The Bad Seed: Is pretty much the grandmother of all those evil-little-kid-kills-people movies. Which is an unfortunate legacy because this is actually a good movie (on account of relying on dialogue and acting instead of titillation--none of the murders happen onscreen). It's impossible not to sympathize with the mom, creepy deviant Leroy does an admirable act of Obfuscating Stupidity...and there had to be something wrong with the actress playing that little girl. She was a model sociopath: bereft of all human emotion, but calculating enough to mimic it when doing so would earn a favorable response from the adults around her, drops the act completely around the one person who makes it clear he can see right through it, explodes in an unholy fury when thwarted. This must be what Ann Coulter was like as a kid.
Mind, the movie bears all the hallmarks of the fifties--there's a fair amount of what VSM has referred to as "'Aw shucks' earnestness," but still, this is a movie where an eight-year-old girl lights a dude on fire and then wanders off to practice the piano while he burns. It's about as warped as 1956 Hollywood would let you be. Though apparently there was some meddling with the ending. On that note, it was about ten minutes longer than it had to be.
I would've been totally cool with the movie ending with the mom drugging the hellspawn into oblivion, just because of how well that scene played out. It didn't serve much purpose to have the docs revive the kid just so she could be smote by the wrath of Zeus immediately thereafter. I'd guess the Hays Code frowned upon a mother killing her daughter, no matter how horrible a creature it was, so they had to find some way to take the responsibility out of her hands. Wikipedia informs me that they did change the ending from the source material, at least: apparently, mom dies, devil child lives in the original story. Supposedly the censors objected to this because it showed a criminal coming out on top. I'd object to it because it would be lame and also fucking depressing. I know this movie predated the cliches of modern horror films by decades, but still, I don't have enough words to describe how much I loathe the standard "OH WAIT THE HERO GETS SCREWED OVER AT THE LAST MINUTE AND THE VILLAIN IS STILL ALIVE LOLOL" ending.
Yes, I just spoiler-tagged a fifty-three-year-old movie. Why? Because the end credits asked me to. That was silly enough that I had to honor the request.
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Barbarella: Precisely 12.65% of my brain cells died while watching this movie. The filmmakers obviously expected the audience to be on immense amounts of drugs while viewing it. They were clearly doing so while making it. The main character flies around in what can only be some manner of alien sex toy, of which every interior surface is covered in orange shag carpet. This is merely the tip of the iceberg. It is an astonishingly ugly piece of kitsch and finely calibrated to make me hate it, but Snow should see it at once.
