kindertrauma

Year: 2009

Name That Trauma :: Reader Howard P. on a Disemboweled Bathing Beauty

Posted on By aunt john

name that trauma!

I've thrown this one out to the Internet hordes before, with no luck. Help me, Obi-wan K'trauma! You're my only hope.

I saw this movie on late-night T.V. around 1976, give or take a few years. It was probably on SAMMY TERRY on Channel Four in Indianapolis. (If you don't know SAMMY TERRY, he's worth a look. Check out the link — it's even got Nixon!)

Anyway, I remember this movie in black-and-white, but we had a B&W T.V., so it may have been in color, no thanks to my cheapskate Dad.

The opening scene involves some unscrupulous capitalists dropping nuclear waste on an old shipwreck. Through the magic of double-exposure, we see the nuclear waste transform the dead pirates into gill-men.

The next scene I remember is the gill-men coming up on land and menacing some bathing beauties. The image that is seared into my pre-'tween memory is of a gill-man disemboweling a bathing beauty by gently stroking his claws along her abdomen, releasing a torrent of Hershey's Syrup. It was the most gore I'd seen at that point in my life. And it looked really fake.

The movie I'm thinking of is most definitely not THE HORROR OF PARTY BEACH, which is an awesome film that I recommend to everyone. Nor is it the Italian-made, ROGER CORMAN-produced THE ISLAND OF THE FISHMEN. I have seen these, and ruled them out.

do you know

Traumafessions :: Reader Maxson M. on Marilyn Manson & Cat Power

Posted on By aunt john

Instead of writing what scared me before, I will write about what scares me now, which is still Kindertrauma since I am only twelve. Marilyn Manson's video for his song Sweet Dreams, which is a cover of the Eurythmics classic, never fails to scare the crap out of me. It is of the king of creepy, Marilyn Manson being creepy in a creepy cathedral while his creepy band mates play the creepy song. As you see, this adds up to ultimate creepiness. I have seen lots of creepy things, but this has to top my list.

My father's computer has a screensaver that shows the album art of all the albums on his iTunes. One of his favorite singers was a folksy singer named Cat Power. She was way cool, but she had one album called What Would the Community Think that had an album cover showing a face with two black bars on the sides that went over left and right side of the face, leaving only the middle colored, except for both eyes, which remained normally colored. At night, whenever I would get up for the restroom, this cover would never fail to be on the computer in my dad's office. The way the eyes stood out made my freak, and I would close my eyes whenever I walked past the computer at night. I would always imagine the eyes in my room staring at me when I got back to the bed. Now that I see the album art again, I don't know why the eyes scared me so much. I guess to a little kid like me, anything was scary.

UNK SEZ: Maxon, I feel your pain. Those MARILYN MANSONS are creeping me out. Just be ever thankful that, unlike myself, you were not raised listening to the voluptuous horror of HELEN REDDY….

Happy Arbogast Day!

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Was it really a whole year ago that we here at Kindertrauma declared that the day after Mother's Day will forever hence forth be known as Arbogast Day? Check your calendars kids because yesterday was indeed Mother's Day and that means you know what today is… Arbogast Day!

Arbogast Day celebrates all that is fellow blogger Arborgast of the stellar blog ARBOGAST ON FILM. We are not the type to let a restraining order or two cramp our style either. How does one celebrate such a day you may be asking yourself? One way is to spend a moment or two reflecting upon what Arbogast may be doing at this very minute. Is he writing? Is he painting a portrait? Could he be taking a bubble bath or is he more of the shower type?

Another way to celebrate Arborgast Day is to take a cue from the type of post that made him our hero. Arbogast coined the phrase "The one you might have saved," when he waxed philosophic about the horror film victims that maybe should have lived. Of course horror films need their dead folks, but we all have a favorite character or two that we find it painful to say goodbye to. With that in mind both Auntie John and myself have selected our own personal choices of film characters that we wish could have lived. (It is our plan to do this every year on Arbogast Day until such time as we forget to or the world ends.) Check our choices out, tell us what yours are and make sure you stop by and visit good ol' Arbogast HERE!

Aunt John's choice:: THE BAD SEED's RHODA PENMARK

They always say it's a real tragedy when a young life is cut short. Your Aunt John says it's an even greater tragedy when the work of a murderous child is cut short. Had Rhoda Penmark not gone out in a well-lighted blaze of glory at the end of THE BAD SEED, she was to have gone sun bathing on the roof with her frumpy neighbor and pretend Aunt, Monica Breedlove. Based on the final bedtime interaction between Rhoda and her father, the pig-tailed psychopath was set to inherit a lovebird named Sweetsie in the event her Aunt Monica ever died or went away. Rhoda Penmark was a take charge little girl who made things happen, and had she survived that lightening attack on the dock, she would have made that date with Aunt Monica. She would have also facilitated some tragic slip and fall for the bombastic Breedlove and snared herself a lovebird in the process.

