Movie Watch: "The Bad Seed" - Is it Heredity? -

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What better topic is there for Valentine’s Day than Motherly Love, especially if your beloved child is a psychotic killer? The glitch? Is it hereditary?

The Bad Seed is a 1956 American psychological horror thriller film directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starring Nancy Kelly, Patty McCormack, Henry Jones and Eileen Heckart, about an eight-year-old girl whose mother begins to suspect that she might be a psychopathic killer. The film adapts the 1954 play of the same name by Maxwell Anderson, which in turn is based on William March’s 1954 novel of the same name. The screenplay was written by John Lee Mahin.

The Plot

Kenneth and Christine Penmark dote on their eight-year-old daughter, Rhoda, pristine and proper in her pinafore dress and blonde pigtails. Kenneth leaves on military duty. Neighbor and landlady, Monica Breedlove, is fond of Rhoda, who tells her about a penmanship competition that she lost to her schoolmate Claude Daigle. Rhoda then leaves for her school picnic at a lake.

Actress Patty McCormack as Rhoda Penmark – https://www.mycast.io/talent/rhoda-penmark

While lunching, Christine and friends hear a radio report that Claude has drowned in the lake. Christine worries that her daughter might be traumatized, but Rhoda is unfazed by the incident. Rhoda’s teacher, Miss Fern, visits Christine, revealing that Rhoda was seen grabbing at Claude’s penmanship medal and was with the boy just prior to his death. She hints that Rhoda might have some connection to Claude’s death, adding that Rhoda will not be welcome at the school after the current term ends. Claude’s parents barge in; Mrs. Daigle is distraught and drunk, accusing Miss Fern of withholding information. When Christine finds the medal hidden in the lining of Rhoda’s jewel case, she demands an explanation. Rhoda tells her that she paid Claude fifty cents to wear it for the day and only kept it in the confusion after Claude’s death.

During a visit from her father, journalist Richard Bravo, Christine confronts him about haunting and confusing memories of her own childhood. She tells him that she always suspected that she was adopted. Initially he denies it, but when Christine recalls details, he reluctantly confirms that she was adopted as a toddler. Christine is horrified to discern that she is the biological daughter of a notorious Australian serial killer. She worries that her origin is the genetic cause of Rhoda’s sociopathy. Richard tries to convince her that it is nurture, not nature, that primarily influences such behavior.

Christine catches Rhoda trying to dispose of her tap shoes in the apartment incinerator. She realizes that Rhoda must have hit Claude with the shoes, which had left odd crescent-shaped marks on his face and hands that could not be identified. Alternately feigning tears and angrily blaming Claude, Rhoda admits that she killed the boy for his medal. Rhoda also confirms Christine’s suspicion that, to acquire a keepsake, she had previously murdered an elderly neighbor when they had lived in Wichita, Kansas. Christine orders Rhoda to burn the shoes in the incinerator.

The next day, janitor Leroy Jessup, who has previously seen Rhoda’s malice behind her demure pose, teasingly tells Rhoda that he believes she killed Claude. After Rhoda angrily tells him that she burned her shoes, Leroy opens the incinerator and finds the remains. A drunk Mrs. Daigle returns and tells Christine that she believes that Rhoda knows what happened to her son.

Realizing Leroy knows the truth, Rhoda sets his excelsior bedding ablaze and locks him in the basement. After men break open the basement hatch, Leroy runs into the yard aflame, ultimately burning to death. From the window, Christine and Monica see him die; Christine becomes hysterical. That night, a strangely calm Christine tells Rhoda that she dropped the penmanship medal into the lake where Claude’s body was found, then gives her daughter a lethal dose of sleeping pills. Christine shoots herself in the head; however, the gunshot alerts the neighbors, and Rhoda and Christine are rushed to the hospital. They both survive, although Christine lingers in a coma. Kenneth arrives and takes Rhoda home.

At bedtime, Rhoda excitedly tells Kenneth that she will inherit Monica’s pet lovebird. She mentions that she and Monica plan to sunbathe on the roof. When Kenneth tells her that lovebirds don’t live as long as people, Rhoda becomes pensive about Monica’s lifespan and her chances of getting the lovebird. Christine regains consciousness and is expected to make a full recovery. She calls Kenneth and tells him that she must pay for her “dreadful sin,” but Kenneth assures her that they will work on their problems together.

At night, Rhoda sneaks away during a thunderstorm and attempts to retrieve the medal from the lake using a dip net. A sudden bolt of lightning strikes her, ultimately causing her death.

Is it Hereditary?

What sort of child was Rhoda Penmark? Her mother noted that she had been “something of a riddle since babyhood.” Already at a young age, she was markedly different from her classmates. On the surface, she was a picture of perfection. Octavia Fern, a teacher and head of the school, tells Rhoda’s mother, Christine, that “Rhoda was one of the most satisfactory pupils the school ever had. She was the only child in the history of the school who’d made a hundred in deportment… and a hundred in self-reliance and conservation, each month… for a full school year.”

Octavia’s sister, Burgess, however, raises a red flag when she follows this by saying, “The simple fact is that she doesn’t need others the way most of us do.” Octavia then warns, “You will not be able to change her.”

These remarks echoed those from another school the year before that asked for Rhoda to be removed. She was described as a “cold, self-sufficient, difficult child who lived by rules of her own, and not by the rule of others. She was a fluent and most convincing liar… and a quite accomplished little thief.”

The story reveals an inter-generational link to psychopathy through Rhoda’s maternal grandmother, which even her mother had not been aware of until near the end of the book and the movie. – Winifred Rule 1

“The Bad Seed incorporates the notion that a murderous genetic trait has been passed down through generations – skipping Rhoda’s mother Christine, but reappearing in young Rhoda, who kills without a speck of remorse or regret.” – Deborah Camp – https://medium.com/bouncin-and-behavin-blogs/is-it-evil-or-mental-illness-cc937da1c7ed

The pivotal revelation in Rhoda’s backstory emerges through Christine’s investigation into her own origins, uncovering that she was adopted as an infant by the couple who raised her. Christine’s biological mother was Bessie Denker, a notorious serial killer active in the early 20th century, who murdered multiple people, primarily for financial gain through insurance fraud, with her crimes beginning in childhood. Denker’s psychopathic traits, characterized by remorseless calculation and charm, are portrayed as genetically transmitted through Christine to Rhoda, establishing a direct hereditary link that explains the child’s innate malevolence.^[8] This familial heritage forms the core of the novel’s exploration of the “bad seed” concept, emphasizing innate evil over environmental influences and challenging mid-20th-century debates on nature versus nurture. Christine, tormented by suppressed memories and newfound documents about Denker, grapples with profound guilt, viewing Rhoda’s behaviors as an inescapable legacy of her own bloodline. Rhoda, in turn, exploits her mother’s emotional vulnerability, maintaining a facade of innocence while subtly undermining Christine’s resolve. 2