kindertrauma

Year: 2014

The Medusa Touch (1978)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Wowsy. I was at the local thrift shop and I found this VHS tape called THE MEDUSA TOUCH (1978) and when I picked it up, its weight felt like a brick in my hand. It cost 45 cents because the thrift shop is crazy. It looked kind of boring because it had RICHARD BURTON's face on the cover but it just felt so at home in my mitt that I had to make it mine. Hey, it turns out I really liked this movie. It wasn't boring in the least and I'm even going to apply an "unsung classic" scratch-and-stiff sticker upon it! Why, this movie is a thriller that thrills and it's also witty and thought provoking and all that classy stuff! If you dig the more somber, headier side of horror like say, THE WICKER MAN, THE CHANGELING or THE NINTH CONFIGURATION, this is going to float your boat. You should watch it in your library with a brown-colored alcoholic beverage of your choice. If you have a fireplace, light it with your mind.

Our story begins on a wonderful note with RICHARD BURTON getting his head bashed in by an unseen assailant. A French detective (LINO VENTURA) stops by to inspect the aftermath and is astonished to find BURTON is still alive! He is rushed to the hospital and the investigators are left to wonder whom on Earth would ever want to bash RICHARD BURTON's skull in and how on Earth is he still alive after having his head smashed in so brutally? While BURTON chills out in a PATRICK (1978) style coma, the detective snoops around and pieces together his life story, which means we get a full RICHARD BURTON movie even though he is in a coma all thanks to the glorious power of flashback-flavored storytelling. The biggest blabbermouth at the clothesline is THE OMEN's LEE REMICK who portrays BURTON's long-suffering psychiatrist. She tells the detective how BURTON would go on and on about how he could make terrible accidents occur just by thinking about them and how she assumed he was a fruit cake until the evidence that he wasn't a fruit cake was too in her face to ignore.

You may be thinking to yourself, "I wouldn't watch that movie even if it meant saving the lives of thousands of strangers." If so, then this movie is even more perfect for you. It starts out being about this narcissistic dude with a God complex but then as we travel forward we go through the same conversion as the characters as they come to believe and fear his claims. Ultimately, we realize that this guy isn't simply representing unhinged folks with freaky telekinetic powers but mankind itself and its douche-y attraction to destruction and evil. I mean I'm a fairly nice person but if I could blow up stuff with my mind, let's face it, the entire world would be charred to a crisp by now.

There's a satisfying twist that you may see coming but not so early on that it will piss you off, a hearty dose of pitch black humor and finally you're left with a disturbing chill. In fact, this movie is probably more disturbing in our post 9/11 world than it was back in 1978. Or maybe that's just me. Watching a plane crash into a building is not what it used to be. Don't worry, you won't have to wait around for a used copy to knock on your door like I did; it looks like THE MEDUSA TOUCH was recently released on DVD and Blu-ray! It's so good I may have to shove out a little more than 45 cents for an upgrade!

Sunday Viewing:: Quiet Cool Presented By Darkko

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Hi! This is "Darkko."

I searched your site and did not see anything for Quiet Cool. It's a fairly violent revenge-with-a-buddy type of deal. It's so bad it's actually entertaining. Basically, some psychotic pot farming guys think it's best they slaughter anyone who lays eyes on their precious marijuana. The main guy and his buddy exchange many long, questionable looks with each other! Hahaha…
It's available to watch on youtube…

UNK SEZ: Thanks a zillion Darrko! I was just wondering the other day why I keep the KT fires burning when I only get paid negative 10 cents an hour and after nearly seven years of diligent service I have yet to win a Pulitzer (I know!). But then I remembered it's because I love movies so much that it is not even remotely funny. Point is, I would have never seen this one without your kind help and that would have been a real shame and I'm so glad that KT provides me with a place to share titles with fine folks like yourself. QUIET COOL is so awesome that I do believe the ghost of PATRICK SWAYZE watched it with me.

Now, if any of you other peeps know of a good movie that's viewable online in full, please do feel free to write in to kindertrauma@gmail.com and if it's not too inappropriate we'll share your recommendation with the rest of the class on a future Sunday! How QUIET COOL is that?

Traumafession & NTT:: Dustin in Minnesota on Dusty's Treehouse & HBO's Short Takes

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Dustin in Minnesota again, with a two-fer.

My "Name That Trauma" was more freaky than scary, and was actually somewhat amusing. It was a film short I recall seeing at a movie theater before the movie. I also saw it as one of HBO's Short Takes. This was sometime around 1981.

It started with a young boy riding his bike and singing a song. He then arrives at home, where his older brother is mixing up a concoction of kitchen ingredients, which he then makes his younger brother drink. The younger brother turns into a chicken, but still has a human voice, begging his brother to return him to normal. The older brother mixes the correct ingredients and changes his brother back.

Does anyone remember this, and if so, do you have a title? I have searched several times on the Internet for this with no results.

My Traumafession was the ONE episode of Dusty's Treehouse that I watched in the early 1970s. If you aren't familiar with that show, as best as I recall it was puppets of squirrels and other treefolk, similar to when Mr. Rogers had his neighborhood of make-believe — except the whole show was puppets. On one episode, one of the squirrels had taken someone else's medication and was very sick. The lesson was to not take medicine unless your parents gave it to you.

