Bad Ronald (1974)

Originally airing on October 24, 1974 on the ABC Network, this film tells the sad tale of Ronald Wilby (Scott Jacoby, The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane), a kid who is a great artist and lives in a fantasy world. So far, he's me at 15, all socially awkward and afraid of girls. Where he is not like me is that his dad left town and never came back, leaving him with an insanely overprotective mother (Kim Hunter, Zira from Planet of the Apes) who has some mystery disease and wants Ronald to go to med school and heal her. That seems like a lot of pressure. Maybe so much pressure that after getting the Heisman and shut down by Laurie Matthews, the object of his affection, he ends up shoving Laurie's younger sister Carol. The little girl just keeps verbally abusing Ronald — trust me, I've had things twelve year old girls say hurt me to this day and gotten over every punch to my face — until he shoves her again, so hard that her head bounces off a concrete block. Boom. She's dead.Yep. In the 70s — and perhaps nowhere moreso than a 70s made for TV movie — life is cheap. So Ronald and his mom do what any normal person and normal mother would do — they bury the body, hide the evidence and even hide Ronald inside a concealed room. They hope everything will just blow over — even when the police come by with questions. Nosy neighbors be damned, her boy will be just fine, provided he stops drawing, does his studies, eats right and remembers his exercises.It should work. Except she dies, leaving Ronald alone in the house with all his cans of food. Before you get to the next commercial, Ronald has totally escaped into a fantasy world of princes, princesses and demons. His house is sold to the Wood family — mom, dad (Dabney Coleman of Cloak and Dagger, 9 to 5, Tootsie and so much more) and three sisters — Babs, Althea and Ellen.Ronald is running out of food and really needs human interaction. Babs becomes the princess of his dreams while her boyfriend, Duane Matthews, becomes his demon. Well, he's already killed one of Duane's sisters and now he's descended so far into pure mania, who can say what will happen next!Read more at http://bit.ly/2ztipvm

I remember years ago as a kid in the 80's one Saturday afternoon on "TBS" watching this old 70's TV movie "Bad Ronald", and I remembered how chilling and creepy it was and it's still effective as I just watched the film again on DVD after many years. It paints a pretty picture of what it's like to be different and alone while having crazy, creep like perverted feelings.Set in California a young boy named Ronald(well done by Scott Jacoby)who's strange and different yet bright lives at home with mom and she has hopes of him one day becoming a doctor. Ronald tries to fit in and date a local girl yet she or none of the other teens want him as a friend, Ronald feels pain. So on the way home Ronald commits a very bad thing upon a girl who teases him, after revealing this to mom she hides him away behind a wall room of the house as Ronald becomes sheltered from the people and the police can't find him! Ronald likes being with his food, and loves to nibble on chocolate bars and passes time away by doing drawings of ancient figures and he believes in a world of another dimension of good and evil that involves strange people of a prince and princesses. Then after Ronald's mom has surgery his life takes a spin mom didn't make it and then the house is put on the market! Now enter the Woods family who move in and they are unaware about the other guest like Ronald who's got more crazy and even more creep like. The Woods family consist of a mother and father and three teenage daughters(some of the cast include Dabney Coleman, Pippa Scott, Kim Hunter, Lisa Eilbacher and Ted Ecclesas as Duane Matthews one of the girls boyfriends). And Ronald starts to sneak out and many scenes are chilling he's just like a peeping tom as he notices the young girls! It's a shock as the Woods family is unsuspecting Ronald brings his terror in the form of chasing the girls and even ties up and gags Duane who he sees as a threat. Overall great suspense horror film that stills chills by showing a different side of life always be careful as you don't know who or what is lurking around behind the shadows and corners of a hidden wall!

Bad Ronald (1974) *** (out of 4) Creepy made-for-TV thriller about a nerdy boy named Ronald (Scott Jacoby) who is constantly picked one. One day a girl insults his mother so he accidentally kills her. Ronald tells his mother (Kim Hunter) what he has done and she suggests that he live behind the walls until everything can blow over. She goes in for an operation and dies, which means the house gets sold to a new family who Ronald stalks from behind the walls. OK, it's highly unlikely Ronald could have lived behind the walls but I'm willing to let this slide because the story itself is so good and so interesting that one can overlook a flaw here and there. I was really shocked at how drawn in I was and by the time the 70-minutes was over I had found a new favorite. The movie has an overall creepy feel from the start of the film when we see the relationship between Ronald and his mother and it gets creepier as the film goes along as Ronald slowly begins to lose his mind. The "friendships" he builds behind the walls, which forces him to come out is rather creepy and handled extremely well here. The scene where he confronts the youngest daughter living in the house has some great suspense and does the ending, which closes everything up quite nicely. I thought Jacoby was very good in his role and make the character quite believable as did Hunter. Dabney Coleman, Pippa Scott, Cindy Fisher, Cindy Eilbacher and a young Lisa Eilbacher (AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN) round out the cast and also deliver fine work. The 70's were a pretty good decade for made-for-TV films and this one has gotten one of the best reputations out there and for good reasons.

"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!