A long time ago I had a “Name That Trauma!” of my own solved in our comments section. I can’t find the thread but thanks again to the kind person who identified “We The Animals Squeak!” as the cartoon I was trying to recall. I’ve decided I must give this animated short a spotlight post of its own because it’s always reappearing in my brain for some reason. “We the animals…” is not scary or creepy but it does capture an awful feeling that I wish there was a catchall word for. What is the opposite of Schadenfreude? “Sympathy” and “pity” are too passive to cut it. I’m talking about an aggressive anguish when witnessing the misfortune of another, a weird nausea of some sort. You know that video of the news lady falling down while stomping on grapes? I know I’m meant to find that amusing but I can’t make myself do it. It only makes me wince and grit my teeth and recoil. What’s wrong with me? I want to have fun at the expense of others too! It’s not because I’m a nice person! I don’t feel any remorse for Miss Collins collateral damage death in CARRIE and I only recycle begrudgingly.

“We The Animals squeak” is a radio show hosted by Porky Pig and what a good fit radio is for a guy who refuses to wear pants. After a fluffy bunny finishes reminiscing about killing a hunter with his own gun to unanimous applause, we are introduced to Kansas City Kitty, a mother cat with an Irish brogue and a tale of woe. Kansas tells us briefly about her childhood and her rise to notoriety as an unstoppable mouser. Of course, for every successful person there are dozens of vermin plotting to take them down and in this case, it is a clandestine Mafioso mouse clique that devises a despicable plan. They kidnap KCK’s newborn and threaten to slice its throat and shoot it with a machine gun if she raises a paw to thwart their nightly fridge raids. I know mice gotta eat too and there’s a possibility that the threats of infanticide were of the empty kind, but what happens next is an atrocity. Not content with their new carte blanche privileges, the mice torment, psychologically torture and openly mock KCK’s pain in an orgy of depravity. To the tune of “playmate” the frenzied mob even have the audacity to use their prisoners tail as a make shift jump rope knowing that she must yield as her child’s life hangs in the balance.

I guess I was not exactly a happy-go-lucky kid because I took this scene clearly intended for comedy literally and it disturbed me. I must have associated Kansas City Kitty with my own mother (or cat) because it also made me angry. Is there anything grosser than exploiting somebody’s concern for those whom they care about? I hate these mice. They’re gluttons and clearly racist and how dare they. By the end of the cartoon, Kansas City is presented with a mouse gift (wha?) and I think we’re meant to think she made the whole thing up when she jumps on the chair and screams, but my take is that she is simply having a well earned psychotic episode triggered by the creature. Do you blame her after what appears to be hours of humiliating torture while her child’s life was at stake? I know I sound ridiculous but the truth is I can’t watch a home invasion flick, the kidnapping of the baby in THE HILLS HAVE EYES, or any kind of torture/prisoner schtick without flashing back to the scene described in my head. Really, this is the same dynamic that made Jack Ketchum’s THE GIRL NEXT DOOR so appalling. Brutality is one thing, but using your victim’s humanity as leverage is a whole other level of sadism.

In other words, I love this cartoon. It may sound like I don’t like the things that strike me as horrendous but I absolutely do. Negative behavior enforces my appreciation for positive behavior and this cartoon represents one of my earliest memories of being outraged and disgusted by the deeds of others; mice though they may be. Plus like any revenge flick worth its salt “We The Animals…” provides a nice slice of comeuppance for its miniature terrorists. It’s not exactly a high school in flames, but it will do.

Hello,

I came across your website doing a search for Angus from “Lost in Space”. My brother and I were just talking about Angus and how that terrifying scream scared us as kids.

The green monster in “War of the Gargantuas” also creeped me out as a kid. The scene where you see him looking up from under the ocean water has stayed with me all these years. Of course, watching him grab a woman through a window, chomp on her and then spit out her clothes was not easy to forget either! Again, the SOUND the monster makes is unique and unforgettable.

I vaguely remember watching a black and white movie on TV back in the 1970′s where (I think) people were being drained (of blood?) by spiders or some type of creature. Do you have any idea what that movie could be?

Thanks, and pleasant dreams!

UNK SEZ:: Thanks for joining us here at Kindertrauma Dave P and thanks for bringing with you an excellent traumafession! I’m sure one of our readers will recognize your blood sucking spider trauma! In the meantime, let us all fail to enjoy what I consider the most upsetting part of WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS! It’s the nightmarish tune “The words get stuck in my throat”!

The FREDDY’S NIGHTMARES show was recently mentioned and I finally got around to finding a show that I watched religiously for thrills in the ’90s. I’m talking about FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE SERIES. No, Jason Voorhees wasn’t in it, but it was a darn good show about cursed antiquities. It was low budget and a bit…um…’80s at times, but very dramatic and the special effects seemed really good for the time and money.

The show is about two cousins who inherit an antique shop whose stock was cursed by the devil. It was their job to recover all the items and store them away for good in order to keep people from harm. Usually a piece was already raising hell, causing the owner destruction, possession and sometimes death. I remember specifically one about a cursed compact mirror and a fashion model. I look forward to revisiting these stories.

