(1956)
Dir - Mervyn LeRoy
Overall: MEH
Full of bizarre, often obnoxious performances and long, stagy, monotonous scenes, Mervyn LeRoy's first film adaptation of Maxwell Anderson's play The Bad Seed is a chore for these reasons and more. Over two hours in length, it certainly feels it due the actor's unorthodox behavior. This mostly falls on the shoulders of Nancy Kelly as an increasingly unraveling mother and to a lesser yet still noticeable extent, Henry Jones as a dim-witted, hillbilly caretaker, both of whom push their portrayals into either unintended comedy and/or "please just shut the hell up" terrain at times. Comparatively, eleven year old Patty McCormack is difficult to watch as the smug, awful brat Rhoda Penmark in a more appropriate way, though she is more reprehensible than ominous. Any time your subject matter deals with a doted-over, spoiled kid, the battle is already uphill to make it tolerable to stomach. Though that is rather the entire point to rev up the tension with such an emotionally disturbing backdrop, the combination of baffling acting over set pieces that go on and on still makes for an over the top, arduous experience anyway you look at it.
(1957)
Dir - Charles Marquis Warren
Overall: MEH
Author Catherine Turney adapted her own novel The Other One for the screen, (the title here changed to Back from the Dead for whatever reason), and it is an easily forgettable film with either an ambitious or sloppy story line depending on how you look at it. There is a secret, occult society at play which sounds promising on paper, but after very briefly being introduced in the opening scene, they are only awkwardly brought back later and we hardly ever learn anything about their unholy shenanigans. It has something to do with a woman possessed by a resurrected wife and some rocky cliffs, but the details are a mixed bag of lazy, half-baked cliches. While the score from Raoul Krashaar is effectively atmospheric at first and even plays a narrative role in one scene, it becomes increasingly grating as it frequently blares on the soundtrack even over characters trying to deliver dialog. Director Charles Marquis Warren took a brief break from exclusively making westerns with Back from the Dead, (and was also behind the lens on The Unknown Terror from the same year), but the material is just too vanilla here to really give him that much to work with.
(1958)
Dir - Will Cowan
Overall: MEH
Primarily working in the western genre, (producing and directing hundreds of shorts between 1940 and 1958), Scottish-born Will Cowan's final film and only second full-length one was the Universal horror outing The Thing That Couldn't Die. The premise of a four-hundred year old, condemned sorcerer possessing people with his unearthed, severed head is airtight for a horror film, but the presentation is kind of lame-brained. Two different women get under his evil spell and basically just act like assholes to everyone and this is after a slow handyman does absolutely nothing except get shot by the cops after likewise getting mojoed. This also might have the least successful finale out of any movie by anybody. Within seconds of being reattached to his dug-up body and proclaiming how wonderful Satan is and how much vengeance he is going to unleash, another guy shows him a shiny bit of jewellery, previously-headless sorcerer guy cowers back into his coffin, turns into a skeleton, the end. It actually goes by faster than it took to read all of that. It is somewhat fitting that the film was released as a co-bill with Horror of Dracula, thus rather sufficiently passing on the torch from Universal's horror output which clearly was waning to Hammer's era that was just beginning to ignite.
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