DVDs: Ruthless!

William March's best-selling novel The Bad Seed, about a dainty eight-year-old girl who happens to be a cold-blooded killer, was dramatized by the distinguished, Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright Maxwell Anderson. The stage version of The Bad Seed opened at the 46th Street now the Richard Rodgers Theatre on December 8, 1954, later transferring to the Coronet now the Eugene O'Neill.

Broadway audiences found The Bad Seed strong stuff; one opening-night review noted that a few audience members, unable to bear the tension of the second half, were forced to depart before the final curtain. The Bad Seed was melodrama, but it was melodrama of a fairly high order. In his New York Times review of the play, Brooks Atkinson suggested, "Everyone who read the late William March's The Bad Seed was horrified and terrified. That is likely to be the case with playgoers who see Maxwell Anderson's drama. Written with reserve and skill, acted with reticence and dexterity, The Bad Seed is an extraordinarily literate horror story and a superior bit of theatre. In view of the monstrosities it discloses, it has remarkable grace and quality."

The Bad Seed ran about a year 334 performances on Broadway. Atkinson described leading lady Nancy Kelly's performance as "the finest of her career," and Kelly won a leading-actress Tony Award for it, then headed the play's national tour. In 1956, the film version appeared, directed by Mervyn LeRoy and with a screenplay by John Lee Mahin. It retained from the original Broadway cast Patty McCormack as Rhoda Penmark, the calculating, remorseless child responsible for three deaths; Kelly as her mother, Christine Penmark, who discovers that she's responsible for passing on to her child an evil gene; Eileen Heckart as the mother of one of Rhoda's victims; Henry Jones as a simple-minded, ill-fated janitor; Evelyn Varden as a concerned neighbor who could be Rhoda's next victim; and Joan Croydon as the headmistress of Rhoda's school.

The Bad Seed film is among the stagiest of all stage-to-screen transfers. One can practically hear the curtain falling at the ends of certain scenes. Brief sequences at a picnic and a hospital are the only significant opening up of a play that otherwise took place entirely in the Penmark living room. The film adds no significant characters beyond the play's original eleven principals. With so many members of the original cast and most of the action still staged in and around the Penmark apartment, The Bad Seed ranks as one of the best records of a '50s-Broadway experience.

Also part of the general staginess is Kelly's grande-dame performance in the central role. The star, whose later roles included Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf on Broadway and The Gingerbread Lady on tour, here gives a highly theatrical, sometimes overwrought performance. One never doubts that it was extremely effective in the theatre. On screen, it comes off as both abundantly skilled and fairly campy. It's as if no one told Kelly that she didn't have to play to the balcony anymore. But Kelly's extravagantly actressy work here is just one of the reasons why the Bad Seed film is both gripping drama and a bit of a hoot.

Then there's McCormack, chilling in one of the most demanding stage roles ever handed to a child actress. And Heckart is positively harrowing in her two scenes as the mother of the little boy whose penmanship medal Rhoda coveted. For their work in the film, Kelly, McCormack, and Heckart were all nominated for Academy Awards.

Because the Hollywood code still maintained that evil had to be punished, the filmmakers felt obliged to change the play and novel's ending, altering the fates of both mother Christine and daughter Rhoda. To further remove the sting of the play and novel, the conclusion of the story is followed in the film by a series of theatrical curtain calls, the principal actors appearing as themselves to take a bow. And that's topped by an even more ludicrous moment between Kelly and McCormack, one that apparently was part of the stage version as well.

In the early '90s, the off-Broadway musical Ruthless! offered an amusing, often quite specific spoof of The Bad Seed, transforming it into a showbiz saga whose satirical targets also included All About Eve and Gypsy. The Bad Seed was remade as a television film in 1985, with Blair Brown, Lynn Redgrave, David Carradine, and Richard Kiley in leading roles. And it was recently announced that Warner Bros. is planning another film remake, to be directed by Eli Roth, who was quoted by Variety as saying, "The original was a great psychological thriller, and we are going to bastardize and exploit it, ramping up the body counts and killings. This is going to be scary, bloody fun, and we're going to create the next horror icon."

Such a plan makes one glad that the original Bad Seed is finally available on DVD, and for its premiere in that format, it has been outfitted with enjoyable bonuses. There's an interview with McCormack, in which the actress states that director LeRoy wanted to retain on screen exactly what he had admired in the stage play on Broadway. McCormack remembers performing live on TV's "I Remember Mama" on Friday nights from eight to eight-thirty, then racing to the theatre for the Bad Seed's eight-forty curtain. She considered Nancy Kelly a second mother, and mentions Henry Jones's disapproval when she wasn't attending school regularly.

The other oustanding feature of the DVD indicates that those involved understood both the film's power and its status as a cult favorite. For the audio-commentary track, McCormack is joined by no less an authority on high-camp screen drama than Charles Busch. Busch notes the broadness of Kelly's performance, but McCormack says that the actors were encouraged to repeat their stage performances on screen.

Busch brings up the film's status as a gay camp classic, while McCormack remembers attending the Oscars, her mother preparing her by telling her that she wasn't going to win. She recalls turning against the film for years, up until the '90s, when she was asked to play a grown-up version of Rhoda in the film Mommy. McCormack also mentions that she played Heckart's role in a Staten Island benefit stage revival, directed by her nephew.

The Bad Seed film remains compulsively watchable, gripping even on repeat viewings, when one knows precisely what's going to happen. Viewed again on this DVD, The Bad Seed seems so potent that one can't help wondering if the play could possibly hold up in a Broadway revival. On second thought, perhaps it's best left to this extremely entertaining film.

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