The Bad Seed is a 1956 American psychological thriller film directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starring Nancy Kelly, Patty McCormack, Henry Jones and Eileen Heckart.

Rhoda, pristine and proper in her pinafore dress and blonde pigtails, tells her about a penmanship competition that she lost to her schoolmate Claude Daigle.

Claude's parents barge in, and Mrs. Daigle is distraught and drunk, accusing Miss Fern of withholding information.

Alternately feigning tears and angrily blaming Claude, Rhoda admits that she killed the boy for his medal and confirms Christine's suspicion that, to acquire a keepsake, she had previously murdered an elderly neighbor when they had lived in Wichita, Kansas.

After some men break open the basement hatch, Leroy runs into the yard aflame, ultimately burning to death.

That night, a strangely calm Christine tells Rhoda that she dropped the penmanship medal into the lake where Claude's body was found, then gives her daughter a lethal dose of sleeping pills.

Although the studios had not yet formally inquired about it, Buddy Adler, Frank McCarthy and Dore Schary were interested in producing the film.

"[3] Although the novel and play conclude with Christine dying and Rhoda surviving, the Motion Picture Production Code did not permit perpetrators of crime to remain unpunished.

[5] The film's ending thus reverses the deaths of the mother and daughter, with Christine's life saved and Rhoda killed by a bolt of lightning.

The film finished among the year's top 20 at the box office in the United States and among the ten most popular box-office draws in Britain in 1956.

[12] The Bad Seed was remade for television in 1985, adapted by George Eckstein, directed by Paul Wendkos and starring Carrie Welles, Blair Brown, Lynn Redgrave, David Carradine, Richard Kiley and Chad Allen.

The remake employs the original ending of the March novel and its stage production but was panned by critics and poorly received by its television audience.

In December 2017, Deadline.com reported that Rob Lowe was to direct and star in the remake with Mckenna Grace, Sarah Dugdale, Marci T. House, Lorne Cardinal, Chris Shields, Cara Buono and a special appearance by McCormack as Dr. March.