Jesse White

  • Mervyn LeRoy – The Bad Seed (1956)

    1951-1960CrimeDramaMervyn LeRoyUSA

    Quote:
    Robin Wood located the seeds for the ghoulish moppet’s maternal stabbing in Night of the Living Dead (and The Exorcist, The Omen, The Brady Bunch, et al.) in little Tootie pulverizing the snowmen in Meet Me in St. Louis; roots had already settled by the time Maxwell Anderson’s play about a soulless sprite got transplanted to screens, only the intergenerational anxiety is whipped into safe, static, psycho-babbling kitsch hysteria. Rhoda (Patty McCormick), the pigtailed, 8-year-old devil, skips back home from drowning a schoolmate and asks mom Nancy Kelly for a peanut-butter sandwich; a “perfect little ray of sunshine,” Au Clair de la Lune played on a loop while the handyman (Henry Jones), wise to the monster behind the curtsies, is barbecued in the basement. Read More »

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