Bad Ronald

I watched this TV movie in January 1979 on television in England one weekday afternoon when I was off school. I was 15 years old and having a miserable time in my life. Bad Ronald captured perfectly my feelings of loneliness, isolation, being trapped and retreating into myself. You can imagine that I identified closely with Ronald's experience and the film made a lasting impression on me as it seems to have done on others. A couple of years ago I did manage to get hold of it on video and saw for the first time in a quarter of a century. Happily I can watch it now with much greater detachment. The director Buzz Kulik is better known, I believe, for Brian's Song but Bad Ronald deserves to be remembered too.

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!

I've been wanting to see this movie for a long time and I'm glad I finally did. This is a TV movie from the glory days before TV movies were all aimed at bored housewives, before you had a rampaging Delta Burke or somebody like that crusading against the drunk driver who sold drugs to her son, turned out her daughter, and molested her dog. I'd watch Lifetime and the Hallmark channel religiously if there was a remote chance they'd ever show something like this! Ronald is a creepy but at the same time oddly sympathetic teenager played by Scott Jacoby (yes, THE Scott Jacoby!). After he kills a neighbor girl, his doting mother hides him in secret room, but then she tragically dies and a new family with three teenage daughters moves in. The dad is played by a young Dabney Coleman WITH HAIR. The two older daughters were played by the sexy Eilbacher sisters, but the perverted Ronald falls in love with the youngest daughter (Cindy Fisher), who the camera leers at as much as he does (she keeps running up stairs dressed in a short tennis skirt--is this 70's made-for-TV kiddie porn?). When the girls parents go out of town, Bad Ronald makes his presence known and all hell breaks loose. There are no important social messages here, no familial problems are addressed, Delta Burke does not appear--it's just two hours (minus commercial breaks) of enjoyable trash.

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.

Several people have commented on the bizarre fantasy aspects of this weird little movie...and for that we can thank the fantastic imagination of its author, the inimitable Jack Vance. Vance is better known as one of the most singular fantasy and sci-fi authors of the last fifty years -- his 'Dying Earth' stories are classics of the genre. Yet as far as I know, Bad Ronald is the only book of his ever made into a movie.

I'd love to see this come out on DVD, along with other classic ABC Movies of the Week like "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" and "Crowhaven Farm".