| re: The Bad Seed - Has anyone read the original novel by William March? | |
| Last Edit: lordofspeech 06:21 pm EST 11/01/20 | |
| Posted by: lordofspeech 06:17 pm EST 11/01/20 | |
| In reply to: re: The Bad Seed - Has anyone read the original novel by William March? - shocktheatre 04:26 pm EST 11/01/20 | |
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| I saw the movie, probably on Million Dollar Movie, when I was a kid, and I adored it. I thought Nancy Kelly was the greatest actress ever. Now, a lot of what she does (that very theatrical way she has of pronouncing her words and using her voice to accentuate her emotional state) is completely out of fashion....but oh my goodness, it's killer in its own way. I loved the book too. And, despite the ending where the villain gets her just desserts, the film was disturbing and chilling. And, oh my goodness, the actor who played the custodian Leroy. Henry Jones. Genius! (I looked him up; he won the best featured actor Tony for Sunrise at Campobello.) RUTHLESS, which used THE BAD SEED as a jumping off point for its camp melodrama musical treatment, was very very very very good when I saw it downtown years ago (The Players' Theatre?). The stage-to-film version that is available on one of the cable channels doesn't quite capture it. Partly because camp like that has to be so definitively, perfectly executed. And might need a live audience. Come to think of it, are there any great camp classics that worked on film? I think Rocky Horror Picture Show is good but the pacing is off. And I don't mean great films like All About Eve and Sunset Boulevard. I mean films that actually relied on camp, usually with a man-as-a-woman. Hairspray the film so missed the boat, in my opinion. (Travolta's work was fine for what it was, but the point of the Fierstein portrayal was to wink at the audience; we knew that he was a man; the Travolta characterization was just un-real.) The early Andy Warhol films with Taylor Mead worked sometimes. Anyone? Or do we all have to go read Sontag again? |
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