Forgotten Made for Television “Classics”

Forgotten Made for Television “Classics”

BAD RONALD (ABC 1974)

Long before “It,” “Christine,” or "Heathers,” "Bad Ronald" appeared as a Saturday Night Movie of the Week on the ABC Television Network.

Lorimar Productions or later known as "Lorimar Telepictures," may be best remembered for “The Waltons,” "Alf,” “Gorillas in the Mist," and other television series and early courtroom series.

The storyline of the film circles around a dysfunctional teen boy named Ronald who, while arguing with a young girl, causes her death. His mother panics and builds a secret place for him in the house, after which mom, of course, dies.

Whatever sanity Ronald has left disappears as he withdrawals into a fantasy world as the house develops, new residents unaware of Ronald's presence.

When researching this film, one can find many different short storylines about this movie of the week, from a shy teen who accidentally kills a bullying female neighbour to a nerdy dreamer who pushes a young girl to her death. Still, other reviews or critics suggest he is a deranged killer of women and a danger to society as a whole.

I leave it to you to watch this film and come to your own conclusions. I suspect he would be hospitalized for a short time, receive therapy, and work in the computer industry in today's world.

This film was released in the 1980s on VHS, and in DVD format in 2009, it may be in Blu-Ray format. This film is released through Warner Bros.

Most people familiar with actors from the 1970s to early 1980s will recognize the actors and actresses of this film. A great list of character actors that makes up this film is lead by a teen actor, Scott Jacoby. Scott would appear in many series like "Murder She Wrote," "Trapper John MD," Marcus Welby M.D" but disappear by the 1990s. His last credit would be him directing a 2001 documentary "Rage, 20 Years of Punk Rock West Coast Style," where he would also have many other credits for this film.

This film was directed by Buzz Kulik, who would have at least 75 credits as a director in film and television work during his career that would span from 1950 to the early 1990s. He would also have at least 17 Producer credits during that same time span. T.V. Guide also credited him with one acting role in the Burt Reynolds film Shamus (1973), which he also directed.

In my opinion, Buzz Kulik was a talented director, producer, and important contributor to American television series from the 1950s to the 1980s.

This film was not short of great talent behind the camera and had a solid cast of a well-known supporting cast of performers.

This film is based on a novel by John Holby Vance, who became well known for his fantasy novels. The teleplay was by Andrew Peter Marin.

Some of the supporting cast included; Pippa Scott, Dabney Coleman, John Larch, Cindy Fisher and others

I spoke to people I know that saw this film back as children or teens in the 1970s. It was a horror Saturday night television film. Many were divided at the time if "Bad Ronald" was a victim of abuse and bullying or an unbalanced killer living a fantasy filled with knights and princesses. Almost everyone found it was hard to believe that a family would move into a home and not realize that the square footage inside the home did not fit the actual outside size of the home.

An important thing to remember about the time of this film, the big three networks of the day ABC, NBC, and CBS, were sometimes completing with limited budgets. Movies in this era were often created to fit 120-minute time slots with commercials included. “Bad Ronald” had limited time to be written to give Ronald a more realistic view. Please so remember, we had commercial sponsors like “Pledge,” “Alka-Seltzer,” or "Madge," sticking our fingers in dishwashing liquid to soften them.

In 1974 this television film shocked small children; ABC would be amazed about the number of people that would talk about this film in lunchrooms around North America for several days after it first appeared on television. Many of which would say it was an unrealistic Horror Film. After watching this film, I wonder how many people would wander their homes and listen for mystery toilet plushes.

RATING THIS MADE FOR TELEVISION “CLASSIC”

Things to consider

This film gets a 4 / 10 on television movies.

I would imagine if this film were created in the last ten years, we would have had bloody corpses, shrieks, screams, and at least one person expelling a wave of profanities during the film. I also suspect at least one nude or nearly naked body would be wandering around the house. Maybe just maybe, we might also have had a much more caring attitude toward Ronald.

This was 1974 and due to public opinion, advertisers' values, the imagination was very much left in charge of all these things. Children might have actually wondered about the late-night toilet flushes they assumed belonged to their dads.