 Welcome to Celluloid Mirror. I'm your hostess Betty St. LaVeau. On this TV show we talk about film history, film definitions, and then we go straight into the movies, which is what we are going to do today. So I thought long and hard about this episode. At first I was going to compare Willow, Legend, and Lady Hawk, simply because I was sat down by for all three of them, number one. And number two, they all have similarities either involving some type of mythical creature or it's a kid themed. However, when watching these movies they have a lot of violence in them. So I want to discuss the fact that you can be a kid of certain age and watch Lady Hawk, Legend, and Willow, but maybe not so young. Plus Willow, directed by George Lucas, had so many fights in it that I finally tried to remember who produced it. I knew that Ron Howard had directed it and usually doesn't involve so big, big screen thrills. But then when I checked that Mr. Lucas had produced it, it made sense to me. So I think we'll do those shows another time. As it is, I switched gears last night and still kid themed, but again it's not an adult fashion. When we watch horror movies where the child is a villain, they appear to be more scary than movies where there is the adult villain because children are naturally cherubic, innocent, etc. You would never expect a child to be evil. So today we're going to study and check out Orphan, The Good Son, and The Big Daddy of All Time, The Bad Seed, which is a very personal favorite of mine. So let's start off with Orphan. This was directed by Jean Colicera and it started there from Jima, Peter Soscott, Isabel Thurman, who did an excellent, excellent job as the villain. CCH Pounder, Jimmy Bennett. Okay, so the premise of this movie is that a couple is having some marital problems. They already have two children and they decide to adopt a Orphan from Eastern Europe. So Orphan groups were, they didn't like the premise of the movie and so there's a disclaimer at least, I'm positive, at the end of the movie saying that this movie in no way reflects what usually happens if you adopt someone from Eastern Europe. Now this is just a movie. Okay, so movie people know that's just a movie. All right, so the Orphan, Esther, who they adopt, happened to have a few very chilling secrets. So what I noticed, what I really liked about this movie was that the actress, Isabel Thurman, who played the evil child was credible. She was believable. I think that with some movies, when you have a child playing someone who is slightly younger, they get an older child for some reason, I think, because that way the child is understanding direction better. At any rate, I find that most child actors play ports like this with a startling maturity. To quote the ex-boyfriend, child stars get a break. He wasn't really interested in Hollywood one bit, but he would never make fun of Danny Bonaduce or any other child search. And this is because child stars undergo a lot of stress and they work very hard. Now, Ms. Thurman, in one interview that I saw her at another that I read, seems to be a very stable individual and I bless her parents for that. She seems like she's doing fine with whatever rigors Hollywood throws her way. So I give kudos to her and she made this movie extremely scary. Now, it didn't get very good reviews. For one thing, most reviewers got 57% Ron Tomato score. And I don't really do Ron Tomatoes, but I did notice the fact that they'll always been Ron Tomatoes, but with this source here, Wiki, they mentioned when a critic is especially negative. So some people found this exploitative. It is its exploitation filmmaking, I hate to say it. It's about child evil. And you're exploiting evil and children. Okay. So it is exploitation filmmaking. I don't find it sleazy, but excuse me, the sex scenes between Piers Sarska and Vera Prozima, I could do without, you know, the whole torture stuff. But the shocker, I thought the shocker was appropriate towards the end. And I found that this child was manipulative, charismatic and psychopath. All right. So please check that out. And it basically made something like it opened number four at the box office, which I think is a really healthy opening. It grossed almost 13 million in total that weekend. And then it grossed total of 78, almost 78, pardon me, yeah, $78 million. No, 78. Yeah. No, I flunked algebra for a reason just now. Okay. So at any rate, it made a ton of money. All right. So there are several alternate endings to orphan, which I found surprising, because it seems like it's just about child evil, but they, you know, studios sometimes don't really, you know, sometimes nowadays they want the villain to win. So I'm not going to blow the ending there. Now, when we come to the good son, we're working back chronologically. Orphan is a 2009 movie. And the good son starring Nicola Colkin, I think that's like 98 or something like that. Let me see. 93, even earlier. Okay. So this stars Elijah Wood, Macaulay Colkin, Wendy Creason, David Morse, Daniel Hugh Kelly, Jacqueline Books, and a little Kay Culkin as the good son's little sister. All right. So basically, this is about a boy, he loses his ma, his pa, Elijah Wood is the little boy who loses the son. And David Morse, who I find an excellent, excellent actor, plays his pop. And they fly out to, he's got to go on a trip. I think he's going to, he's going overseas to Japan. And he's dropping Elijah Wood off at his cousin Henry's house, played by Macaulay Colkin. Okay. So Henry is a full-on psychopath. There was a novelization of the movie trying to show where Henry's aberrant behavior came from because obviously everybody else in the family is sane and not psycho. Okay. So Henry's type of evil consists and mechanical. He likes to build things. He likes to destroy things. He's almost indifferent and cold to other, he is indifferent cold to other people's suffering. And I said that almost there because it's a little difficult watching the home alone kid playing a psychopath. I don't really want to go into Macaulay's family psychology here, but the pop did want his little sister to be in the movie. And from an account I read, Quinn Colkin, the little girl, she hated, hated acting. And so there's a brother of Macaulay and Quinn who enjoys acting. I think he's a pretty good actor. I think, I can't remember his name off the cuff. It might be Rory. But you can see why the critics really didn't enjoy Macaulay in this role. And I think that Macaulay was sort of overdoing it. I don't think that he was directed in a sense that he could portray Henry in a believable manner. Again, you're just watching a cute home alone kid being a