I just remembered the name of this movie after lookig on a another board. Oh my gosh, I saw this on tv when i was about 9 and it freaked me out so bad. I swear I slept with the hall light on and checked all the closets. I was banging on walls to make sure there werent any hidden spots! Im 39 annd I still remember this movie and how weird the kid was and he was dirty and the drug him out at the end........ugh!
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Just to be safe: Don't go to sleep tonight. I hear Ronald's on the loose ...
shareMany years later, after his release from prison, Ronald Wilby made a fortune marketing fantasy medieval-themed video-games he invented while incarcerated. He bought a chain of summer camps up in the Adirondacks. Now effete, affluent teenagers from the suburbs travel up there to spend a few weeks "out in nature" (actually, getting laid, drinking, and smoking weed). Every year, a few of them mysteriously disappear. Ronald just smiles, and laughs all the way to the bank.
shareSame with me, Vito! I saw the movie when I was young. I didn't see it when it was originally televised in 1974, but I saw it about 1978 or '79. And it really haunted me. OMG. I'm 41 and I still have the occasional Bad Ronald nightmare. It's a very twisted film, but not in an over-the-top Rob Zombie way. It gets in your head and never leaves. Who'd a thunk that a made-for-TV movie would have had such a profound psychological impact?
shareWho'd a thunk that a made-for-TV movie would have had such a profound psychological impact?
I'll add the TV movie Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (1973) to your list. Seems everyone who saw that as a child when it originally aired was scared. Myself included...
shareWatching made-for TV movies back then was awesome. Pretty much everyone would watch the same thing and then you would go to school the next day and talk about it. And there was such a variety of ways they would scare your pants off - haunted houses and killer bees and dobermans and devils, etc. - not gory but scary for a kid. Those movies made such an impact on me! And then there was something about watching them in your own home - on your trusted TV - it just made you feel there was always some kind of unknown evil lurking . . .
shareGlad to see I'm not alone by finding this film so creepy even after all these years. Funny though.... Ronald was the only true evil and his killing of the little girl was an accident. No other worldly Stephen King spooks needed here.
I think part of it was the preview, where peering into a hole in the wall and there protrudes another eyeball. Or something unsettling about that snoopy neighbor, too. Reminded me of a neighbor with Alzheimer's when I was just eight years old. An old lady popping up in my play area without warning from behind a bush or a car. Sometimes ordinary life can be so haunting.
Me too! I could never remember the name of it until I just ran across it. This movie instilled lifelong irrational fears in me.
shareJust be glad you didn't read the book. Suffice it to say that in the book, Bad Ronald is really, really bad. The story in the movie is toned way down from the novel.
We report, you decide; but we decide what to report.
"Bad Ronald" really scared the crap out of me after my family moved into a home with a closed off space. It was about three feet by three feet and could only be accessed from the attic. It was created when an extension was put on the house. The family who lived in the house before us had a son who died there. Or so we were told.
sharewhen mrs schumacher s head rises up when she first looks in the window is pretty scary!!
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