| Author | Message | ||
     Giancarlo (Giancarlo) Username: Giancarlo Registered: 11-2008 Posted From: 85.116.228.5 |
I grabbed a copy of M.LeRoy's "Bad Seed" at last! I don't know why it's been so difficult to obtain in Italy. I like the movie, albeit the story could have been better served by a 90 minutes William Castle style production. The stage structure seems to have been almost totally exported to screen even to the players' cast. The analyst would-be woman is a cliché often found in period movies. The "black lily" theory of inherited sinfulness (how biblical!) was past serious consideration even at the time of shooting but it works well for a horror/thriller/dark drama. Being polemical about it seems moot altogether: the movie is not expected to be a scientific lecturing:...moreover, on the personal side, I'm not utterly convinced "black lilies" to be a total legend. I try to keep a "beginner's mind". I hate the cold supercilious arrogance of a certain kind of scientists and/or psychoanalysts and/or men of "faith". The players are excellent. I know about the substituted climax. The godly lightning (levin, Poe would say) burning evil Rhoda to a crisp was forced upon the story by the American education code and, besides, producers didn't want to risk stoning by morality associations and the average movie-goer. But it works all the same although in a less subtle way. The final scene of Rhoda getting a spank seems to be a comic relief and justification for the terrible theme and what trouble might ensue. This anti-climax worked for me, I was amused, albeit it was criticised as an asinine bending of LeRoy's direction to the production pseudo-moral values. As precursor to the "evil children" stream, the thread seems having been well trodden already. Unless...to anybody's knowledge, is there an even older precursor to the theme, even before "The Bad Seed"? Maybe...maybe...but I can't connect to it. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
In prose, certainly "The Small Assassin" from 1946. | ||
| Giancarlo (Giancarlo) Username: Giancarlo Registered: 11-2008 Posted From: 85.116.228.5 |
By Ray Bradbury, if I'm not wrong in remembering... Thanks, Ramsey! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
'The Turn Of The Screw' perhaps? | ||
| Giancarlo (Giancarlo) Username: Giancarlo Registered: 11-2008 Posted From: 85.116.228.5 |
Yes! To my knowledge, the novella was published in 1898. Its excellent movie version, "The Innocents", was released in 1961, that is five years after "The Bad Seed", but the novella could well be the archetype of the "evil children" theme, although it's more a story of ghostly possession, a very extensive concept. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
What made Henry James' novella so revolutionary is that it can be read in any of three ways (maybe more?); as a story of ghostly possession, as a tale of evil children maliciously messing with their nanny's head or as a "descent into madness" psychological thriller. I have always found the "evil children" reading the most pleasingly disturbing, we all know how wicked the precociously spoilt can be... | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Stevie, that's an interpretation I'd not considered, but I don't think it stands up. At heart, 'The Turn of the Screw' is about the impact of abuse (whether sexual, psychological or a mixture of the two) on the children, and particularly on Miles. I think the governess' puritanical outlook is relevant, but not in the way many readers think. She's not hallucinating the ghosts because of her sexual repression. The children are haunted by trauma and guilt (the ghosts are 'real' by virtue of literary metaphor, as always in any psychological ghost story), and her sexual repression stops her doing the one thing that might have helped: getting Miles to talk about what has happened to him. Instead, she decides to exorcise Miles, with terrible consequences. To me, the story is about a society that cannot deal openly with child abuse or with emergent adolescent sexuality, and as a result deals inhumanely with traumatised youngsters. First and foremost, it's about the utter stupidity of exorcism. | ||
| R.B. Russell (Tartarusrussell) Username: Tartarusrussell Registered: 02-2010 Posted From: 86.141.52.169 |
I've not seen the film, but "The Bad Seed" is a great book. The updated version, for modern sensibilities, is the disturbing "We Need to Talk About Kevin" by Lionel Shriver... | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
WNTTAK is one of the biggest piles of rubbish I've ever read. The only thing disturbing about it is how bad the writing is. | ||
| R.B. Russell (Tartarusrussell) Username: Tartarusrussell Registered: 02-2010 Posted From: 86.141.52.169 |
Really Weber? I thought it was intelligent, clever and sensitively written... There's obviously no accounting for taste. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
I think you'll find I'm with the landlord on this one. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