The reason this episode might have freaked me out so much was because when I was about 2 or 3 I took an entire bottle of iron pills and was rushed to the hospital to have my stomach pumped.

This ties in with my first Traumafession here, the Mr. Yuk commercial that terrified me so much. Maybe the iron pills made the idea of poisoning all the more terrifying to me.

Love the site, keep it coming!

Dustin in Minnesota

Name That Trauma:: R.H. on a One-Eyed Baby in a Box

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Hi Kindertrauma!

I have been looking for this one for years and could use your expert help.

One day, in the early 90s, I turned on my black and white TV to the only channel it got, which was a UHF PBS channel in Washington State, and there was a very strange film being shown. (I believe it was British, like most things on the channel.) What I saw began with two people in a car diving up to a forested hill in the country and getting out. (My memories are super rusty…) I think they may have been cops. They walked into the forest and explored until they came upon an old house/shack. They went inside and found an old box…. they opened the box and… there was a baby with one eye inside the box – alive. Just then, they saw someone running off in the woods and one of the men chased after them. I don't know why, but it gave my child mind the creep chills and I shut it off.

I vaguely remember looking it up in a TV guide later and finding something called "The boy in the box", but again, my memories are likely rotten and I'm getting it mixed up with the classic Corey Hart song.

Any ideas would be appreciated – thanks!

Traumafession:: QJS on Children of the Damned & Quatermass and the Pit

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Films that scared me as a kid? No CONTEST…'Children of the Damned' (little known sequel to the ORIGINAL 'Village of the Damned')

I don't think I slept for 6 MONTHS after watching this, and I wasn't even that young!

Oh, and finally, 'Quatermass and the Pit' (AKA 'Five Million Years to Earth') There is a scene set in a bombed-out house that still rates as one of the SPOOKIEST scenes I have EVER seen!

Happy Viewing!

QjS

Sunday Viewing:: Picture Mommy Dead (1966)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Every couple months or so I check YouTube to see if anybody has uploaded PICTURE MOMMY DEAD (1966) which has eluded me for years. I once neglected to buy the VHS at a used store and clearly the film held a grudge and was playing hard to get. Happily my saint-like patience finally paid off and PICTURE MOMMY DEAD appeared before me and looking mighty good I might add! I'm glad I didn't pick up that ratty old tape that surely was wearing washed out colors and a shroud of static. This movie needs to be crunchy not fuzzy! I put my DONNA WILKES marathon on temporary hold and dived in at once. I wasn't even through the opening credits before I decided that PICTURE MOMMY DEAD is my new favorite thing that ever existed and I was bound to be obsessed for days before some other cinematic chippy came strutting around. Holy crap, it looks like a box of candy! I had that thing were I started fantasizing about eating the movie. This movie would taste delicious! It's all pastels and gold and ornate and fizzy and now I want to listen to that ABC album "The lexicon of Love." This movie was filmed in a real mansion and has ZSA ZSA GABOR in it for Pete's sake! Maybe this will be all too frilly for some horror fans but I think the relentless onslaught of prissiness creates a counter intuitive hellish atmosphere all its own. Diabetics beware.

PICTURE MOMMY DEAD is irresistible because it brings home the crazy and fries it up in a baroque, gold-plated pan. SUSAN GORDON (who's father is incidentally the director of this fine flick, BERT I. GORDON, who also blessed our world with the tonally opposite FOOD OF THE GODS) plays Jan Brady-level crazy Susan Shelly. Our Susan has just spent some time in a convent that doubles as an insane asylum because she witnessed her mother's tragic death by fire and was so traumatized that she blocked the whole thing out of her head! Am I salivating as I type this? She comes back home to her luxurious estate with her father (DON AMECHE!) and his new wife who is Susan's ex-governess; a sneaky moneygrubber named Francene (MARTHA HYER). Turns out, if Susan looses her marbles or should happen to die her inheritance will go to her father, who could really use it because Francene has expensive tastes and has already spent his share of the dough! All right. I'm not really into inheritance drama but I am really into accusing dolls that sing, "The worms crawl in and the worms crawl out", menacing stuffed animals, attacking falcons, paintings that bleed and or yell at you and giant-sized lurking groundskeepers with scars on their faces (Not necessarily in that order). Oh, and ZSA ZSA freakin' GABORas a flaming ghost!

I hate to use the word "camp" because it sounds dismissive and yet it's kind of unavoidable here. This is 1966 though and we should remember that folks acted like hysterical lunatics in most movies back then not just in low-budget horror flicks. Obviously everything was done here sincerely and not as a joke but it is funny– especially if you imagine the characters have no idea how insane they sound and are actually trapped in a surreally overstated melodramatic dimension they can't escape. And I love the heavy-handed mommy and daddy issues; it's rather like a powder puff version of HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME without all the awesome kills. In any case, the scene were the dolls begin to harass crazy Susan is now one of my favorite scenes in all of moviedom. I'm not kidding! It's like three minutes of pure grade-A Kindertrauma. I almost overdosed! And as a matter of fact, this movie gave me crazy dreams. Any movie that can grant me trippy dreams can picture itself a pal of mine for life.

Unk's Homemade Video Store Signage!

Posted on By unkle lancifer

I was going through an old box of photos and found these sub-genre signs that I made for the horror section of the video store I used to work at. I took them home whenever the joint got all fancy and switched to DVD. What kind of dope gets rid of their "Scary Spinster" section? That's not progress!