The nerd is one of film’s favourite character types. Normally, they go one of two ways: the misunderstood route where a pocket protector hides their true colours or they are what they seem. In Buzz Kulik’s made-for-TV and laughably badly titled Bad Ronald, there’s a rare mix of both. At first the titular character seems to be headed on the misunderstood route. But this film isn’t about the expected. It’s about the weird. Although it’s hampered by rushed pacing and some plot contrivances, Bad Ronald isn’t actually that bad.
Poor Ronald (Scott Jacoby). He’s got an overbearing mom, no dad in sight and the social skills of Deep Blue, the IBM super computer from a few years back. Despite his brave swooning for the hot girl next store, he’s labeled an outcast doomed to be lonely for at least the duration of high school. And that’s when things are going good for him.
Whilst on the way home from being shutdown by the girl of his dreams, Ronald runs into the girl’s much younger sister. She proceeds to berate Ronald, which in turn makes him mad. And understandably so. I’d be a little embarrassed too if a girl on a banana bike told me where to go when I was in high school. But then Ronald has to go and take it too far. He starts fighting with the young girl and she ends up dead.
Although it was accidental, Ronald doesn’t know what to do. Seeing as how her Ronald is her only thing in the world, Elaine (Kim Hunter), his mother, helps him out. She suggests they build over their first story bathroom and make it into a make-shift hideout where Ronald can lay low for a while. Seeing as how Ronald just got a toolbox for his birthday a short time earlier, this makes perfect sense and all seems happy again. At least until Ronald’s mother goes in for a somewhat routine operation and doesn’t come home. With Ronald presumably on the run, the house goes up for sale and a new family moves in. Ronald goes from misunderstood teenaged murderer in hiding to a peeping tom creeper on the brink of insanity.
Bad Ronald has a creepy vibe throughout its brisk running time. It opens with a very quiet scene in which Elaine presents Ronald with a birthday cake. The stark plainness of the scene reflects the two characters’ lives. They’re quiet members of society that in all honesty probably wouldn’t be missed much if they just up and moved away without notice. It’s quite sad, really. But that’s the way it is. Elaine’s over-protective attitude toward Ronald certainly increases the creep factor. She reminded me a lot of the titular character’s mom in Brian De Palma’s Carrie.
Time is not a friend to Bad Ronald. With its iron-clad running time of 74 minutes due to TV time constraints, as soon as the problem is established it moves right into being resolved. Personally, I wished the film had sped along the beginning a little more and maybe even dropped parts of the subplots to make the script tighter and more suited for the shorter length. As it stands, the film is jolting. The first half revolves around Ronald hiding. With the change of a scene his mother is dead and the new tenants are moving in. This is where the major issues arise and where development is necessary. Instead several characters are introduced but none are developed beyond the most superficial levels.
As a study of madness and morality, Bad Ronald does raise some interesting questions. But because of its limited nature, it’s given little chance to truly explore any of them with any real meaning. Ultimately, it drags the film from something that’s really good to something that’s intriguing for a time and nothing much in the end.
Bad Ronald DVD Review
Bad Ronald is being released as a part of the online on-demand Warner Archive Collection. It provides a no-frills disc with the film being shown in its original full screen, English mono format. The picture is a little rough, which is amplified somewhat when blown up to the larger screen’s of today’s TVs versus those found in homes 35 years ago. For fans of the film, this release provides an outlet to see it again. For everyone else, it’s probably best seen as something that’s acceptable and better than nothing at all.