My amazon review This is nothing more than a very badly written and predictable horror novel. The twist at the end is totally predictable from very early on. The format of the chapters each being letters doesn't work as she ends each chapter with a cliffhanger. That doesn't make sense in any way, shape or form. No one ends a letter with a cliffhanger, not even a letter to your dead husband. That's not a spoiler, it's impossible to spoil something as bad as this book. Shriver's spoilt it enough already. She contradicts herself continuously in this book. In one chapter she says she never saw her son naked from the age of 6 till he was 14. then a few chapters later she tends to his every need bathing him etc aged 10. She has the boy still in nappies aged 6 but there's never a suggestion that social services, doctors or anyone of that ilk has tried to help. A school would never put up with a physically able and intelligent (as he's portrayed) child that age in nappies. The family would have been given help to train him by any number of child health organisations. The style of the writing is cringeworthy at best. This is a book about child rearing by a woman who knows nothing about the subject and clearly has made no effort to do any research. Avoid at all costs. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Joel, I'll try reading TTOTS again as a metaphor for the unspoken trauma of child abuse (I think it was more about what they witnessed than what was done to them) and you read it again with the belief that the kids know exactly what they're doing and the heroine's overwrought imagination does the rest. Either one will make for decidedly uncomfortable reading... | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
I reviewed Shriver's novel in great detail in All Hallows and believe me, Marc's review above is a rave by comparison. The author herself said that the narrator was meant to be unreliable. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
So Lionel Shriver is a woman, you learn something new every day!  | ||
| R.B. Russell (Tartarusrussell) Username: Tartarusrussell Registered: 02-2010 Posted From: 86.141.52.169 |
Ramsey, I'd be interested to read your review. Perhaps the nature/nurture part of the story is less interesting than the question of the reliability of the narrator. Either her son is a true monster, or she is making him out to be one (and thus absolving herself of blame). Isn't it being filmed with the wonderful Tilda Swinton? | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.233.213 |
Unless...to anybody's knowledge, is there an even older precursor to the theme, even before "The Bad Seed"?... Agatha Christie, Crooked House (1949). | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.55 |
I'd love to read that review as well. i've heard you wax lyrical on it's demerits before and it was highly entertaining. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.170.179.157 |
'it's about the utter stupidity of exorcism' I think exorcism could work if the sick person bought into it, in a placebo way. Hasn't prayer been shown to work in recent years? (don't ask me for proof again - it was on the radio!). | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.204.180 |
Some studies have shown a statistically-significant improvement in hospital patients who were prayed for (without their knowledge). | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.204.180 |
(Not relevent but the first microsecond of this is quite scary.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DsaXfNgQZ4&NR=1 | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.152.204.180 |
This isn't "relevant" either. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.179.61.177 |
Proto - that's genius! Those first few moments are terrifying! | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.170.179.157 |
Marie Mother of God... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJThkIP-2EU&feature=related | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.170.179.157 |
I meant Mary! | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.170.179.157 |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11142453 | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.170.179.157 |
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/health/31pray.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1 Sorry, Bad Seed people! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.17.252.126 |
Yet more proof that human beings really are the scariest animals of all...  | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.170.179.157 |
You know, I really do think we shouldn't be in this world. When we're not hurting it it's hurting us, making us stressed over it. Most of us will never get along or agree or come to some understanding. It's all just a snake eating it's own tail. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.42.115 |
If you can (without becoming cynical) accept that suffering is inevitable and it becomes much easier. | ||
| Giancarlo (Giancarlo) Username: Giancarlo Registered: 11-2008 Posted From: 85.116.228.5 |
I seem to remember having read a "Turn of the Screw" tale by Joyce Carol Oates. Methinks it was a PDF file. I suppose it was published somewhere. It's a retelling of H.James' novella from the perspective of the former governess, the "ghost". Intriguing but unfocussed in my memory. Is anyone more familiar with the "alternative" tale? | ||
| Giancarlo (Giancarlo) Username: Giancarlo Registered: 11-2008 Posted From: 85.116.228.5 |
On further search, I've found Joyce's novelette published in her collection "Haunted" (1994), the story is "The Accursed Inhabitants of the House of Bly". | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.241.79 |
Is anyone more familiar with the "alternative" tale? One of the best has to be John Gardner's Grendel; a tiny but most profound novel, too, that lingers with me since I first read it, ages ago.... |