Bad Ronald

Plot synopsis:
Ronald Wilby (Scott Jacoby) is a socially inept, awkward high school youth with budding artistic talent and a predilection for fantasy, who is often ridiculed for his behavior and mannerisms. His overprotective mother, Elaine (Kim Hunter), is in need of surgery and plans for Ronald to become a doctor and cure her illness. Ronald's father has not been heard from in years, having divorced his mother and then agreeing to terminate his parental rights in exchange for not having to pay child support.
One afternoon, while asking out Laurie Matthews (Shelley Spurlock), he is rejected and then ridiculed by her friends. As he returns home, he accidentally knocks over her younger sister Carol (Angela Hoffman). Carol, like Laurie, also taunts Ronald, at which point he pushes her over, inadvertently killing her when she strikes her head on a concrete block during the fall. He buries the body and confesses to his mother, but fearing the police will not believe that it was accidental, Ronald and his mother wallpaper the door frame to the downstairs bathroom and convert the closed-off space to a living quarters for Ronald, with a concealed trapdoor in the pantry through which Ronald can escape in an emergency. The plan is for him to hide in the room until the incident blows over, and Mrs. Wilby tells the police that Ronald ran away.
Ronald's mother keeps paying attention to what neighbors, particularly the nosy Mrs. Schumacher (Linda Watkins), and others are saying about the young girl's disappearance and tells Ronald that when it's safe, he can return to a normal life. One afternoon, she is taken into a hospital for gallbladder surgery, from which she unexpectedly dies. In the meantime, Ronald has created a fantasy world in his own head consisting of a prince and a princess that live happily until a devil appears and a struggle begins.
Shortly after Mrs. Wilby's death, the house is sold to the Wood family, consisting of a mother (Pippa Scott), father (Dabney Coleman) and three teenage daughters: Babs (Cindy Fisher), Althea (Cindy Eilbacher) and Ellen (Lisa Eilbacher). As Ronald needs food to eat, and begins to crave human interaction, sudden disappearances of food and odd noises are experienced by the new family.
Babs, the youngest of the Wood daughters, becomes identified with Ronald's princess and he identifies himself as the prince, while Duane Matthews (Ted Eccles) (who is well liked by the family), oldest daughter Ellen's boyfriend and brother of the previously mentioned Matthews girls, becomes identified with the monster that threatens their happiness. Ronald's goal is to "regain" his princess and remove anything, including the members of her family, that stops his dream from becoming reality. During this time, neighbor Mrs. Schumacher spots Ronald on a venture outside his space and dies of a heart attack from the shock; fearing the police will blame him, Ronald ends up burying her as well.
Mr. and Mrs. Wood then make plans to go out of town for a couple of days, leaving the girls on their own. Ronald confronts Babs when she is alone in the house and tells her she is his princess. She flees to Mrs. Schumacher's house next door (unaware of her aforementioned demise), but Ronald locks her in the basement and forges a note for her sisters to find, claiming she has run away. Both Ellen and Althea are skeptical of the note, but the police refuse to do anything. Ronald later attacks Duane, knocking him out and tying him up and gagging him. The police now suspect something is amiss and advise Ellen and Althea to check into a hotel, but they refuse.
Shortly after the police leave, Althea notices one of the many peepholes Ronald has drilled. When she approaches it, she suddenly sees Ronald's eye staring back at her, and screams in terror as Ronald then breaks through the wall. The police, who have been watching the house, hear the girls' screams and rush back. Ronald is captured as he tries to flee, crying out for his mother. Soon afterwards, Duane and Babs are both discovered, shaken but not seriously harmed.
The story stops without depicting any of the legal proceedings involving Ronald Wilby.

Tags: fantasy, murder, cult, revenge, violence, insanity, romantic, suspenseful

Review:
He fell asleep and I ended up watching Bad Ronald, the last thing on that night, all alone.All I know is, I couldn't stop watching until the end, and I have never forgotten this 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"..
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..
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The film Bad Ronald I think is really a commentary on what it is like to be an introvert, rather than just the story of an individual.
Also attempts to fight back against these people or join their society  seem futile to outsiders, exactly like Bad Ronald's attempt to date a popular girl far to good for him and romance one of the girls that comes into his house of habitation.
A fantasy world, like Ronald's Entarantia (a movie parallel to geeks who live in the Star Wars universe), are their only way to stay sane.
The Brady Bunch type family moves in and Ronald has drawn artwork on the walls in his cubby, and written a fantasy-novel that shows his romantic feelings but also his mixed-up mind...A GREAT movie to spook you if you live in an old house...and the simple, 70's special effects make this a great thrill, that is not even diminished by it being in black and white..
