Bad Ronald Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		1.5

Bad Ronald Blu-ray Movie Review

When "Made-for-TV" Meant Something

Reviewed by Michael Reuben October 7, 2018

This opening line writes itself: Bad Ronald is a bad movie. It was made in an era when the boundary was clearly drawn between films made for television and those aimed at theatrical release. The latter usually had bigger budgets, better writing and more accomplished talent. The former were disposable fare, designed to hold viewers' attention just long enough to get through the commercials. Directors like Buzz Kulik were specialists in the genre, occasionally turning out something memorable like Brian's Song (1971). But Kulik also made Bad Ronald, which sold surprisingly well when the Warner Archive Collection released it on DVD. As a result, we now have a remastered Blu-ray.

The first half of Bad Ronald establishes teenage Ronald Wilby's (Scott Jacoby) relationship with his ailing mother, which is just as co-dependent as Norman and Norma Bates, though considerably warmer. (Elaine Wilby is played by Kim Hunter, fallen far from her Oscar-winning turn as Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire.) When Ronald finds himself in serious trouble with the law, his mom conceives the nutty notion of having him build a concealed room in their crumbling Victorian home, where he can hide away while she tells police detectives (John Larch and Roger Aaron Brown) that he's disappeared. Mother's endgame is unclear, especially since she and Ronald already know she's dying of an unspecified disease. When she passes suddenly, Ronald is left on his own.

The film's second half is taken up with Ronald's gradual emergence from hiding after the house is sold to Mr. and Mrs. Wood (Pippa Scott and Dabney Coleman), who promptly move in with their three young daughters (Cindy Fisher, Cindy Eilbacher and Lisa Eilbacher). One hopes the Woods paid a rock-bottom price, because they certainly haven't done much of an inspection. Observing the family through holes in the walls, Ronald elevates the youngest daughter to the role of princess in the graphic novel he's been writing during his self-imposed imprisonment. His desire to bring his tale fully alive (in which naturally he's the hero) will eventually lure Ronald out of hiding and into more of the violence of which we already know he's capable.

Bad Ronald has wooden dialogue, numerous plot holes and a pace that was leaden even in 1974. If you saw it at the right time in your life to identify with its anti-hero's adolescent alienation and yearning, you probably recall it fondly. But I'll bet it's not nearly as good as you remember.

Bad Ronald Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Bad Ronald was shot on film by Charles F. Wheeler, who worked mostly in TV but also photographed a few memorable features like the original Freaky Friday. Previous video presentations, including the Warner Archive Collection's DVD, were taken from an antique video master that was soft and cloudy. For this 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray, WAC was able to use a recently manufactured interpositive, which was scanned by Warner's MPI facility at 2K, then given a thorough cleaning to remove dirt, scratches and other age-related damage. The resulting image looks far better than the movie deserves: film-like, clear, detailed and unquestionably superior to anything that could have been broadcast in standard definition when the film was first shown in 1974. The colors are distinct but more naturalistic than bright, and a finely rendered grain field is visible throughout. The Blu-ray's aspect ratio accurately reproduces the film's original SD TV format of 1.33:1.

Improved clarity isn't always a boon to low-budget productions, and Bad Ronald is a case in point. Feature-film visual quality only highlights the corner-cutting in the movie's overall design. Still, for better or worse, WAC's Blu-ray offers Bad Ronald's fans the chance to see it as they never have before. The film's short running time and lack of extras has allowed WAC to fit it on a BD-25 without compromising their customarily generous compression, with a bitrate that averages 34.99 Mbps.

Bad Ronald Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Bad Ronald's soundtrack has been taken from the mono composite magnetic master, cleaned of any pops, clicks or other interference, and encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0. Having been designed for the limited TV speakers of a pre-home theater era, the track exhibits a notably compressed dynamic range, with a high end that sounds genuinely unpleasant at today's reference volume. It appears that WAC has not succumbed to the temptation to "sweeten" the audio (which might be impossible), and the Blu-ray's track is only as good as the source. (The audio score is weighted for fidelity.) The forgettable musical accompaniment was supplied by Fred Karlin, who, on better days, composed soundtracks for Westworld and The Sterile Cuckoo.

Bad Ronald Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No extras are included. WAC's 2009 DVD was similarly bare.

Bad Ronald Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It has been many years since premium channels like HBO and streaming services like Netflix erased the line between theatrical features and made-for-TV movies, and even major networks have been forced to up their game in response. Bad Ronald is a museum piece, a reminder of a time when "made-for-TV" could be a dismissive epithet (though a few good productions managed to slip through, e.g. Katherine (The Radical), Sybil or Duel). Technical merits are good, but Bad Ronald is recommended only for diehard fans.