Page to Screen is a series of blog posts where I read a book or story and then watch a movie based on said book or story. It will be intermittent, I’m sure, like most of my “regular” features.
Because I am obsessed with “trade dress” book series, I bought all of the titles in Vintage Books’ Vintage Movie Classics series several years ago, with the intent to read each one and then watch the movie based on the book. I read/watched and reviewed The Bitter Tea of General Yen by Grace Zaring-Stone (movie directed by Frank Capra) and then sort of got distracted by other things. So here, finally, is the second entry in that series (and the third entry in my Page-to-Screen series overall, following Evening Primrose). WARNING: HERE THERE BE SPOILERS (can’t discuss the differences between the book and the movie without spoiling).
BOOK REVIEW
TITLE: The Bad Seed
AUTHOR: William March
205 of pages, Vintage Books, ISBN 9781101872659 (paperback)
DESCRIPTION: (from back cover): There’s something special about eight-year-old Rhoda Penmark. With her carefully plaited hair and her sweet cotton dresses, she’s the very picture of old-fashioned innocence. But when the neighborhood suffers a series of terrible accidents, her mother begins to wonder: Why do bad things seem to happen when little Rhoda is around? Originally published in 1954, William March’s final novel was an instant bestseller and National Book Award finalist before it was adapted for the stage and made into the 1956 film.
MY RATING: 4 out of 5 stars
MY THOUGHTS: William March’s final novel isn’t perfect by any means, and in fact may be a bit problematic as it trades so heavily on stereotypes of women and black characters. But it gave us one of the most chilling, creepiest child villains ever written. Rhoda Penmark is, in my opinion, the gold standard by which all other child villains in horror fiction should be judged. She is truly sociopathic, and none of her evil can be blamed on a supernatural aspect. Blamed on genetics, sure, as March explicates late in the book. But this is pure human evil distilled into an innocent-looking (and usually innocent-acting) eight-year-old.
Of course, if this were just 200+ pages of evil actions by a kid, the book would probably get boring pretty quickly. What makes the book work for me is that we as the reader are never really in Rhoda’s head. We hear her “rationale” (if it can even be called that) for killing her classmate Claude Daigle, and we see the series of interactions with Leroy Jessup that lead to the penultimate scene in the book. Most of what we see is filtered through the eyes of Rhoda’s mother Christine. With her husband away in South America on business and her parents deceased (and her husband’s family emotionally distant), Christine is functioning as a single mother albeit surrounded by older folks who adore Rhoda and want to help. Christine’s character arc – from a mother concerned about her too-perfect daughter’s socialization skills to a mother in denial that her daughter is a murderer to a woman torn between her forgotten past and an uncertain future – is a compelling read. March may handle most of the women in this book as stereotypes, but he gives Christine much more depth. And it is Christine’s research into serial killers (prompted by a dinner party conversation with a friend of a friend) to understand her daughter that leads to the reveal of her repressed memories about her own past. The hints leading up to the reveal are well-placed in dreams and half-asides, but the actual reveal is a bit awkwardly staged, just about the only time in the book where a flashback through Christine’s point-of-view fails to be effective.
As mentioned, the other female characters are barely more than stereotypes: Monica Breedlove is a blowhard who must be the center of attention in all things (starting with her officious gifting to Rhoda of a pendant). Hortense Daigle never really rises above the stereotype of braying alcoholic – I wanted to feel more for the woman whose only son is killed by Rhoda simply for the “crime” of winning an award Rhoda thought she deserved more. Rhoda and Claude’s school is run by a trio of spinsters called the Sisters Fern – and while each is given her own first name and role at the school, I’m hard-pressed now to remember what those names are or what their official jobs were at the school that bears their name. And the male characters fare mostly worse: Christine’s husband is off-screen until the very final pages of the book, Christine’s famous reporter father is only mentioned in flashback, Monica’s brother Emory is a drunken flirt, and Emory’s friend Reginald Trasker is a mere plot device, existing only to provide Christine with the research he’s developed on his favorite subject (in general, serial killers, and in specific, one Bessie Denker). Even Leroy Jessup, Rhoda’s primary foil for much of the book, never really rises to the level of fully realized character. Leroy is the apartment complex handyman and the only other adult who sees through Rhoda’s prim-and-polite exterior, but he’s mostly stereotype: he’s the lazy black working class guy who is horny for women (especially Christine), hates anyone who thinks they are better than him (Monica and Emory) and has a big chip on his shoulder. The scenes between Rhoda and Leroy are tense and build the drama of the book overall (when is little Rhoda going to turn on him?) but Leroy’s inner monologues and home-life scenes read like March is just ticking boxes in writing a “standard Negro character.”
Despite the stereotype-ridden supporting cast, the book is a great read for the characters of Rhoda and Christine, and for an ending that must have shocked readers when the book first came out: the heroine of the story (Christine) attempts a murder-suicide – but only the suicide part is successful. The troubled but basically good mother dies while the evil child survives idea is now a trope of horror movies, but it had to be a surprise at the time. For my money, it’s a perfect ending to the book.