The pilot episode featured a possessed doll who could talk and was stolen by a cute little girl. Mayhem ensues of course. Little girl: “You can talk”?!, Evil doll: “I can do a lot of things”…in a chill inducing whisper… I had an antique doll collection thanks to Dad that became a collection of fear. I had him move them to the glass cabinets in the living room.

This show was very scary to me as a kid, my Dad was and still is, an antique dealer. Our house was FULL of old curiosities. After watching this show I was terrified of some of the objects in the house. My dresser was from the early 1800′s and became highly suspect. I had become scared of ghosts and curses attached to old things. We had some strange things happen and to this day I don’t know if I was just imagining it. Light would turn off and on, TV would switch on full blast and once to my dismay the toilet flushed by itself. THE HORROR! Didn’t stop me from watching the show everyday though. I think if anything it fed my lifelong passion for all things spooky.

I have been thinking about this show for awhile now (it was also recently Friday the 13th). I looked it up on Netflix and was happy to see the DVDs available to rent. Someone had suggested to me a newer show called WAREHOUSE 13 that sounded very similar to this one. I will re-watch this first.

FRIDAY THE 13TH (if memory serves) was on after school on the Sci-Fi channel in re-run or perhaps the USA channel? BEYOND REALITY came on before or after and was liked but not as much.. I watched every episode without fail, I was glued to the TV set.I’m of the opinion that both series seemed like early versions of the X-FILES. I think a few ideas were lifted from these shows. Can’t wait to see this again. Might try to find BEYOND REALITY too. They are both available on DVD. Only FRIDAY THE 13TH is available on Netflix. Come to think of it, kinda reminds me of SUPERNATURAL too!

– dasklyter

Hi, there -

Becca V. here again. I’ve got a whole new trauma to request (you’ve solved my previous four)!

This is the hardest one yet because of how little I remember of it.

All I remember was that there was a scene with a family talking pleasantly, followed by a shot of a pink little girl’s room …. only in the pink room there is one of those spinning musical light carousels, and blood splashed across the wall. I don’t know if it was a movie or TV movie, but I saw it on TV.

Help?

Sorry to be so vague!

– Becca V.

When I was around twelve years old, I first read the STEPHEN KING short story collection NIGHT SHIFT. In the collection, there is a tale entitled, The Boogeyman, which had a literary device in it which has since scarred me well past the point it should.

The story deals with a man who tells some sort of mental health professional (I’m assuming psychologist), an account of how his three young children died. Officially, the young ones all died from SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome), but the father knows the truth. It was The Boogeyman that killed them all. I won’t spoil the rest for you, except to discuss the part of the tale which traumatized me so utterly. For, you see, every time one of his children died, the father would find the closet door open…just a crack. Just a tiny bit. And that’s the hate joke; STEPHEN KING knew that when closets are left open, it’s always just an inch or so!

Since the age of twelve, I have not been able to deal with a closet in my bedroom open. Especially not open…just a crack. I associate the open closet door with death, and while I’m way past the point of dying from SIDS, I can’t help but feel like it’s still dangerous to keep the closet open. The fear lost a lot of its power when I left home to go to college around eighteen, but I’d be lying if I said it had gone away completely.

UNK SEZ: Thanks for the traumafession Spooky Sean and thanks for building the wonderful blog SPOOKY BLOGGERY which everyone should stop by and visit often HERE!

There’s an excess of under the radar, reality-based serial killer movies out there. Separating the wheat from the wack is a challenge hard-won. Some are fascinating or can at least boast interesting performances (JEREMY RENNER in DAHMER, CARRIE SNODGRESS in ED GEIN) and some are lamentably directed by ULLI LOMMEL. (Don’t cry ULLI, you and I will always have THE BOOGEYMAN). I tend to dive into the true crime zone as sporadically as possible because I know regardless of the film’s success, I’m signing up for a bummer of a time. In fact, the better the film is the more likely I am to feel dismal afterward. I always end up empathizing too much with the victims and sometimes even the killers themselves. People can romanticize murderers as much as they like but the truth remains that they are sick miserable people whose homes no doubt smell really bad.

DEAR MR. GACY leans toward the way less sucky side of the true crime spectrum and it’s deep and dark enough without resorting to excessive violence to leave you wishing you could dunk your brain in Purell. It’s based on the book THE LAST VICTIM by Jason Moss which details the author’s correspondence with several serial killers; the staunchest of which was with John Wayne Gacy while he was on death row.

Jason Moss (portrayed in the film by JESSE MOSS, no relation) comes off as nearly as complicated and twisted as the source of his obsession allowing the film few respites as it careens towards a moral abyss. Hiding under the excuse of research, Moss endangers his family and throws his own well-being off a cliff as he attempts to outsmart, exploit and even seduce a known psychopath. Sometimes the player gets played and some masks are easier to put on than yank off. He is left stained with the knowledge that his desire to have the upper hand, his fixations on power and control and his shruggy ambivelance towards the suffering of others are all simpatico with the demons that drive Gacy. In other words, when you lie down with dogs that dress up like clowns and bury a multitude of corpses under their floorboards, fleas are the least of your worries.