It should be noted that Rhoda escapes unscathed in both the novel and play formats of THE BAD SEED; it is her wishy-washy mother that does not survive her suicide attempt. Alas, it appears my poor Rhoda was a victim of the oppressive Motion Picture Production Code (a.k.a. the Hays Code), which forced filmmakers to adhere to the adage "Crime does not pay." I can only reckon that this Victorian approach to film making also dictated the goofy curtain-call tack on in the closing credits in which PATTY McCORMACK politely curtsies for the camera. If you're gonna kill the kid, don't rub salt in my wounds and trot her out like a show pony three minutes later. In killing Rhoda, they also killed off a potentially lucrative franchise. It's a damn shame that we have to live a world where the kid from PROBLEM CHILD can land a two-picture deal, and all McCormack received was a playful spanking from NANCY KELLY. Where is the justice in that?

Unkle Lancifer's choice: BAD DREAM'S LANA

After much thought my "The one you might have saved" ends up being the character of Lana from 1988's BAD DREAMS. I tried real hard to think of a super plucky or noble character from a classic film, but any answer other than E.G. DAILY 's Lana would be a complete lie. Why should I pretend to love Crêpe Suzette when I am always so darn hungry for meatballs? Lana's death is a real shame for many reasons. First off, who wants to see anything bad happen to adorable E.G.? I also gotta admit I love Lana for being such a shivering Chihuahua basket case. I know you are only supposed to like strong willed characters who know exactly what they are doing at all times and always say the right thing, but I've come to terms with the fact that I just don't. Human strength is boring as hell; give me a train wreck any day of the week. Mental patient Lana hides behind her hair and drips pathetic, over sensitivity all over the place like a pelted martyr. That is why I LOVE HER.

Watch what happens when lil' Lana tries to reach out to self obsessed final squirrel JENNIFER RUBIN…

She's Carrie White without the chance of telekinetic redemption, a doormat with a punching bag for a heart. She's also the first victim to kick the bucket. She shows up, whines a bit, has a momentary flash of hope for the future, has said hopes trampled on and then gets drowned by RICHARD LYNCH. Misery, false hope and then death, now there's a character arc I can believe in.

I would have loved to see Lana stick around longer, not to watch her lace up army boots and kick ass but to maybe just be a rock of Gibraltar sidekick with a few hidden talents up her sleeve. I mean, c'mon BAD DREAMS you could have at least had E.G. perform a theme song over the closing credits! Oh Lana, we hardly knew ye and perhaps due to your galactic vulnerability, you actually are BETTER OFF DEAD, but let me tell you, the movie BAD DREAMS would have been better off with a double dose of E.G. and a lil' bit more of that sacrificial Lana.

A video that sports not only E.G DAILY but fellow "One I might have saved." AMITYVILLE 2: THE POSSESSION's DIANE FRANKLIN? How appropriate is that for Arbogast Day?

BY THE BY: Every Arbogast has his day, but the night belongs to Amanda! Check out Kinder-chum Amanda by Night's up to the minute report on made for television remakes HERE!

Happy Mother's Day!

Posted on By aunt john


When it comes to any holiday here at the Kindertrauma Castle, your Unkle Lanciferand Aunt John are all about the recycling and the re-gifting of presents. Call us green, call us thrifty, call us lazy, we could care less. What we do care about, though, on this special day, are mothers and, more specifically, our mothers. Please join us in revisiting the countdown of Trauma-Mommas (both naughty & nice), and two very special Traumafessions from two very special ladies:

Traumafessions :: Unkle Lancifer On Mother's Day

Posted on By unkle lancifer

This is kind of embarrassing but we're all friends here right? I don't really have to worry about my horror cred being destroyed anymore as that was pulverized beyond repair when I admitted to bawling at the end of THE BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA. Here is the thing…I once walked out of a movie because I was just too mortified to endure any more. I wasn't a kid either, I must have been twelve or thirteen at the time. The movie was CHARLES KAUFMAN's MOTHER'S DAY and although it no longer has much of an effect on me at all, the truth remains, that movie scared me right out of the theater.

