The Bad Seed
Eight-year-old Rhoda Penmark appears to be what every little girl brought up in a loving home should be. Outwardly, she is charming, polite and intelligent beyond her years. To most adults, she's every parent's dream: obedient, well groomed, unassuming and compliant. She does her homework on time, gets good grades and attends Sunday school each and every week. However, most children who know Rhoda keep their distance from her, sensing that there is something not quite right about her.
Rhoda is the only child of Kenneth and Christine Penmark. Kenneth, a military officer, goes away on business, leaving his wife Christine, a beautiful homemaker, at their apartment home with Rhoda. Christine begins to notice that Rhoda is acting strangely toward one of her classmates, Claude Daigle, who mysteriously drowns at a school picnic not much later. When news of the boy's death reaches Christine and Rhoda, Christine notices Rhoda is indifferent about the loss. Claude's death is presumed accidental, but one detail was unexplained: his face was imprinted and dappled with strange crescent shaped marks. Christine learns that Rhoda quarreled with Claude over a perfect penmanship medal award that the boy won, but which Rhoda believed she deserved more, and has lied about the last time she saw her now deceased classmate.
Faced with Rhoda's deception, Christine begins to reevaluate a few troubling incidents from the past. After Rhoda had begged her parents for a pet dog, she quickly became bored with it, and the animal died in what Rhoda described as an "accidental fall" from the apartment window. An elderly neighbor in Baltimore had promised Rhoda a special necklace upon her death, and soon after died from a fall down the stairs while babysitting Rhoda, who now proudly owns the necklace. Additionally, Rhoda was once expelled from a school for repeatedly being caught lying to teachers and staff who described Rhoda as a "cold, self-sufficient child who plays by her own rules".
Disturbed by the idea that her daughter might indeed be the one behind all these tragedies, Christine begins investigating true crime stories and indirectly asks friends for advice under the guise of writing a novel. Soon Christine discovers that she was adopted as a young child and that her birth mother is Bessie Denker, a notorious serial killer who died in the electric chair, and of whom Christine has vague, fragmented memories. Christine feels responsible and blames herself for passing on the murderous "bad seed" genetic to her child, yet clings to the hope that Rhoda might have killed Claude by accident during a squabble over the medal, and is just too afraid to tell anyone. Christine writes a series of lengthy, tortured letters to her husband expressing her worries about Rhoda, but never mails them in fear of what may happen if he, or someone else reads the letters and goes to the authorities. Instead, Christine chooses to wait until Kenneth comes home to tell him in person.
In the meantime, Leroy Jessup, the crude-minded maintenance man who works and lives at the Penmark's apartment complex, is the only other adult besides Christine who even partially sees through Rhoda's phony yet charming facade. Believing that Rhoda's sweet persona conceals nothing worse than a mean streak, he relentlessly teases her about her supposed cruelty, pretending to believe her responsible for Claude's death. Rhoda is unfazed by Leroy's teasing, until he tells Rhoda that police can discover traces of blood even after the blood has been cleaned. To taunt Rhoda even more, Leroy then pretends to believe she used her cleated shoes to beat Claude, explaining the crescent-shaped marks left on the boy's face. Immediately after, Leroy realizes he has guessed correctly about Rhoda's dark secret by the way Rhoda reacts to his accusations. Afraid Leroy will expose her, Rhoda makes plans to shut Leroy up for good, waiting until he's asleep in his shed and lights his mattress ablaze before locking him inside, to be consumed by the flames. A horrified Christine witnesses the heartless murder from a distance: it occurs so quickly and smoothly she doesn't have time to get help or intervene. Other people attribute Leroy's death to be accidental by falling asleep while smoking, thus starting the fire.
Christine summons up the courage to confront Rhoda, who of course, initially attempts to lie and manipulate her mother before finally confessing to killing Claude, Leroy and their elderly neighbor in Baltimore, all the while shifting blame to the victims and expressing absolutely no remorse. Christine is now unable to deny her assumptions regarding Rhoda's appalling crimes and fears that Rhoda will eventually be taken out of society forever and end up like Bessie Denker in the electric chair. In a desperate attempt to prevent Rhoda from killing anyone else and to save her daughter from a fate nearly worse than death, Christine secretly gives Rhoda an entire bottle of sleeping pills so she will die painlessly in an overdose. Devastated by what she has done, Christine then shoots herself in the head and commits suicide.
Christine dies, but a nearby neighbor hears the gun shot go off and finds Rhoda, who is still alive, but barely so. She is rushed to the hospital and survives. A heartbroken Kenneth returns home from his business trip, believing that Christine had suffered a nervous breakdown. And with no one wiser as to what she has done, Rhoda is free to kill again.
murder