Satellite in the Sky (Warner) is the sort of thing the British usually do very well done very badly. An attempt to duplicate the agonizing authenticity of such films as Breaking the Sound Barrier, it parades plot and props (including an enormous mocked-up spaceship) that could have been scissored by a small boy from the back of a cereal box. Its improbabilities do not begin or end with an unlikely character named Lefty who appears to pen notes with his right hand.
With less preparation than it takes to get a family of four off on a beach expedition, Her Majesty's Government sets out to fire a rocketship past the pull of earth's gravity, and at the same time touch off the world's first T-1 bomb, which is too big to be exploded on earth. A girl reporter (Lois Maxwell, about the only structurally sound object in Satellite) stows away on the unguarded vessel.
Science-minded viewers will find much to object to: e.g., in space the crewmen are heavy as sacks of potatoes while inside the ship, become weightless when they clamber outside to make repairs.
Otherwise, Satellite is rocketshipshape with searching dialogue ("You knew the rocket was my job when you married me"), a crisis (the bomb sticks to the ship's hull), an addled scientist (Donald Wolfit), and a final clinch between Reporter Maxwell and craggy-browed Pilot Kieron Moore. After 85 harrowing minutes Satellite makes port, leaving the corn barrier sadly shattered.
The Bad Seed (Warner) offers moviegoers a new sort of murderer: a crafty, coldblooded, eight-year-old blonde. Pig-tailed Patty McCormack has beautiful manners, a sweetly sensitive mother (Nancy Kelly) and a doting father (William Hopper). But accidents happen to the people around her. There was the nice old lady who fell down a flight of stairs—and the little classmate who won a penmanship medal Patty wanted, and then was found mysteriously drowned at a school picnic. Patty was the last to see either of them alive.
Nancy Kelly is troubled by these occurrences. When she finds the penmanship medal hidden in Patty's drawer, suspicion grows sharper, and she wrings a confession from Patty in a shattering crossexamination. Nor do the revelations come singly. Nancy has long had doubts about her paternity, and now her middle-class world collapses as she discovers that her own mother was a mass murderer who had fled justice. Even worse, she must face these mountainous horrors alone, since her husband has been called out of town.
While Nancy is bewilderingly facing up to the truth, little Patty is coolly taking the measure of another victim, a feebleminded janitor (Henry Jones), who thinks he is teasing the child in blaming her for her classmate's death. Probably the most chilling moment is when Jones discovers —too late—that his joking accusation is true. Before he can properly defend himself, Patty has burned him alive.