Speaking of dogs, WILLIAM FORSYTHE whilst portraying Gacy, morphs from prancing poodle to pulverizing pitbull in a way that’s remarkably chilling. I’m not familiar enough with the real life maniac to say how well he captures his personality but I do know that he snags the general essence of seriously loco like a pro. After lulling us into an odd sense of comfort with Gacy the film abruptly revisits the harrowing experiences of one of his victims who somehow narrowly escaped and it’s like a sobering glass of water splashed in the face; Moss is Mr. Magoo taking a bath with a shark. Due to this being a small film concerning unpleasant subject matter it’s doubtful FORSYTHE will recieve the apprasial that he deserves but he’s really very good in this.

Horror fantasy and horror reality are two distinct camps in my book no matter how much they influence and smudge into each other. In truth, the cinematic villains horror fans are accustomed to stand so far removed from the depths of depravity known by their real-life inspirations that they might as well be Shirley Temple doing Black Sabbath karaoke. There’s probably much going on in DEAR MR. GACY that could have been orchestrated better but there’s no question in my mind that it achieves exactly what it sets out to do. It’s not Gacy’s crimes but the allure of darkness to Moss that is really under this microscope. Moss may have correctly assumed that he was brighter or quicker than Gacy but he underestimated the trumping toxic power of evil itself. This is a clash of titan egos where one oponent ends up executed (Gacy) and the other eventually kills himself (Moss took his own life on 6/6/6). I’m going to call it a draw.

Hello Kindertrauma,

Just found your website recently. I’ve been scouring it daily reliving past horrors. I gave myself nightmares last night after reading about 10 pages of Traumafessions! It’s nice to know I can still do that…

As is the case with several other of the Kindertraumatized, my trauma comes from a family film not intended to send the mind recoiling in horror for decades.

In the Disney film FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR, a young boy (David) is abducted by a spaceship commanded by a giant Black And Decker Snake Lite voiced by PAUL “PEE-WEE HERMAN” RUEBENS. After zooming through space with his new pal (even introducing the robot to American rock’n'roll music), the boy is returned to his planet only to discover he’s been “missing” for 6 years and presumed dead. His parents have a little more gray in their hair. His younger brother now appears older than HE is. Technology has progressed since he’s been “gone” and he barely recognizes anything. He is sent to some military/science facility to be monitored and researched.

Horrifying.

This idea was completely chills me to my core. Always did.

Particularly upsetting is the scene where the space alien introduces David to his other abductees – aliens from other planets. The scene where he gets a little too close to a creature who lurches from his cage and snatches the boy’s baseball cap off and eats it. A moment later, David puts his face up to a tank and a giant eyeball reveals itself and screams at him.

Words can not describe the horror I feel as an adult, reverting back to a childhood state of panic when watching this from my work computer.

Man, Disney really were the masters of the unsettling family film.

– Drew B.

First off, your site is so completely awesome and words can’t express the amount of pleasure I’ve had over the years scanning through all of your articles saying, “Oh wow… I remember that!” For this… I thank you.

For my first trauma confession ever, I present to you an episode of the late ’80s show FREDDY’S NIGHTMARES. This was an anthology show where Freddy Krueger introduced horror tales of the terrible things that happened in the cursed town of Springwood. Sometimes, he even appeared in the tales.

I was very young (maybe 8 or 9 I think), and was over my Grandparent’s house in their basement at the time. My Grandfather was flipping through the channels, when all of a sudden, he stops on this one particular program that looks like a game show. The host keeps looking at this timer and telling this totally frightened woman that she doesn’t have much time left on the clock. She is being asked questions, and the camera switches to her husband who is tied up with a blade above him that keeps swinging closer and closer to him. The host (with an unsettlingly happy grin) keeps asking her questions. The woman then says out loud to herself something like, “If I win, HE DIES!” or maybe it’s the other way around (I’m at work as I type this and can’t check on YouTube unfortunately).

Anywho, the blade finally starts piercing his flesh and you see some blood. The gagged man starts to scream. My grandmother happens to come into the room and she says “Lee, turn that off!”. My grandfather just sits there laughing. “Lee, turn that off now!” she says again. My grandfather finally turns the channel.

Of course by then, the damage had already been done.

My poor little brain was now trying to erase those images for the rest of that trip I’m sure. Later on in life, I became an absolute horror fanatic and received a bootleg set of the entire series of FREDDY’S NIGHTMARES in great quality. Imagine my surprise when I watched the episode “Judy Miller, Come On Down”. It was the infamous scarring episode!!! It had, through the hands of fate arrived back to me after years of searching for it, wondering if it was but a dream! Not only that, but I could now see all of the “wonderful” ways Judy was tormented on that sick gameshow including her relatives being covered in man-eating ants!

It’s up on YouTube now I believe, so you fellow kindertraumers can go see it in all of its sick glory. ’80s nighttime T.V. was never so good! Hehe.