The 10 Most Horrible Children In Movies & Television

 Ever since the 10-year-old Patty McCormack tied her hair into pigtails, and graced us with her wonderfully twisted performance in Mervyn LeRoy’s 1956 classic “The Bad Seed,” the world of cinema has been rife with killer children. The Killer Child subgenre is a campy footnote in the world of horror, and will get further analysis from me at a later time. For the time being, I will focus my attention not on children who are career killers, but, rather, on insufferable little brats, torturously ungrateful scamps, and other kidlets who make their family’s lives a living Hell. This is a list of the worst children to grace popular culture.

 While some of the kids on the list below have committed murder, they were selected, instead, for their peerless brattiness, selfish onanism, and their ceaseless capacity to bring pain and suffering to at least one member of their family. Let us now look, shall we?, into the universe of the ten most horrible children of film, TV and stage.

10) The kids from “Babe.”

from “Babe” (1995)

 Farmer Hoggett (James Cromwell) is a hard-working, salt-of-the-Eath kind of man. He builds things with his hands, cares for his animals, and blissfully absorbs the abuses of his clucking wife. He earns a living in the edenic mold, shearing sheep, selling puppies, and entering sheepdog competitions. In one scene, he even builds an ultra-realistc, heavy-duty dollhouse for his granddaughter.

 When his granddaughter (Brittany Byrns) opens her gift on Christmas morning, she deigns to lay one glance on the dollhouse, and wails in disappointment. “It’s the wrong one!,” she complains. “I WANT THE HOUSE I SAW ON THE TELEVISION!” Never mind that she has a marvel of mastercraft in front of her. Never mind that it’s a beautiful dollhouse, regardless of the one you wanted, you ungrateful little brat.

 What’s more, she seems to be entirely unhappy to be on the farm. True, a lot of city mice are uncomfortable in rustic settings, but there’s something about this little girl that is incredibly abrasive. There’s also her little brother, a fat little tyke who has no personality at all. In a world of gentle, old-world hard work, and sweet animal charm, these kids are like a violent truck wreck.

9) Kim Bauer

from “24” (2001-2010)

Kim Bauer (the gorgeous Elisha Cuthbert) is not so much obnoxious as she is in the terrible habit of constantly putting her father’s life in danger. Her father, Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) is the star agent of the Counter Terrorist Unit in Los Angeles, and his job consists of charging about L.A., trying to catch bad guys, torturing suspects, and stopping doomsday devices from going off. His job is hard enough, but his daughter Kim only makes the situation worse. She gets herself kidnapped. She gets lost in the woods. She is constantly in peril. And, when she in finally rescued, she blames Jack for getting her into danger in the first place. Talk about ungrateful.

In the show’s further seasons, Kim was actually hooked up at CTU with a computer processor’s job. This seems like a good-paying job that was clearly due to the nepotism of her father. And is she grateful? No. She still thinks it’s her skill that got her there. Despite all the hard work her dad did for her, Kim is constantly on the brink of severing ties forever.

8) Dudley Dursely

from “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” (2001)

Dudley (Harry Melling) is an overfed little puke with a slicked-down hairdo, a quivering pink face, and a monstrous amount of selfishness. To his credit, he was never encouraged to be much else by his parents, who are equally abusive, smug and assholish. This is a family of status-obsessed jerks, who live for material gain, and have no problem treating people poorly, or unduly flattering bosses to get what they want.

 Dudley seems to be the worst of the lot, though, as he is seen, in one early scene of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” counting his birthday presents. It’s quantity over quality for this boy. He stomps on the roof of his cousin’s room, and wails insults for no good reason. He has been molded, very carefully, into a cruel fuckwad. Poor Harry Potter. He had to live with this kid for the first 11 years of his life. No wonder he longed for escape.

7) Sonny Corleone

from “the Godfather” (1972)

Sonny (James Caan) is the loose cannon of the Corleone mob. The family looks after their own, and, despite being a group of amoral murderers, still have a criminal code to abide by. They are honorable people who live in an alternate world away from conventional laws, away from conventional wealth, and away from the piddling everyday ethics that keep society together. They are a rich family, insular, separate, powerful. Able to manipulate any system.

So what to do when you have a jerk like Sonny around? Sonny is a screw-up. He understands his power, but not really how to use it. He’s too eager to use violence, and makes dumb decisions that his father winces at (he even leaves his bedridden father to beat up a mook). He asks for favors that advance his personal agenda, but whines when he is asked to do something. Sonny is essentially the archetypal over-privileged rich kid, but with the added bonus of having the clout to have people killed.

Sonny does eventually suffer a horrible fate, and, even though we feel bad for him, we do feel some relief that he was taken out. That toll booth scene is one of the best shootings in film history.

6) Dennis Mitchell

from “Dennis the Menace” (1951 – present)

 Dennis Mitchell is presented, in Hank Ketchem’s seminal comic strip, as an irascible, fun-loving prankster, always underfoot, but essentially a good-hearted kid. There was a Boys-Will-Be-Boys attitude of forgiveness to his actions that allowed the troublemaker to stay syndicated for decades. Despite his cute face and fun-loving presentation, however, I saw Dennis as a destructive little brat who deserved a good spanking. His antic were not mere pranks, but often ran into the outright sadistic. Be it cutting up his parents’ books or intentionally harming his best friend, Dennis was a proto-sociopath.

Dennis was also always picking on the same beleaguered neighbor. Mr. Wilson was a crotchety old guy who didn’t care for children, but his cantankerousness hardly warranted the abuse he had to endure. I half expected Dennis to playfully kill Mr. Wilson one day, and only be sad that he no longer had a playmate. Dennis had a dark, dark streak that isn’t spoken of often enough.  