The year was 1980 and my older brother somehow snuck both me and my younger brother into the theater with him. (He either worked there or had a friend that did at the time.) Sneaking into the theater usually worked out fine for me and my little brother (like when we got to see THE BOOGENS) but this time we were both in way over our heads. All was fine at first, three pretty campers out in the woods alone, two crazy hick psychos and their lunatic mother out to get them, it wasn't worse than anything else we were consuming on vhs on a nearly daily basis. Then suddenly out of the blue MOTHER'S DAY starts getting all weird and twisty with the rape action. Say what you will about FRIDAY THE 13TH's Jason Voorhees, he may have had a violent streak but he was always a gentleman.

Keep in mind that at this point I had already seen I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE and LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT and been rightfully disturbed by but not completely devastated by both. It wasn't as if I was some Pollyanna or something. I thought I could handle just about anything. MOTHER'S DAY was just so damn perverse though. This wasn't some SALLY STRUTHERS in A GUN IN THE HOUSE type of deal (yikes, now that I think of it that T.V. movie did a number on me too.) For some reason this particular sexual assault involved dressing the victim up as SHIRLEY TEMPLE, taking Polaroids of her distress and all under the watchful eye of a laughing elderly crone. Sorry folks, lil Unky Lancifer just had to bail! I took as much as I possibly could, looked over to my little brother (poor guy was about ten!) and then we both made a silent agreement that it was time to scram.

I didn't try to watch MOTHER'S DAY again until I was in my twenties. By that time the movie, although still not a walk in the park, was at least partially redeemed by a clever level of satire that was previously lost to me and the fact that if you stick around you get to the part were revenge is served to the repulsive brothers and their not so sweet mom. So there, now it's out there. I admit it, I walked out of a movie because it just scared me and horrified me too much to take one other second of it (every subsequent time I've walked out a movie it was due to a different emotion-boredom.)

I can't say MOTHER'S DAY traumatized me for life, but it certainly ruined SHIRLEY TEMPLE movies for me for a long time after.

The Brood

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Oh THE BROOD, how I love thee. Is there any better horror film for Mother's Day than THE BROOD? Is there any better horror film for any day than THE BROOD? From Kindertrauma's inception, we've always felt a keen bond with this CRONENBERG masterpiece. Here is a film that deals with two of our favorite pet themes, "Tykes in Trouble" and "Kids Who Kill" (albeit mutant kids) and although we've mentioned it in numerous posts, we've yet to really stop and give it the proper attention it deserves. Why? Because I have been way too scared to. THE BROOD, like much of CRONENBERG's work, is just so damn interesting on so many levels that it has always attracted absolutely fascinating discussions from minds much sharper than my own. How could little old me objectively examine something so grand when my gut instinct is to just bow down and kiss its feet? I guess I'm just going to have to man up because we need a proper THE BROOD post up in here and it's not going to write itself. So here goes kids, I'm throwing my propeller beanie into the ring…

ART HINDLE plays Frank Carveth a guy with many an issue, the least of which is the fact that he seems to own only one pair of corduroys. Frank discovers wounds on his young daughter Candace's back and suspects that they came courtesy of his strange, estranged and partially deranged ginger-ex Nola (perfectly cast hand grenade in a housecoat SAMANTHA EGGAR.) At the time Nola is undergoing unconventional therapy in a safe trap house called the Somafree Clinic, and any question as to whether this treatment will be beneficial is answered by the fact that Nola's Doctor, Hal Raglan, is portrayed by a tightly coiled ham sandwich named OLIVER REED. We follow Frank as he learns that there is a hideous side effect to Raglan's cutting edge work. Raglan's patients' pain, once drudged to the surface, manifest into physical form. In Nola's case, troll like beast children are spawned and are set out into the world to express her rage mostly by smashing people on her shit-list in the face with blunt objects.

It might all sound a tad silly, but in CRONENBERG's hands (or should I say through his mind?) it ends up saying more about the human condition (and family dysfunction in particular) than all the hand wringing dramas you can think of combined. Inspired by CRONENBERG's own strenuous divorce, there is real venomous acrimony here. Some (including the director himself) claim THE BROOD is his answer to KRAMER VS. KRAMER, and if it is, than his "answer" is a smack of a wooden meat mallet to each Kramer's skull with perhaps an extra little whack for the Mrs. As worthy as THE BROOD's concepts about how the mind affects the body are, the larger truth unearthed involves how abuse lingers from generation to generation in a family like an unshakable hereditary disease. Now that I think about it, maybe both ideas are as compatible as broken vases and black eyes.