Eventually the more intense films became controversial due to its large audience of young people (like myself) and the entire night was replaced with sit-coms geared to teens and families ("Happy Days," "Laverne and Shirley," "Three's Company.")  ABC used "Fantasy Island" to incorporate many of the themes the film series developed and used many of the same actors.
Compared to today's standards, the film would pale in comparison to other TV movies, but what it lacks in lustre, Bad Ronald makes up for it in mood, tension, and imagination.
Ronald panics, and goes home to his overprotective mother, who decides to hide him in a secret room in the house, rather than tell the police.
Unfortunately, the mother is soon taken to the hospital for an operation, and never returns...so Ronald stays in the furnished room/house until a new family moves in, knowing nothing of Ronald's presence, only that he went missing...Good acting by Jacoby, and sensitive script give him a sympathetic portrayal of how he is lost in a fantasy world of his own creation, and how he tries to cope with the teenage daughters, whom he views as needing saving.
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).
A new family eventually moves into the house, one day he is looking through a pinhole in the wall, and gets spotted, whereby he freaks out, rushes through the wall, and the cops kill him or something...That's all I remember of it, but it was very haunting, and very depressing.
Good stuff."One of the most cherished "Movie of the Week" entries, "Bad Ronald" holds up well nearly thirty years later...but an ambitious remake is definitely something for Hollywood's movie men to give thought to.The premise of a psychotic nerd holed up in your very own home has to be one of the creepiest ever thought up...and this one surely had impressionable kids searching the house for peepholes in the walls.
It was rerun quite often over the years and I always watched it if possible.Just imagine: Moving into a new home but totally unaware that an insane young man is also living there in a hidden room, coming out only at night to raid your fridge for nourishment!
The story of Bad Ronald is the clincher though; the "weird" kid in the neighborhood accidently kills a bully by pushing him onto the ground onto a sharp rock - he runs home to his clearly deranged mother, who hides him away in the space under the stairs, filling his mind with paranoia about being convicted of murder.
He stays under the stairs, the house is sold, and he falls in love with a young girl who moves in with her family.
Scott Jacoby gives a memorably creepy performance in this popular TV-movie about a young fugitive from the law who lives in the walled-up guest bathroom of his house after his divorced mother dies and a new family moves in.
This figure of intruder who lives in a hidden room of a house dwelled by a perfect bourgeois family is one of the most interesting subject I've ever seen in horror movies.
I will admit that Bad Ronald is very good by middle-seventies TV movie standards, but the rating it has gotten here is ludicrous.
To rate Bad Ronald with the best films of all time should prompt an immediate and extensive reality check..
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.
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.
When teenage outcast Ronald Wilby (Scott Jacoby) accidentally kills a young girl, his overprotective mother Elaine (Kim Hunter) comes up with an unusual way to keep her son out of the hands of the law: she instructs Ronald to turn their guest bathroom into a hideaway, covering up the doorway with plasterboard and wallpaper and creating a secret entrance in the pantry.When the police inevitably turn up, his mother tells them that her son has left home and that she doesn't know his whereabouts.
Eventually, the lad loses his grip on reality, retreating into his imaginary world, and becomes obsessed with the youngest Wood daughter (Cindy Fisher), who he believes is a princess who must come and live with him in Atranta.Bad Ronald is a made-for-TV movie and, as such, doesn't exactly push the envelope (no gore or nudity here, folks); despite this, it still manages to be both creepy and bizarre enough to appeal to the cult crowd.
The premise might be a bit far-fetched at times, Ronald managing to remain undiscovered even when sharing the house with a new family (wouldn't they hear him flushing the toilet?), but solid performances and great direction make it easy to overlook the film's sillier moments (the worst of which involve cartoonish snoop of a neighbour Mrs. Schumacher, overplayed by Linda Watkins).Towards the end, Bad Ronald changes from quirky drama to tense thriller, with the now unhinged Ronald chasing 'princess' Babs through the house (director Buzz Kulik proving particularly fond of the 'upskirt' shot).6.5 out of 10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb..
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.
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.
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!
'Bad Ronald' tells the tale of a young teenage boy who accidentally kills a child, and is forced to go in hiding - within the walls of his own house!
The police are after Ronald, so his mother's master plan is to hide him away in their house.
It's exciting to watch Ronald hide out behind the walls, especially when the new family moves into the house.
There are some intense moments when he's watching them through a peep hole in the wall, and the ending is effectively eerie too.I highly recommend 'Bad Ronald' to all.
I would buy the DVD of this right now if it were available.Bad Ronald, at the time of the original airing was definitely a unique piece of work.