psycho and trying to be, he's being cast against type here. So it's not an enjoyable movie in the sense. So you're very aware of that's Macaulay Colkin playing Beckett. Now Orlando there. Oh, I would get Orlando Bloom and this other Orlando mixed up. The act, Elijah Wood. I'm so sorry. I say I get Orlando Bloom and Elijah Wood mixed up, but this is why they get them mixed up. Okay. Even though I find Orlando Bloom very handsome, they both do the wide eyed thing. Pardon me. So it's pardon me. It's Elijah Wood playing Henry. Okay, so I looked at Elijah Wood as again, he was a spectator watching Henry's badness and psychopathicness and what to quote me, Sister Laura, his evil macalations that he would do to people. So I found myself focusing on his facial expressions instead of believing that he was a kid terrified of his cousin. It was more like he was enjoying the Henry show. I'm so sorry. So there are some the two child actors, their performances are as good as they can be with the direction that they had. I'm sorry. So this type of movie to me isn't so much a chiller because you sort of know that's Macaulay Calkham being the villain. I don't recommend it, but if you want to check it out just for some reason, let's go ahead and do it. All right. And that particular movie, it didn't do that well with the critics and I don't think it did that well at the box office either. Let me get back to that in a little bit. But the critics, I remember the critics didn't like it. And my men, Cisco and Iberther, they found it downright creepy. So don't watch that tonight. So the last one that we're going to talk about today is one of my favorite movies of all time. It's Pat C. McCormick playing the titular role, The Bad Seed. This movie came out in 1956 and it stars Nancy Kelly, William Hoppe, Patty McCormick, Henry Jones, Eileen Hecott, Evelyn Vaughton and some very other fine actors. So most of the Broadway cast, all the Broadway cast was on build for the film, which was such a great delight for every movie goer because the director and the producers were like, we want to recreate what was happening on stage because that's where they knew the magic was. So if you watch Pat C. McCormick's wonderful, wonderful mini-documentary on YouTube, she talks about being in The Bad Seed and I think that she was in, I remember Mama or something like that over at another theater and so she was doubling, she was doubling playing this part on Broadway and I think another role over or doing a radio show. All right, it's been a minute since I've watched documentary. I have it in any file. So when you watch Pat C. McCormick's wonderful documentary talking about discussing what an exciting time it was for her and how she understood the part of Rhoda, that itself is a great movie to check that out. Okay, so when this movie would come on in the afternoon in Chicago, it would inevitably at times come on when we were staying at my grandmother's house in the summer. I don't really remember Ma having it on and my aunties are 10 years older than me. They were teenagers at the time. They made sure we were always out of the room and it was always one of those movies that I couldn't exactly read but I could sense parental discretion as advised. That was back in the day when there were only three networks in New H.F. So they never let us watch it and the reason why they didn't is because Rhoda as a character is one of those iconic villains that no one can ever forget and this movie is best for adults, not children. The Good Son, I really don't want a 10-year-old watching it but they'll know it's a home alone kid. Orphan, I don't want a 10-year-old watching it. Maybe a 12-year-old but the parents is around. I think that the child would get bored. With the bad seed, not only would a child enjoy watching it because Rhoda Penlock, played by Ms. McCormick there, is a squeaky clean blonde butterwood and meldner mouth cute little girl and so a child watched that movie thinking, wow this is about a nice little kid and it's not about a nice little kid. So Rhoda is the type of child psychovat where you have Esther and Orphan who's been loved to the charismatic and charming and an opportunistic type of killer and on the other hand you have Henry who is sort of a lackadaisal type of killer but when he hates he really really really hates and he'll decide to get rid of who he's hating. Rhoda is she can act at the spur of the moment but she's very cunning and she is the only planner in the group so I think Rhoda definitely plans her crimes much more than Henry or Esther do. So they all exhibit paranoia and there's always one parent conspicuously absent with Rhoda, her pops away so her mother Christine has to bear the brunt of discovering that her child's a monster. With the bad, oh pardon with the good son, Elijah Wood's pop is away. He would be the parent who could keep order. Where else his uncle Elijah Wood's uncle is totally oblivious of his son's evil and the mother is only kind of suspecting. Rhoda's pop is away and Elijah Wood's mom has croaked and so there's always the parent who's like where are they so the children's victims are unprotected by the parent who could possibly keep order. Now I had a really great comparison chart and I think I pretty much hit it. Okay so Rhoda doesn't divulge her crimes unless she is pressed all right. Her when her crimes are divulged it's because she's forced to confess. With Henry Evans he enjoys having his victims kind of squirm. He would admit to what he's doing but unlike Rhoda he seems to kind of enjoy confessing and with Esther she likes to make threats out of the out of the three she's much more secretive than the other two. Okay so basically I want to say about all of these three movies in general. The earlier one is definitely much better made and much more well thought out and directed our bad seed. Orphan our latest one our latest one is terrifying and scary modern but it has some flaws but you'll totally believe the villain is really villainous and with the middle son of the middle one the good son you're probably not off after half an hour. All right so I think that's it for me today. I'm Miss Betty St. Leveau and you've been watching Celluloid Mirror. I'd like to thank my crew at AUCA here for their continued support and gender and building quality and concrete for almost 45 years now and St. Leveau Consultations and St. Leveau Lemonade Company for taking time off and enjoying their time here articulating her first professor's admonition to articulate and explainate the silver screen. My mother Sharon Ardella Warfield Paris Oceania Claridge. Until next time stay away from those bad movies. Ciao.