Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786300270275
Format: Black & White, NTSC
ISBN: 6300270270
Label: Warner Home Video
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Warner Home Video
Release Date: May 03, 1993
Running Time: 129 minutes
Sales Rank: 10941
Studio: Warner Home Video
Theatrical Release Date: September 12, 1956
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
"A basket full of kisses for a basket full of hugs." Those are chilling words, at least when uttered by that ice princess, Patty McCormack. As Rhoda Penmark, she is as pretty as a porcelain doll but drips venom with each curtsey and polite response. Little Rhoda's mother is terrified she has passed on her own mother's corruption. Oops, turns out she's right. This passes the test of time, as it still gets under your skin. The character development is tight and the story very involving. Not even Freddy Krueger had the ability to scare like tiny McCormack, looking just like a little adult while she literally beats out the competition for a penmanship award. However, director Mervyn LeRoy's hands were tied over the ending, which was changed from the source material--Maxwell Anderson's hit Broadway play. A supposedly more appropriate, and moral, ending was demanded by the studio. This was remade (badly) in 1985. --Rochelle O'Gorman
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
Acting at it's best. So well written and So well performed. Outstanding movie with and outstanding ending. Recommend to all. It was written and performed for the stage and brought to the screen. Many of the orignal performers from the stage such as Nancy Kelly and Patty McCormack lead an all star cast. Eileen Heckart personifies a distraught mother who has lost her only child as she consumes drink after drink in an intoxicating paranoia against Rhoda as she searches for the truth of the death of ... Read More
Rating: -
When asked the movie from childhood I remember best, this is the one. The Birds, The Blob,
even Baby Jane and Sweet Charlotte did not have the impact of Patty McCormack's stellar performance in this movie. Maybe after seeing it was when I became terrified of going in our farmhouse basement...and lightning.
Perhaps it even influenced my interest in mental illness and led me to work 20 yrs. in a state mental hospital!
I watched it as an adult and was still captivated by the quality ... Read More
Rating: -
"What will you give me for a basket of kisses?" This quote becomes quite memorable as it is repeated throughout the 1956 movie The Bad Seed. The main character is Rhoda, a pigtailed eight-year-old girl who is seemingly charming and well-mannered. This phrase is one she uses often, fooling her parents into thinking that she is the perfect daughter, shown by their response, "Why, I'd give you a basket of hugs." It turns out, though, that Rhoda is not so perfect after all. In fact, she is the ... Read More
Rating:  -
Christine Penmark has a loving husband and a picture-perfect daughter named Rhoda. Christine knows that Rhoda can be stubborn and greedy and a bit of a kiss-up, but that's not all that worries her after a classmate dies at a school picnic...the boy had just won a medal that Rhoda wanted. A lot.
This movie was considered quite shocking when it was made in 1956; it was unheard of to suggest that a child could be a cold-blooded killer who inherited her evil from her mother. The cast came ... Read More
Rating: -
My Mom, uncle and I absolutly love the ending! We don't see it as "moralistic" or sunday-school, or "cheesy"!! To us it is absolutly halarious!!! We love the OVER-THE-TOP, DRAMATIC ending!! In fact there are many funny moments like "...blue ones for little boys and PINK ones for little girls!", the taunting is halarious! The obvious water-from-the-hose on her shoes as Rhoda is walking out of the apartment is another example where the audience may find it delightfully fulfilling and funny. And what about ... Read More
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