The Bad Seed (1956 film)

The Bad Seed is a 1956 American psychological horror-thriller film with elements of melodrama and film noir, directed by Mervyn LeRoy. The film is based upon the 1954 play of the same name by Maxwell Anderson, which in turn is based on William March’s 1954 novel The Bad Seed. The movie ends with the mother dying and the child surviving.

About The Bad Seed (1956 film) in brief

Summary The Bad Seed (1956 film)The Bad Seed is a 1956 American psychological horror-thriller film with elements of melodrama and film noir, directed by Mervyn LeRoy. The film is based upon the 1954 play of the same name by Maxwell Anderson, which in turn is based on William March’s 1954 novel The Bad Seed. Nancy Kelly, Patty McCormack, Henry Jones, and Eileen Heckart star in the film. The movie ends with the mother dying and the child surviving. The Motion Picture Production Code did not allow for evil to pay for crime, thus the ending of the film reverses the plot of the novel and plays out in the opposite direction of the 1954 novel. The play was adapted by John Lee Mahin for the screenplay of the movie.

The main cast of the main cast has a curtain call in the movie, which has a call-and-response scene. The director has said she will recover from her injuries, but the doctor has said that she will not live past the age of 40. The mother is actually the daughter of a notorious serial killer. The father is not her biological parent; she was adopted. The daughter is determined to retrieve the medal from the lake, but a bolt of lightning strikes her body, sending her into the water and putting an end to her evil, ironically proving Leroy’s prediction that she would be electrocuted for killing Claude Daigle.