Mother thinks this should be required watching for anyone about to have a child. I'll go a step further and say also anyone who has ever been around a child. Young Rhoda Penmark (Patty McCormack) is the perfect child: she is polite, cleans her room, gets good grades, and never gets mussed or dirty. But when her father (William Hopper) gets called away to D.C. for a month, her mother (Nancy Kelly) begins to suspect that something is terribly wrong with Rhoda. Especially when a series of "accidents" start befalling people who have crossed the little girl.
This was back in the days of debate over nature vs. nurture in what made a criminal. It seems quaint and old-fashioned now that no one had ever heard of a sociopathic killer but those were simpler times, apparently. The mother is absolutely the weakest character in the bunch, her incessant whining of her daughter's name will get on your last nerve, but I'm pretty sure that's on purpose. There were a couple of extra soliloquies in there than I felt was necessary but it was adapted from a stage play. Minus those irritants, the movie still stands up fairly well. Rhoda is a nasty, creepy, pig-tailed piece of work, played to perfection by McCormack. The borderline-rapey handyman (Henry Jones) plays off the little monster like two sharks circling each other in a tank. If you like your horror close to home, this is the movie for you.
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