Bad Roland

A review by Michael O'May

Ever heard of a little movie called Bad Ronald?

Yeah I know you haven’t, not many people have. Bad Ronald is one of those insane classics that needs much more love, and really a DVD release, how it’s managed to slip under the radar this long is a mystery. You’re also probably wondering why I have such a love for the movie; I have quite a history to be honest.

Let’s go back in time shall we, way back to my senior year of high school which was like 10 years ago. I knew I had graduation locked up so I pretty much spent my entire senior year doing jack shit. I skipped well over half the year, I slept through most of my classes and most of my time was focused on getting laid over you know, learning. Well I had one class that was pretty much the type you just have to show up to pass, health class. I spent almost every day in the back of the class asleep, until one faithful moment. It was mental illness day and instead of teaching the class with text books and tests, my teacher popped in a video. That video was a recording of a 1974 TV movie called BAD RONALD. We didn’t learn shit about mental illness beyond the fact our teacher was crazy to think BAD RONALD had any value beyond feeding my demented mind.

BAD RONALD is about the continuing miss adventures of Ronald Wilby (Scott Jacoby). Like all nerds, he tries to be cool, tries to be in that in crowd, and tries to talk to the opposite sex, but when Ronald tries to talk to girls he cracks their skull open like a piñata. When Ronald accidentally finds out there isn’t candy inside someone’s skull he has no choice but to go into hiding- inside a hidden room his bat shit mother built inside his house. The plan is to keep Ronald locked in the wall for a few years till the heat is off then let him out because its pretty obvious to everyone he was the one that did the deed. He will do his studies with his mother through a vent in the wall, he has a bomb shelters supply worth canned food with him so in theory he has no reason to leave at all.

Well time goes on, and to pass the time Ronald decides to go nuts and really I can’t see what else there is to do beyond maybe chronic masturbation. He starts to escape to a bizarre fantasy world called Entranta where he’s prince, a world he spends most of his days painting on the walls of his room. Well it doesn’t take long for Ronald’s mother to die of chronic “crazy cunt-itis” and Ronald to be left sealed inside the house with nobody knowing.

Even more time passes and Ronald manages to kill another person, this time by being so Golumish he scares them to death. Around the same time Dabny Coleman moves into the now empty Wilby house and brings his hot young daughters with him. Now if the realtor only told him there’s a murderous chronic masturbating nerd living in the walls of the house he may have moved in somewhere else.

As you can imagine the now fully nutty Ronald gets a little too excited by hot young vagina living in the house with him. He spends most of his time boring holes in walls, drooling, and being an all around creepy bastard. Pretty quickly the bodies pile up and the family begins to realize that there may in fact be a retard maniac inside their house. But you know that happens to all of us once in a while.

If you can see past how insanely stupid the whole premise of a socially inept maniac living in the walls of someone’s home is, BAD RONALD is a lot of fun. It really is beyond me how this movie doesn’t have more of a cult following, but honestly that’s why I’m here, now go track this fucker down, you wont regret it.

3 out of 4 Z’Dar’s