Movie Review: The Bad Seed
Halloween is coming up. So in preparation, it's time to start watching a bunch of horror flicks. I rented the 1950's original version of "The Bad Seed" starring Patty McCormack because John Waters told me to. It's about a little girl named Rhoda who is inherently evil from birth, and by age 8 has already murdered 3 people. But she's all sweet and cute and deceptive about it.
I don't usually get into old black and white movies, preferring films that are a little more contemporary with things like 3D zombies, car chases, and rollerskates. But there is something to be said for these older movies where the actual story and the writing is what's important, not the special effects or camera angles or soundtracks. And my word....they talked so different in the 50s, has it really changed that much?? There were times when the characters sounded positively British! And they kept throwing out vocabulary words that I had never legitimately heard used out of people's mouths:
So you should watch this a yearn for a time more innocent, when little girls would still curtsy before they killed you.
I don't usually get into old black and white movies, preferring films that are a little more contemporary with things like 3D zombies, car chases, and rollerskates. But there is something to be said for these older movies where the actual story and the writing is what's important, not the special effects or camera angles or soundtracks. And my word....they talked so different in the 50s, has it really changed that much?? There were times when the characters sounded positively British! And they kept throwing out vocabulary words that I had never legitimately heard used out of people's mouths:
- Excelsior - I thought this was an exclamatory word, like "Excellent!" No. Excelsior was old timey packing fluff that they must have used before the age of styrofoam packing peanuts or airsacs. It's basically a big bird's nest. It just looks like straw, and maybe some cloth fibers and maybe some sawdust. It's also highly flammable. So my advice is that if you use excelsior to create a little bed that you nap on beside the incinerator, which in turn is in a cellar that locks from the outside only, do NOT piss Rhoda off.
- Adroit - Rhoda's mother accused her of "being very adroit at lying," and I had to get the damn dictionary out. I could tell it meant "good" or "skilled," but I had to make sure it didn't have some etymological relation to "android." It doesn't.
- Well, I'll be a middle-aged mongoloid from Memphis - This is not in the dictionary. Dude, I can't even believe that this was actually in the movie! I could feel John Waters smiling when I heard this line.
- Hortense - This is not a vocabulary word, but an actual lady's name?! Seriously, Hortense?
So you should watch this a yearn for a time more innocent, when little girls would still curtsy before they killed you.
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