![]() ![]() Warner benefited from the feud with the feud with the Production Code Administration. The studio was forced to excise the shocker stage ending in which the girl gets away with murder. ![]() ![]() Under pressure, the last reel deviated from the stage play. A solution had to be found for the Code provision that murder cannot go unpunished. The Production Code tempered with John Lee Mahin’s screenplay. Realizing that if she doesn’t act quickly, tragedy will multiply on tragedy, Christine gives her child overdose of sleeping pills and then shoots herself. At the climax, the mother realizes that her own mother was a murderess, and that she herself has passed on the taint, giving birth to a monster. ![]() To acquire a coveted penmanship medallion, Rhoda kills a boy, making it appear an accident. Mother Chritsine (Nancy Kelly) begins to suspect that something is wrong with her young daughter, Rhoda (Patty McCormack), when a boy is found drowned in a school picnic. However, at the time, it brought to the screen the heredity versus environment argument. The movie is based on a false, dubious premise that evil and the instincts to kill are biologically conditioned. Adapted to the screen from Maxwell Anderson’s 1954 Broadway hit (based on William March’s novel), The Bad Seed, the 1956 crime-family melodrama, is thematically outdated, but the movie is highly watchable due to Mervyn LeRoy’s taut direction and excellent female-driven ensemble, headed by Nancy Kelly and Patty McCormack in Oscar-nominated roles. ![]()
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