by MATTHEW HAYS

"Can you call back in a bit?" the sweet-sounding voice on the other end of the line asks me. "My daughter is having her baby shower today, and I'm a bit behind!" Such an idyllic family scene isn't quite what I'd expect when calling up child star Patty McCormack. This is the actress who, in 1956 at the wee age of 10, starred in the lead role of The Bad Seed - now widely regarded as a major landmark in the horror genre.

In that film, McCormack is a devilish child who begins knocking off fellow classmates and even the family gardener when they dare to get in her way. It's mom (Nancy Kelly) who soon becomes suspicious of her daughter's wayward ways, only to learn - through a careful study of Sigmund Freud's teachings - that her daughter has inherited her murderous traits through mom herself. At once hilarious and horrifying, The Bad Seed set a new standard, earning McCormack an Oscar nomination (then the youngest person ever to receive one) and offering up a model for such later demonic-children epics as The Exorcist and The Omen.

McCormack recalls the on-set experience as "a lot of fun. I had been acting since I could breathe, so it was nothing new to me. I knew it was a movie. There was an aura of strangeness around the set, a sort of quiet eeriness to it all. I'll never forget that." And McCormack knew the role very well indeed; she had starred in the stage version of Seed the year prior to production, and the show had proven such a hit that a movie version was bound to follow.

Freudian slip

And follow it did, with no end of controversy. As well as the Freudian running theme of genetic fatalism, the studios did not for one minute like the play's ultra downbeat ending, which was famously changed into a ludicrously tack-on, see-through saccharine finale for the big-screen version. What impact did playing such a famously dark role have on McCormack? "Everything has an impact on us at that age, but I can say that it didn't mess me up. I didn't end up holding up any 7-Elevens. Though come to think of it, that probably could have been fun. You know what? If anything, I think I went out of my way for a while to prove that I was a really nice person. I think I went overboard with that."

McCormack has continued to act, notably in such other cult-ish fare as Maryjane, The Mini-Skirt Mob and William Castle's Bug, as well as two films in which McCormack was cast as an evil parent, Mommy and Mommy 2: Mommy's Day. This year's Fantasia line-up finds McCormack in a pivotal role in Sheldon Wilson's Shallow Ground, a gory low-budget California-shot horror, which won Best Feature at the Edinburgh, Scotland, Dead by Dawn Horror Film Festival this spring. The fun begins when a sheriff and his deputies are confronted by a naked teenaged boy who is caked in blood from head to toe. The lad being almost mute, the small-town cops struggle to figure out where he came from. Clearly, he has some connection with the rash of mysterious murders and disappearances that have plagued the town for years.

Horrifically ignorant

"I certainly enjoyed the twists in the script when I read it," McCormack says, of her decision to leap into horror once more. "It seemed to go a little differently and take some risks. But I confess, I'm not that huge of a horror fan myself. So I consulted with some close friends who are, and they loved the script and urged me to do it."

It's certainly bloody. The film's special effects designer Patrick Magee used over 100 gallons of fake blood for Shallow Ground's gorified cast. Does McCormack feel good about being tossed back into the clutches of this genre? "I used to be embarassed about The Bad Seed legacy," she reports. "Why would something from the fifth grade remain so significant? But I got to feeling good about it again. ‘That's me. I did that.' Now I feel more glad about it.

"Jodie Foster was a real exception, someone who went from child star to adult star. Now it's much more common. And that's wonderful - because the talent doesn't go away."

At Hall Theatre, Thursday, July 22 at 9:50pm

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