Bad Ronald

Many fans of 70s tv horror revere this obscure and neat movie from 1974.And with good reason!Ronald is a shy young man with a wild imagination who lives with his twisted mother.After he accidentally kills a neighborhood girl and buries her,his ma surmises Ronald should hide in a plastered-over room until things settle down.Ma dies and Ronald stays put,drilling peepholes into every room.By this point he's quite deranged and when a new family with pretty daughters moves in,look out!Scott Jacoby is great as Ronald and the whole movie is very creepy.I've seen other movies that borrowed elements of BR(hider in the house,christina's house),but none reached the eerie level of this one.

"Bad Ronald" enjoys quite an impressive cult reputation, despite "only" being a low-budgeted and made-for-TV film from the early 70's, so I simply had to check it out to see what all the fuzz is about. I can't deny "Bad Ronald" has something irresistibly special! The atmosphere is thoroughly unsettling and Scott Jacoby portrays a strangely menacing Ronald. There are no special effects or bloody massacres in this film, yet it's an engaging little thriller with a fairly original premise. Ronald is a geeky and slightly peculiar teenager who lives with his dominant and overly protective mother. He's obsessed with his personally created comic book universe, yet his mother insists on becoming a prominent doctor. When Ronald accidentally murders a young girl after she mocked him one too many times, his mother sees no other solution than to construct an extra lair in their house and hide him from the cops. Then when mommy doesn't return from the hospital one day after a routine operation, Ronald remains hidden in the house and new tenants move in. Slowly going insane from loneliness and paranoia, Ronald mistakes the new tenants' daughter for his comic book heroine. The script is a little too far-fetched to be plausible and it definitely contains too many improbabilities, like the bizarrely noisy neighbor Mrs. Shumacher, for example, and the fatal gal blather operation. But at least it's never boring or exaggeratedly ridiculous, so I'm certainly not complaining. Ronald's parental house provides the film with a uniquely sinister setting, complete with hideous wallpaper & furniture, peepholes and secret cupboard passageways. Especially considering it's a TV-production, "Bad Ronald" is well photographed, suspenseful and it approaches several themes that are appealing to fans of grim 70's exploitation. Recommended!

An eerie film about an outcast teenage boy who lives in a fantasy world of princes and princesses which he spends his time elaborately illustrating on paper as a hobby. His mother has more sensible expectations for her son with a future medical career. But that bright future may never materialize after Ronald accidently kills a girl passing by who was taunting him with cruel remarks. In a state of shock and grief at what he'd done, Ronald buries the girl's body in a shallow grave and returns home. His mother, upon seeing him exhausted and dirty, asks what happened. Ronald, still visibly shaken, tells his mother what he did and his she tries to console him advising that it was only an accident. But when he tells his mother that he buried the girl's body, his mother becomes alarmed and angered realizing that the police will wonder why Ronald buried the body as if to conceal the incident. Knowing that this would destroy any chances of Ronald becoming a future doctor, his mother feels there is only one thing that can be done, hide Ronald in the house until things quiet down. She can just tell the police that he ran away. Ronald and his mother work through the night to convert a spare bathroom in their Victorian house into a well-concealed "hidden room" in the house where Ronald would remain at all times. One more problem arises as his mother must go in for some minor surgery which would leave Ronald on his own for a week alone. His mother dies during the operation. Ronald remains in the hidden room. The home is quickly put up for sale and a new family moves in. The house's new residents had already heard the horrific news of Ronald, and what he'd done, but they believed he had long since disappeared. Not long after the family settles in, they begin to hear unexplained noises and food begins missing from the kitchen. They wonder if their Victorian house also has a resident ghost. They find out soon enough!

On the face of it, Bad Ronald doesn't look like it has much going for it, but despite some silly plot devices and the fact that it was made for TV back in the seventies; this is actually a very decent little cult gem. The film capitalises on the idea of creepy old houses being haunted; only this time the house at the centre of the tale is not inhabited by ghosts, but rather by the psychopathic son of the previous owner. The premise works from what is probably the most obvious plot device ever, as we watch the title character; an odd young man obsessed by the fantasy world that he himself has created, accidentally murder a young neighbourhood girl. That's just the start of the chain of events, and when he comes home to tell his mother that he's killed a girl and buried the body in a shallow grave, she immediately decides that he must convert the downstairs bathroom into a secret hideout. He stays there while his mother brings him food, but tragedy strikes when she dies in hospital, leaving Ronald on his own. It's not long before a new family moves in, and Ronald isn't moving out...

I'm probably overrating this film a little really, but the way that the story is delivered is completely undemanding, and that makes this a very fun film to watch. Too many films these days are too complicated, but Buzz Kulik's film focuses on the important elements, and the resulting film is very simple and easy to get into. The film isn't heavy on characterisation, but the central situation has more than enough to make up for this, and the character of Ronald is easy to get behind, despite the fact that he's the villain of the piece. The fact that it was made for TV is obvious as the film looks very cheap and the acting is largely diabolical, but I've seen a lot worse from theatrically released films. There's no blood and gore in the film, partly because it was made for television, and partly because the story really doesn't need any gore to succeed. Bad Ronald is a real bona fide cult gem; it may never achieve classic status, but its well worth tracking down and I highly recommend this film to anyone that gets their hands on it. I know I'll definitely see it again!

After accidentally killing a girl, teenager Ronald Wilby (Scott Jacoby) is hidden away from cops in a secret room in the house by his domineering mother (Kim Hunter). Poor Ronald is left all alone when she passes away. Sad Ronald finds the situation gets better and worse when Mr. Wood (Dabney Coleman) moves into the house with his wife and three daughters. Bad Ronald, whose mindset is becoming increasingly delusional, becomes fixated on the youngest daughter (Cindy Fisher) and begins to imagine she is the princess for the imaginary kingdom in his head. Highly effective TV-movie from director Buzz Kulik that is based on the novel by John Holbrook Vance. You do actually feel sorry for the boy and Jacoby gives a great performance, especially for a teen. The end is very rushed, but it is after all a TV movie. Expanded and it could be a top-notch thriller that still would work today. When I see something like this I wonder why Hollywood never tackles this kind of material for a remake (the French did a version in the early 1990s).