5) Junior

from “Problem Child” (1990)

Another holy terror that was presented as a comic character, Junior (Michael Oliver) was even more sadistic than Dennis Mitchell. Junior didn’t merely have a stripe of sociopathy, he was an outright monster. He had been juggled from Foster home to Foster home, always being retuned to his orphanage after he managed to injure his Foster parents. He dressed in sweatervests and bowties. He took pleasure in the misery of his peers. Parental loving and understanding was greeted with sadistic cackling, and millions of dollars in property damage.

There’s one scene in “Problem Child,” in fact, where some friends of Junior figure that they can just ignore him. He responds by peeing on their campfire, and on them. You can’t piss on hospitality. I won’t allow it. By the film’s end, director Dennis Dugan has somehow figured that his adopted mother (Amy Yasbeck) is worse than he is, and tries to make Junior seem like a sympathetic character. Don’t be fooled by the “comedy” setup. This film is a horror film.

4) Hamlet

From “Hamlet” (1604)

 Stick with me on this one. Hamlet is in line for the throne, when his father is murdered mysteriously. His mom, however, married his uncle, and, through some political finagling, Claudius became king of Denmark instead. Hamlet soon learns that his uncle was the one who killed his father, and his only recourse is to kill the king, and take his rightful place on the throne. That Hamlet spends the bulk of the play vacillating and stalling reveals a wry parody of Senecan revenge tragedy conventions, and Hamlet’s self-aware, deep moral center and his place in court. “Hamlet” is still one of the best plays in the English language.

But, as a son, Hamlet is kind of a douche. He claims to want revenge for his father, but takes every opportunity he can not to get revenge. What’s more, he can’t really acknowledge his mother as an adult human begin, and tortures her and badmouths her right to her face. I’d love to see a production of “Hamlet” in which Gertrude chooses not to take nay guff from this upstart college-bound manchild living in her house. Hamlet is 30, and he’s still living at Wittenberg college on his parents’ money. And he ends up killing people. What an asshole.

3) Veda Pierce

from “Mildred Pierce” (1945)

 “Mildred Pierce” is a very good film about female empowerment, made when women were actually looked down on for being business leaders. That it stars the intense Joan Crawford only helps. Joan plays the title character as a put-upon housewife who must risk everything to start a business when her caddish husband leaves her alone with two daughters. She starts as a waitress, saves up some money, and ends up founding and managing a successful chain of diners in SoCal. She becomes wealthy, but continues to push and spend and earn and work her fingers to the bone. And why does she need to earn so much? Because of her daughter Veda, the ultimate sponge.

Veda is a precocious teenager who sneers at her mother for working hard. Veda was raised in wealth, and expects only the best. She is happy when her mom buys her a dress, and then secretly badmouths how ugly it is. She wants cars and furs and money, and will be damn sure that mom feels bad for not providing those things for her. She not above lying to get what she wants, and will even take her mom’s boyfriends, should the situation call for it. She lies about being pregnant in one scene. Veda is so obsessed with wealth and backstabbing, she nearly becomes the film’s supervillain. This is no mere spoiled brat. This is a status-obsessed bitch.

She refers to her mother’s “people” in one scene. The racial implications are staggering.

2) Dolores Haze

from Lolita (1955)

It’s easy to argue that Dolores Haze, the 12-year-old title nymphet from Vladimir Nabakov’s classic novel, is a victim of an older man. She was, after all, repeatedly statutorily raped by her lecherous stepfather, Humbert Humbert, the novel’s eloquently sleazy narrator. And while she was clearly exploited, she was also depicted as, well, something of a brat. She was already a slutty foulmouth before she was corrupted by her stepfather, and regularly verbally abused her poor single mother.

 After she entered into literature’s most beautifully wrongheaded romance, she became a horribly manipulative little jerk, often playing with Humbert’s emotions, and constantly scheming to get away from the guy, and into the arms of an equally older man. Nabakov wrote one of the best novels of the century with Lolita, and managed to make a criminal act of child molestation read like one of the most pained romances of the age. It cannot be argued, though, that Lolita herself was an insufferable little asshole. A victim, perhaps, but still not a pleasant human being.

1) Eric Cartman

From “South Park” (1997 – present)

 As “South Park” began, Eric Cartman was the callow, whiny, selfish kid of the group. He would badger his mother, demand fatty foods, and run at the first sign of danger. He was a selfish and mean-spirited little kid that his friends barely put up with. Fans loved his wherewithal, though, and he became something of an antihero.

 As the series progressed, however, Cartman slowly mutated from a selfish little kid into an outright tyrant. His selfishness proved to be deeper and deeper, as he began to lie, steal, torture and renege on his word in order to get what he wanted. Sometimes, the boy would kill. He was no mere liar anymore. He became a death-minded, Iago-like manipulator. His narcissism stretched from mere harmless self-interest, into a blackened hole of misguided ego. That boy is a monster.

 In one of the series’ most notorious episodes, in fact, Cartman, as an act of revenge for a petty prank, has Scott’s parents murdered, and prepared in chili, which he then fed to him. I think it was that moment when we left the realm of comic self-interest, and entered into the realm of horrific tragedy. He’s probably the worst little boy in the history of TV.

Witney Seibold is a film critic living in Los Angeles. He lives with his lovely wife, his video collection, and his secret love of fine cartoons. He maintains his own ‘blog, Three Cheers for Darkened Years!, which can be seen at the following address: http://witneyman.wordpress.com/ He also is the co-host of the new B-Movies Podcast with William Bibbiani over at Crave Online, where you can hear him talking weekly about new movies and movie news. He wants it known that he was a pretty good kid growing up.