught, he cries some crocodile tears so the cousin says, “Aw, shucks - he didn’t really mean it. Have some birthday cake, Skippy!” I bet the following year Young Adolf murders them all (not just the Jewess) in their beds.
Showed it in the vidstore again tonight. Well, I tried to; someone rented it right out of the machine. I ordered the DVD of Tomorrow the World! tonight. That’ll be fun to play in the store.
