well if you're like me, and i know i am, you used to always really look forward to this time of year. the air chills, the leaves go amber then croak, you can dig your stinky red hooded sweatshirt out of the closet and plan on wearing it to local cineplex (drive-ins are usually closing round now) to see whatever horror films the old movie machine has churned out for you this halloween. only today it's more like whatever they've regurgitated onto the screens to grab a bit of that ol' consumer cash people are too willing to part with to see the same damn thing they saw last year. Saw V!? are they really up to a part V already? who paid to see II-IV? holy Christ in a sidecar friends. and let me not forget the upcoming Friday the 13th remake. three words for you all, tra-ve-sty. marcus nispel helming? didn't he already muck the Texas Chainsaw remake enough? didn't the stink bomb that was Rob Zombie's Halloween teach anyone anything? answer to these questions...heck no! the mighty dollar and the box office take for those movies was triple enough to keep the hollywood remake monsters keep on looking for stuff to do-over and rip more people off who have no clue about film nostalgia and care more about....gee what do them dullards care about? it certainly ain't the integrity of a good old fashioned, well done, ORIGINAL horror film. maybe they are too busy caring about...i'm still drawing a blank. maybe i'm the dullard.
another annoying thing about this halloween season. i'm calling you out AMC! what the hell happened to MonsterFest? you know a couple weeks of round the clock horror movies including classics like Magic and the Beast Must Die? now you've went wimp city USA on us all and bastardized the once damn cool couple weeks of MonsterFest into this pale semblance called FearFest. a measly eight days of horror movies when they aren't ramming their overblown series Mad Men and Breaking Bad down your throat every other hour. i've watched a collective eight hours of this FearFest so far and four of those hours consisted of Jeepers Creepers, TWICE!!!
TV around halloween is supposed to be enjoyable for the likes of us. i will still always sit through the immortal Carpenter film at least once a year around this time. another great thing about this time a year, at least when i was a kiddie was that you could count on coming home from begging for candy and catch a made for TV scare show on one of the major networks. in the day an age of sequels that i wouldn't take the time to beat with a stale salami and remakes that are just as wretched as taking a big bite from a beat up stale salami, i'm going back to the golden age of the made for TV horror film. the early 80's we're the bonanza jackpot for these pictures. some of them so good that i may talk about at length separately at another time when the mood hits. just to give ya'll an idea though. i'm talking Dark Night of the Scarecrow, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, How Awful About Allen, the BBC's the Woman in Black, This House Possessed, and the grandaddy mini series Tobe Hooper's Salems' Lot. grade A horror every one of them. for now though let's talk about a nerd-0-matic weirdy Magee who mistakenly bashes a little blonde brats brains out on a sidewalk brick and then has his overbearing mother hide him out in a secret room under the staircase in their house. yeah let's talk about the made for TV semi sorta scary Bad Ronald.
so yeah, as stated our titular character, Ronald Wilby, is the garden variety high water wearing, milk out the nostrils at lunchtime, sci fi fantasy geek who nobody really likes at school. early on he tries to chat up some of the school cools at a pool party and they pretty much tell him that they would all rather ride a road cone covered in army ants then hang out with our main man Ron. on his way home some bicycle brat outta nowhere who is of course is essential to the plot starts picking on Ron and out of frustration he shoves her and well, she falls down and goes dead. you'd think our book wormy nerd would be smart enough to go to police and explain all of this but nah instead he just buries the kid which is just as well because now we have ourselves a movie. next thing is that Ron runs home and tells his mommy, played quite effectively by Kim Hunter. for all of you who aren't as geeky as Ronald Wilby and myself, Kim Hunter is widely known for playing Dr. Zira in the original Planet of the Apes films. i must admit apart from the Apes movies i've never seen Miss Hunter in anything else let alone without being all monkeyed up and in her day the woman must have been what my drunk uncle Gary would call "a stone fox". let's get back to the less attractive Ronald. his mom who clearly has a little rust on her hinges, if ya know what i mean, decides to hide Ronald in a secret room under the steps and wait for all the dead kid backlash to just "blow over". what a mom. sure enough the coppers come callin' for our missing suspect Ronnie and mom tells them he must of just ran away, ya know, "like a normal teenager". so with Ronnie spending weeks inside the secret room and conjuring up a fantasy land called Atrana to pass his time his darling mother goes for an operation and ends up getting dead. two minutes later a new family is moving into the house with Ronald still living inside the staircase. wouldn't ya know it the family has as many daughters as Ronald has peep holes drilled through out the walls he roams around behind. suddenly you start to get the impression that Ronnie isn't missing his cuckoo bird mom as much with all the new eye pie running round the joint. but it isn't long before Ronald, who is by now believing himself to be "Prince Norbet of Atrana", is literally climbing the walls and venturing out to steal hard boiled eggs and scare nosey old neighbors so sideways that they roll down concrete steps like a lincoln log and drop dead. chalk up another accidental death and one basement burial later Ron has flipped his wig so hard that kidnapping one of the girls living in his house seems an ok idea. so with an abduction and a subsequent braining of one of the girls boyfriends, Ronnie is finally getting on with being some kinda B A D. finally after he has done enough rash things for the family to catch wise and coupled with the fact that his mind is gone harder than the wind, Ronald comes crashing out of one of the walls Kool-Aid man style. everyone freaks, the cops show up and Ronald, looking dirtier than a turd at a rodeo, is hauled off to who the hell knows. Roll credits.
Bad Ronald isn't the worst way to spend 75 minutes by any means. it can also be used as a handy guide for any shy or nerdy sci fi kid who ain't all that great with the ladies and is looking to forge a new "bad boy" image that everyone knows is plain irresistible. just follow the Ronald Wilby steps and you'll be beating them off with a stick...and then burying them in the woods.
1. react with blind violence whenever you are teased, if lucky you will accidentally crush the base of someones skull and kill them.
2. HIDE THAT BODY!!! the more shallow the grave the better.
3. tell your whacked out mom about your misadventure and have her hide you in the walls of your victorian home and lie to the cops about where you are because "teenagers run away all the time". duh stupid cops!
4. have your mom die. if necessary just kill her, this will pin the needle on the bad O'meter for sure.
5. scare your nibby neighbor to death, accident style. HIDE THAT BODY!!!
6. when a new family moves into your house, STEAL THEIR GROCERIES!! i mean bad dudes gotta eat right?
7. kidnap one or more members of the new family.
8. finally, and this is imperative, when you and your dastardly deeds are finally discovered...GO OUT SWINGING!!
you too can be as bad as Bad Ronald.
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