Tuesday 7 October 2008

Day 7: The Bad Seed

Oh dear, I do hope that Sham Shocktober isn’t just turning into a daily dose of me reeling off a film title and saying “OMG! I can’t believe I’ve not seen this!” – because that would be so boring. I had hoped the idea might have a little more depth than that. On the other hand, in respect to The Bad Seed, OMG! I can’t believe I’ve not seen this!

Now, I’m not totally clueless when it comes to the movie – I mean, I know it’s not about gardening or anything – but, considering how synonymous its title is with the notion of devil-children, it’s surprising how little I actually do know about it. I know it stars Patty McCormack as the eponymous pipsqueak, and I assume she gets up to some things that just weren’t socially acceptable in 1956 – like holding her cutlery in the wrong hands or perhaps even shouting “atom bomb!” in math class. I saw 1993’s The Good Son, which everyone compared to The Bad Seed, and that had Macaulay Culkin throwing a mannequin off a motorway bridge and calling Elijah Wood a shithead or something, but I doubt The Bad Seed is as histrionic as that (or as goshdarn funny).

Patty returned to her suburban-psycho roots in a couple of other 90s movies, Mommy and Mommy 2: Mommy’s Day, this time playing a bad seed who’s grown up, germinated and produced seedlings of her own... Uh, yeah, that’s about as far as I can run with that metaphor. I doubt they’re as good as Serial Mom, anyway.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't forget Patty also originated the role of Carol the D.A. on Magnum P.I. and lived next door to the Ropers. Now that's scary!

The Bad Seed is pretty awesome. See it.

Stacia said...

Definitely see this one. It's a good movie, and it taught me what excelsior is.

Ross Horsley said...

OMG, what is this... this excelsior of which you speak?

Two strong recommendations for this one, anyway!