The Bad Seed

The Bad Seed (1956) is a psychological thriller directed by Mervyn LeRoy — watch it online on iFILM. Eight-year-old Rhoda Penmark is polite, neat and charming. Everyone in the neighbourhood says so. Her mother Christine tries very hard to believe it too.

Then a boy at school wins a penmanship medal Rhoda felt she deserved. Days later, he drowns. The details don't add up. Patty McCormack plays Rhoda with a sweetness so precisely calibrated it turns unnerving well before the film shows its hand; Nancy Kelly, who originated the role on Broadway, carries Christine's mounting dread across the whole picture — a woman watching herself understand something she cannot afford to understand. The script is adapted from Maxwell Anderson's stage play, itself drawn from William March's novel.

What keeps this 1956 film sharper than most of what came after it in the evil-child subgenre is that it grounds the horror in psychology, not spectacle. The most disturbing scenes are conversations. Stream The Bad Seed (1956) online on iFILM.