The Bad Seed

“Talk all you want about the man and the woman -- but please don't tell about the girl!”

In 1956 America, Colonel Kenneth Penmark's household looks like the model of postwar family life, with a doting wife, Christine (Nancy Kelly), and an eight-year-old daughter, Rhoda (Patty McCormack), who is polite and neat. When a schoolmate dies under strange circumstances, Christine can no longer look away from what she has always known about her child. Mervyn LeRoy keeps the camera in ordinary rooms and lets the quiet, tidy house carry the tension.