Another summer vacation is mercifully defunct–the stridulating small fry now swimming in their schools of lower learning, leaving our streets safe for adults. Still, one pities them their thankless plight. The “innocence” of adolescence is a lie: A Wasteland populated equally by testosterone-poisoned, pint-sized pervs and their hapless, victim-peers. Let us celebrate its horrors with these corrupted-childhood classics:
The Bad Seed (1956)-The evil-youth theme gets the corn-fed Hollywood
treatment through tiny Patty McCormack’s role as the eight-year-old Midwestern
murderess Rhoda. Eileen Heckart, repeating her stage role, is stunning in her
consummate, drunken-neighbor cameo.
Pixote (1981)-No accident Nick Cave dedicated his Tender Prey album to the explosive title character, a chilling, skull-eyed, 10-year-old
thief, pimp, and killer. The brilliant child-actor Fernando Ramos da Silva–in
actuality one of Brazil’s three million homeless kids–was offed by the Sao
Paulo pigs after the film was made. Brilliant.
The Reflecting Skin (1991)-Leave it to a foreigner (director Philip
Ridley, writer of The Krays) to nail homespun American family values
to the barn door with such dreamy power. In a sun-kissed, silken nightmare,
little farmboy Seth watches his sanity go up in flames.
Come and See (1985)–There are sentimental-shit war films as-seen-through-little-eyes
(Empire of the Sun, Hope and Glory, Au Revoir les Enfants), and there
are bolder ones (Forbidden Games, and The Tin Drum). Nothing tops
Elem Klimov’s shocking, poetic masterpiece. A Soviet Belorussian child shows
us the German invasion of 1943. Go ahead and cry, baby.