The Bad Seed

The Production Code would not permit a child murderer to go unpunished, so Rhoda is struck by lightning, and then the cast take a curtain call in which her mother turns her over and spanks her.

That ending is the most famous thing about it and it is worth watching for the whiplash alone.

Everything before it is the film. Patty McCormack plays an eight-year-old with immaculate braids and perfect manners who kills a schoolmate over a penmanship medal, and she plays it without a single wink. She was nine and was nominated for an Academy Award.

Nancy Kelly plays the mother working out what she has raised, and the performance is enormous in the stage sense because the whole cast came from the Broadway production.

The play had no such problem with its ending. The novel had none either.