Granted I do not recall word for word or each scene from beginning to end, but as I previously stated this films unique characters, specifically that of Bad Ronald and his quite off-beat mother still hold a place of remembrance if not regard when thinking of my childhood and the movies that clicked.I would hope that they release this title on DVD in the near future or give me the rights and let me pursue the release as I think it could be worth the time and effort to make this available to an aging fan base.The next best thing would be for one of us fans (hopefully someone already connected to the movie industry) to pursue a remake, that is try and keep the same premise however make it current in both date and technology.
Now, I'm pretty sure I saw this same movie with the immortal Gary Busey (Lions, and tigers and bears...OH MY) and he was living in some family's attic and they didn't know about it, but I think Ronald has the dubious distinction of getting made first.
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.
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.
You'll probably read descriptions of "Bad Ronald" that make it sound like a horror movie.
One of the many TV movies that became vogue in the 1970s, it focuses on a socially inept teenager who accidentally kills a girl and hides in a crawlspace in his house.
Things turn ugly after his mother dies and a new family moves in.It's easy to feel sympathy for Ronald until he lets his imagination take over.
I wouldn't call "Bad Ronald" a great movie but it's worth seeing.
I first saw this movie when I was 13, long before I knew what was a "good" movie or "bad." Granted, it's NOT a cinematic masterpiece, but being a picked-on geek myself, I identified with Ronald and the imaginary world he creates, and tries to drag a teenage girl into.
If you'd like to see Scott Jacoby in a much better movie, track down "The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane," with a barely-post-"Taxi Driver" Jodie Foster and a still-playing-psychos (a la "Badlands") Martin Sheen.I just bought a CD from a band that I'd never heard of, just because their name was Bad Ronald ...
The scene which included Ronald's eye peering back through the peephole at the girl who has just found it, replete with blood curdling horror-scream, is, with it's creepy soundtrack and wide angle distortion, one of the defining moments of teenage tele-voyeurism we have, and was shown at least fifty times to Americans before the movie aired, prompting many parents to quip "you're not watching that," before the full program air.
Kim Hunter of Streetcar Named Desire and Planet of the Apes fame does a classic turn as the clinging, insecure nag of a mother, protecting her mamma's boy "Ronald" whom she had too late in life ("mommy I killed the girl next door, she was making fun of me!") by walling-in a bathroom and giving him Carnation powdered milk to drink (a metaphor for her own menopausal "change" and long-dried bosom), which had just come onto the market and in reality was something else disgustingly tangible for America's teens to further identify.
Ronald's existence, and later, his abandonment, inside his "room" is, essentially, one long "time-out" gone haywire, after he does THE dastardly deed of all deeds and doesn't come straight home like his mother said to.
Ronald's mother tells him that  she has to leave for a week to have an operation but she dies.
As a  result, a new family moves into the Wilby house while Ronald continues  to live in the walls and spy on the new family and their three  daughters.
A very young Dabney Coleman played Mr. Wood, who moved his wife and  three daughters into the Wilby house unaware of Ronald's probing eyes  spying on them from behind the walls.
The plot is more dramatic than scary but works perfect for a Horror movie (like Black Christmas or When A Stranger Calls) but very toned down.**SPOILERS** In the likes of "Psycho", Ronald finds in his mother trust, friendship, and love.
Scene cuts to Ronald telling his mother that he killed and buried a girl.
As Ronald learns that his mother died, new owners settled in the house.
"Bad Ronald" is a dramatic movie with Horror tones.
BAD RONALD was a childhood movie...
It is about a boy who accidentally kills one of his friends so his mother boards him up in his house and hides him from the law.
Now I don't recall if this is when the police come but later they do and Ronald comes crashing through the wall in an effort to escape but tumbles to the ground outside instead.I believe after 1979,this was not shown on network TV again,I do know it was shown on late night movies a few times but I haven't seen it in about 20-25 years now.
Played by Scott Jacoby, who starred as Mario in The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976), Ronald never meant to kill anyone.
It was just an accident that got him condemned to living in the walls of his mom's creepy old house.So why rate this relatively unknown mystery/horror film a 10/10?
When she goes for an operation one day, she dies in the hospital, leaving a new family buying the decrepit house and poor Ronald stuck trying to keep his home, and existence, a secret, especially with Mrs. Schumacher, the next-door old bat, always peeping in the windows to spy.The soundtrack, it's very nostalgic with a 1970's atmosphere, and both melancholy and incredibly creepy, perfect for this movie.
One humorous scene involves a nosey neighbor who perpetually peeks into Ronald's house, even after a new family moves in.
Most '70s made-for-television movies are great.I've noticed among video collectors that Bad Ronald is gaining some cult status.