MOVIE REVIEW
TITLE: The Bad Seed
DIRECTOR: Mervyn Leroy
CAST: Nancy Kelly (Christine), Patty McCormack (Rhoda), Evelyn Varden (Monica), Eileen Heckart (Hortense), Henry Jones (Leroy), Paul Fix (Richard Bravo)
2 hours and 9 minutes, black and white, 1956, Warner Brothers
DESCRIPTION: (from IMDb): Christine Penmark seems to have it all: a lovely home, a loving husband, and the most "perfect" daughter in the world. But since childhood, Christine has suffered from the most terrible recurring nightmare. And her "perfect" daughter's accomplishments include lying, theft and possibly much, much worse. Only Christine knows the truth about her daughter and only Christine's father knows the truth about her nightmare.
MY RATING: 4 out of 5 stars
MY THOUGHTS: The journey from novel to movie took a side-step into the world of live theatre, and it’s really the stage play that Mervyn Leroy adapts for this classic film. With a couple of exceptions, he sticks to the Broadway staging, which in places can feel a bit stilted and staged as it forces almost all of the action to take place in Christine and Rhoda Penmark’s living room. There are a few cut-away scenes (to the streets outside the apartment building, the lake where Claude Daigle dies (although we don’t see the death), the apartment’s backyard, and to the hospital) which are very effective when used, but they are few and far between.
The staging being somewhat static, it’s the performances that carry the film. Most of the actors carried over from the Broadway production. Patty McCormack had had plenty of time to hone her performance as Rhoda and it’s pretty much perfect. Her ability to go from innocently polite to cloyingly sweet to angrily psychotic within seconds is impressive. Nancy Kelly is wonderful as Christine, but the character lacks the excellent progression of the novel: Christine looks harried and afraid of her daughter from the very first scene rather than having that fear develop as the story goes on. Still, Kelly is a strong presence on screen and she makes you believe every moment of her performance. Interestingly, Eileen Heckart’s portrayal of Hortense Daigle rises above the base stereotype of the novel. You can hear Hortense’s heartbreak and despondency in every slurred line of dialogue, see it in every misstep and in her slouched posture. Heckart’s performance is one of the standouts of the supporting cast, alongside Henry Jones as Leroy Jessup. The Broadway show (and thus, the movie) changed Leroy from a black man to a white guy. I’m not sure why, but Jones’ performance is pitch perfect. He’s lascivious when leering after Christine, angry when dealing with Monica, and insincerely apologetic to both. But the scenes between Jones and McCormack, especially the one in the backyard arbor, match the tension of the novel. You’re just waiting for Rhoda to crack and when she does Jones plays Leroy’s fear as the very potent thing it is. This is a man who realizes, even more than he does in the novel, that he just brought the full attention of a predator to bear on him, and he has only himself to blame for it.
The change of Leroy from a black character to a white one (leaving the movie with absolutely no people of color, even in background scenes) and setting most of the action in the Penmark living room are not the only difference from book to movie. Some of the other changes are basically inconsequential to the story (instead of being a businessman, Mister Penmark now works for the military and has been called to Washington DC; instead of three Fern Sisters, there is only one), but two are pretty substantial. The first is that Christine’s father, reporter Richard Bravo, is alive and comes for a visit. This was a change made for the stage play, and allows the reveal of Christine’s past to happen via dialogue instead of monologue – which makes it much more effective and gives Nancy Kelly some of her finest moments in the movie, opposite the understated Paul Fix as her father. The love these two share is palpable in every moment of their screen time together, and Fix really drives home how much it hearts Richard to reveal a past to Christine that he hoped she’d never have to be burdened with. I really wish March had given us this in the novel as well.
The other major change is to the ending of the story. The play retained the partially “successful” murder-suicide shock ending, but that wouldn’t fly in Code-era Hollywood. So Christine and Rhoda both survive the murder-suicide – but Rhoda is killed in a cheesily-staged final scene where she makes a midnight, thunderstorm-covered trip back to the lake where she killed Mark and is struck by lightning while standing on the pier. In one respect, it’s nice to see Rhoda get the comeuppance she deserves, but it robs the ending of all the power it has in the book (despite the director’s attempt to draw out the suspense of who lived and died via the scenes in the hospital). It’s the only part of the movie I really didn’t like.
One other weird bit of business. The closing credits are staged as they would be on Broadway, with each actor taking a bow. Nancy Kelly is the last one, and after her bow she looks off-camera and says “and as for you…” and then walks over to the living room sofa, pulls McCormack over her lap and proceeds to jokingly “spank” her, with McCormack laughing the whole while. Almost like the studio felt they needed to give the audience one more reminder that these were just actors in a movie and that McCormack wasn’t really an evil psychotic murderer.
The Bad Seed has been adapted to film twice more, for television. The 1985 version on ABC, which I have vague memories of seeing the commercials for but not of actually watching, started Blair Brown as Christine, Lynn Redgrave as Monica, David Carradine as Leroy, and David Ogden Stiers as Emory, with Carrie Wells as Rachel (Rhoda) and Chad Allen as Mark (Claude) Daigle. I plan to watch it soon and probably write a review. In 2018, Lifetime aired a version with Rob Lowe as the distraught parent and pretty much all of the names changed. This version is apparently not on DVD (I haven’t searched for it on streaming because honestly it sounds pretty bad).