The Bad Seed (Mervyn LeRoy, 1956)

Nancy Kelly and Patty McCormack in The Bad Seed

Cast: Nancy Kelly, Patty McCormack, Evelyn Varden, Eileen Heckart, William Hopper, Henry Jones, Paul Fix, Joan Croydon, Gage Clarke, Jesse White, Frank Cady. Screenplay: John Lee Mahin, based on a play by Maxwell Anderson and a novel by William March. Cinematography: Harold Rosson. Art direction: John Beckman. Film editing: Warren Low. Music: Alex North. 

The Bad Seed stands out today as one of the more muddle-headed products of Production Code censorship. In the play and novel on which the movie was based, Christine Penmark, the unwitting carrier of the gene that turns her daughter, Rhoda, into a serial killer, commits suicide after giving the child an overdose of sleeping pills. One of the shocks of the novel and play is that Rhoda survives to kill again. But suicide as a positive plot resolution and crimes that go unpunished were taboo under the Code, so John Lee Mahin's adaptation blunts the ending for both characters. And then, to add farce to bathos, someone thought it a good idea to add a "curtain call" sequence in which the actress playing Christine, Nancy Kelly, gives the actress playing Rhoda, Patty McCormack, a spanking. Since spanking is hardly a punishment for murder, you have to wonder if Kelly is punishing McCormack for upstaging her. (In any case, McCormack seems to be enjoying it a little too much.) Still, if you take the movie on its own terms, it has its creepy moments, most of them involving McCormack, whom we spot as a bad kid from the moment she shows up with her braids so tight it looks like they hurt and wearing a starchy, spotless outfit that no decent child would have tolerated for a moment. There's some entertaining overplaying by Evelyn Varden as the psychologizing landlady and Henry Jones as the nosy hired man. The production is stagy and the performances often overblown, with the exception of Kelly, who strives to make her character -- and the ridiculous premise that evil is inherited -- credible. It's a role that could easily have tipped over into camp -- as the rest of the film often does -- but Kelly balances right on the edge. 

El Dorado (Howard Hawks, 1967)

James Caan, Robert Mitchum, Arthur Hunnicutt, and John Wayne in El Dorado 

Cole Thornton: John Wayne
J.P. Harrah: Robert Mitchum
Mississippi: James Caan
Bull: Arthur Hunnicutt
Maudie: Charlene Holt
Dr. Miller: Paul Fix
Josephine (Joey) MacDonald: Michele Carey
Bart Jason: Edward Asner
Neise McLeod: Christopher George
Kevin MacDonald: R.G. Armstrong
Luke MacDonald: Johnny Crawford

Director: Howard Hawks
Screenplay: Leigh Brackett
Based on a novel by Harry Brown
Cinematography: Harold Rosson
Art direction: Carl Anderson, Hal Pereira
Film editing: John Woodcock
Music: Nelson Riddle

Like his later Rio Lobo (1970), Howard Hawks's El Dorado isn't so much a remake of his Rio Bravo (1959) as a movie built on its template: Gunfighter John Wayne teams up with a drunken sheriff, a greenhorn, and an old coot to stand off an assault by the bad guys, who greatly outnumber them. Wayne retains his earlier role in El Dorado, but here the drunken sheriff is Robert Mitchum, the greenhorn is James Caan, and the old coot is Arthur Hunnicutt, replacing Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, and Walter Brennan, respectively, in the earlier film. Unfortunately, Hawks was unable to find a suitable replacement for Angie Dickinson's Feathers, the "Hawksian woman" in Rio Bravo, and tried without much success to sub in two C-list actresses, Charlene Holt as Maudie, the woman with a past that involves both Wayne and Mitchum, and Michele Carey as the hoydenish Joey. Neither makes the impression that Dickinson made. Leigh Brackett was disappointed to find that Hawks had turned her screenplay into a reworking of Rio Bravo, but she was used to his freewheeling ways by then, having worked for him on The Big Sleep (1946) and Hatari! (1962). There are diminishing returns to any kind of remake, and by the time Hawks made Rio Lobo, the template had worn thin, but El Dorado is solid enough entertainment, especially when Wayne and Mitchum are on screen together, playing off of each other gleefully. Except for the rather hackneyed "El Dorado" theme song over the opening credits, with its by-the-numbers lyrics by John Gabriel, Nelson Riddle's score is a pleasant surprise in its avoidance of Western movie clichés -- no cowboy songs or "Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie." The one sour note in the movie comes when Caan puts on a racial-caricature "Chinaman" act to get the jump on a lurking gunman.

Force of Evil (Abraham Polonsky, 1948)

John Garfield in Force of Evil

Joe Morse: John Garfield
Leo Morse: Thomas Gomez
Doris Lowry: Beatrice Pearson
Freddie Bauer: Howland Chamberlain
Ben Tucker: Roy Roberts
Edna Tucker: Marie Windsor
Bill Ficco: Paul Fix
Detective Egan: Barry Kelley
Hobe Wheelock: Paul McVeigh
Wally: Stanley Prager

Director: Abraham Polonsky
Screenplay: Abraham Polonsky, Ira Wolfert
Based on a novel by Ira Wolfert
Cinematography: George Barnes
Art direction: Richard Day
Film editing: Art Seid
Music: David Raksin

John Garfield was one of the few movie stars who could play leading man to Joan Crawford and Lana Turner, and then turn around and appear in a gritty drama like Force of Evil without letting his star power outshine the supporting cast of character actors and unknowns. In Abraham Polonsky's film, he's a lawyer connected to the big players in the numbers racket, an illegal lottery that flourished before the legal ones took over. Joe Morse is torn in two directions: his work for the gangster Ben Tucker, who wants to take over the numbers game from the smaller "banks" that work in New York City neighborhoods, and his ties to his brother, Leo, who runs one of those banks. The numbers, posted in the daily newspapers, are based on the amount of bets placed on a day's horse races. Theoretically, the trio of numbers -- the last digits in the amount -- should be completely random. But Tucker has discovered a way to rig the numbers so that they'll come up 776 on Independence Day -- a day when a lot of bettors choose that number -- thereby causing a lot of the banks to go bust. When Joe learns of the scheme, he tries to tip off Leo, but his brother is having none of it. Joe also becomes involved with one of Leo's employees, Doris Lowry, who is grateful to Leo for having given her a job when she first came to New York, but now wishes to quit the shady business. Beatrice Pearson, who made her debut in the film but gave up movies for the stage, is a fresh and engaging presence, making the "love interest" feel less obligatory than it might. Garfield, of course, is terrific in one of his best roles, striking the right note of moral corruption while still retaining an essential attractiveness. George Barnes's cinematography is superb, whether he's working with Richard Day's sets or New York City locations. There's a haunting shot of Joe Morse in a deserted Wall Street, and the film's emotional climax is Joe's descent to the river beneath the George Washington Bridge to find where his brother's body has been dumped. Force of Evil is a downer, but a surprising one, and it makes one feel all the more bitter about the damage that the blacklist did to Polonsky and to Garfield, whose persecution by the commie-hunters may have contributed to his early death.