The Bad Seed

The Bad Seed centres on eight-year-old Rhoda Penmark, a seemingly polite and well-behaved child whom her mother Christine adores. When a classmate dies in an accident during a school outing, Christine begins to suspect that her daughter is not the innocent girl she appears to be. As she looks into the death and earlier incidents, she is forced to confront what Rhoda may really be capable of. The film is based on Maxwell Anderson's play.

Mervyn LeRoy directed and produced this 1956 Warner Bros. release, working from a screenplay by John Lee Mahin. It was the thirteenth of the fourteen films LeRoy directed in chronological order, arriving after Mister Roberts in 1955 and before Gypsy in 1962. Patty McCormack plays Rhoda, with Nancy Kelly as Christine, Henry Jones as Leroy Jessup, Eileen Heckart as Hortense Daigle, Evelyn Varden as Monica Breedlove and William Hopper as Colonel Kenneth Penmark; twenty-three cast members are credited overall.

Released in September 1956, the film runs 129 minutes. On IMDb it holds a rating of 7.4 from around 18,000 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 7.1 from roughly 276 votes. A critics' rating of 7.1 from 28 reviews places it close to the audience scores on both platforms. Made for about 1 million dollars, it mixes drama, horror and thriller elements.