A funny thing happened on the way to the forum. While doing a little background reading on THE BROOD (yes, I was wearing bifocals) I came across, I'm sure a very well meaning person, who was outraged by a particular scene in the film. In the scene (which was built to disturb and therefore must be considered successful) a woman is savagely (and some say hilariously) bludgeoned to death in front of a group of young school children. The disgruntled viewer was upset that such a scene would ever be filmed with children present. I personally assume that precautions were taken like, I don't know, telling the kids that they were filming a movie or perhaps editing things in such a way, but something about this person's indignant tone stuck in my craw. It seems to me that a lot of adults spend a lot of time worrying about what children witness on television or in movies (as well they should), but not so much time worrying about what behavior they witness in their own homes. This might sound off topic, but I think that it is partially what THE BROOD is about, the lingering effects of witnessing domestic abuse (physical, verbal and psychological) and the curse of absorbing your elders' insecurities and prejudices (not to mention, rage). Violence on the T.V. is scary (check out this site called kindertrauma…) but sometimes mom and dad and grandma and grandpa leave real lasting wounds that you can't simply turn off with the flick of a switch.

Was that a soapbox I just stepped off of? I apologize, but as I said I cannot even pretend to critique THE BROOD; the movie is just too damn awesome and over my head. In order to leave on a positive note though, I will add this, the score, (the first of many done for CRONENBERG by HOWARD SHORE) is so incredibly perfect that it makes you want to slap someone.

Name That Trauma :: Reader Emily K. on a Lady Cop Fighting Flying Fleshy Ribcages

Posted on By unkle lancifer

name that trauma!

I was hoping you guys could name this trauma for me!

I must have been 9 or 10 when I was babysitting these two little girls and flipped the channel to this creepy looking movie T.V. It came in at like a female cop with short blonde hair who I guess had been futilely trying to conceive a baby. She gets dropped into some sort of weird underground cavern, I think she was chasing a guy…and she's on top of all these nasty, flesh-colored rotting things that look like human rib cages… or the front part of the ribs at least. She's all freaking out and stuff and then these cages start flapping like bats and each side of the rib cage is a wing and she's all freaking out and starts running and crying trying to find a way out.

Then all of a sudden she wakes up in a hospital and a creepy older lady is standing over her and starts cackling about how she's got her baby now and opens her dress to show a huge pregnant belly, only it's see through and you see a creepy baby growing inside and it's all nasty and opaque with nasty liquid and veins and stuff and the lady cop starts screaming and writhing in the bed; only when they pull the blanket off… her legs and arms have been chopped off!

The only other messed up detail I remember is when some guy she's looking at reaches and grabs hold on his upper lip and proceeds to pull up and rip his whole face off revealing a crazy looking nastiness underneath with no eyes or anything… just a creepy looking grin with teeth!

I've never been able to get those details out of my head for like 15 years and I never knew what the movie was called or what it was even about. I just remember I knew it was bad ‘cuz I made the girls I was babysitting watch something else out in the living room while I was rooted to the spot watching this nasty traumatizing stuff…gore has never been so eerily addictive!

Well, my searches thus far have been futile but hopefully someone on your site can enlighten me about this horrible kindertrauma I experienced!

UNK SEZ: Dear Emily, you have come to the right place because I know just the movie you are looking for! In fact I just finished watching an old VHS tape of it to double check and make sure. The movie is called NECRONOMICON and it is from 1993. It's an anthology film based on the work of H.P. LOVECRAFT and the part you remember was the third and final story "Whisper" which was directed by BRIAN YUZNA (BRIDE OF REANIMATOR). The film, as a whole, has an amazing cast of character actors that includes JEFFREY COMBS, RICHARD LYNCH, DAVID WARNER, BRUCE PAYNE and DENNIS CHRISTOPHER. This is a tough one to get on DVD but if you got one of them old-fashioned tape players you are in luck! Not everybody is too kind to this flick but I agree with you Emily, that the third segment is so whacked out it does kind of get under your skin!

Name That Trauma :: Reader Dan P. on Falling Females & Bad Birthdays

Posted on By aunt john

I have two, actually. Not sure if they're from the same movie or not. The first one involves a woman standing on a ladder which is in the hallway on the second floor, by the balcony. Someone (perhaps a child) pushes her off the ladder and she goes flying over the railing and hits the ground and dies. I thought that perhaps it was the scene in THE OMEN but it isn't. This is from a different movie.

The second trauma I have involves a birthday cake. I don't remember if it was a woman or a child, but just before or right after they blow the candles out, some sort of creature pops up from the cake and lets out some sort of ghastly scream. For a long time I was leery of birthday cakes because of this scene. Hope you can help!

UPDATE: The "Bad Birthday" trauma stems from the 1983 PETER WELLER classic OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN. Special thanks to reader jaakko, and check the comments for a clip.