BAD RONALD (1974)

Teenager Ronald Wilby is a weirdo.  And when a young neighborhood girl says as much, Ronald does then only logical thing you could do in a situation like that: he caves her head in with a brick and then buries her in a shallow grave.  When Ronald's mom hears about this, she's understandably upset, but not because he killed somebody, but because this is going to ruin Ronald's chances of getting into medical school!  She then hatches the brilliant idea of hiding Ronald in a secret room hidden behind the pantry.  This works out alright at first, but then, when the mother dies and a new family (with three sexy teenage girls) moves in, things go from bad to worse.  It also doesn't help that Ronald is as crazy as a shithouse rat.

The basic story idea is full to bursting with all kinds of perverted possibilities...and none of them ever happen (since this is a 1970's TV movie), but it's still fun to think about!  A creepy male teenage virgin lurking in the walls of a house populated with three attractive teenage girls...maybe the youngest girl thinks Ronald is an imaginary friend come to life; or the oldest girl is a murder groupie and talks Ronald into murdering her family; Ronald comes out of his hiding place, ties up the entire family and starts raping and eating everybody; Ronald kidnaps one girl and holds her captive in the walls; how about an alternate reality sequel where the murderous Ronald is hiding in the walls...when a family of psychopaths move in!  Now Ronald is hiding for his life.

Anyway, as it is, BAD RONALD is interesting to see what people were watching on TV back on October 23, 1974. I imagine any youngsters who saw this back then were probably pretty creeped out by the idea of weird Ronald watching them through their walls. As for me, I enjoyed the story and got a kick out of seeing Kim Hunter, a young Dabney Coleman and brief appearances by John Fiedler and John Larch.

TRAPPED (1973)

Do you like the sound of dogs snarling, growling and barking?  Then this is the movie for you! Originally broadcast on November 14th, 1973 as part of ABC's "Movie of the Week" series, TRAPPED tells the story of a young James Brolin who's shopping at a large department store in New York City.  While innocently shopping, he's jumped in the bathroom by some muggers who beat him up and leave him for dead.  The store closes and for whatever insane reason the store is guarded by five bloodthirsty attack dogs!  They're so violent that the handlers have to wear full body protection and even install dividers to keep the dogs from attacking each other!!! James wakes up and is instantly bitten in the leg. So now with blood spurting all over the place, to the point that he's getting delirious, he runs around the store getting attacked at every turn by these crazy dogs.

Any normal person (remember this is before cell phones) would just run back into the shitter and pull the fire alarm or break a fire sprinkler nozzle, but no, not Brolin. Instead, he runs all over the joint crashing into stuff. It's kinda humorous, especially how pissed off the dogs are. They growl at everything! What's that? A mop? Grrrrr. What's that?! Stairs? Grrrrr. What's that?! A door? Grrrrr. What's that?! Another dog going Grrrrr? Grrrrr.

The dog portions are fun, but unfortunately half of the film is also taken up with Brolin's ex-wife looking for him.  Those scenes are a complete snoozefest.  If there were more attack dog scenes and less ex-wife walking around scenes, I would recommend it, but as it is it's just a mildly entertaining historical novelty.

Fun Fact: writer/director Frank De Felitta went on to direct the legendary TV movie DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW.

SEVEN IN DARKNESS (1969)

Originally aired on September 23, 1969 as part of ABC's "Movie of the Week" series, SEVEN IN DARKNESS tells the interesting story of eight (yes, I counted them multiple times) blind people who are stranded in the wilderness after their airplane crashes.  All of the sighted people on-board were killed so now it's up to the eight blind survivors to make their way beck to civilization before the blizzard freezes them to death.  Also one of the blind women is very pregnant.

For what it is SEVEN IN DARKNESS is a totally watchable film.  The production values are obviously pretty low (the "Movie of the Week" series was rumored to budget around $400,000-$450,000 per film), but the story is intriguing and the 74-minute runtime doesn't have any wasted moments.  The entire cast was good, but I was especially impressed by Lesley Ann Warren who genuinely looked blind and by Barry Nelson who did an excellent job portraying the internal struggles of a blind dude who is used to being respected and in charge and is now failing to deal with the fact that the survivors are listening to another guy instead.

Wolf attack, lots of bumping into stuff, a young woman playing a guitar and singing on a commercial airplane 5 years before AIRPORT 1975, Milton Berle not really looking like he's blind, walking canes whacking into everything.  Modern audiences would probably fall asleep within five minutes, but I think anybody who has childhood memories of this film or people (like me) that are interested in television from this period will enjoy SEVEN IN DARKNESS.

Not sure why, but my copy has this interesting "Place commercial here" cue included during one of the obvious commercial breaks.