kindertrauma

Author: unkle lancifer

Traumafesions :: Reader Dasklyer on Friday The 13th: The Series

Posted on By unkle lancifer

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

Name That Trauma:: Becca V. on a Blood Splattered Bedroom

Posted on By unkle lancifer

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.

Traumafessions :: Spooky Sean on Stephen King's The Boogeyman

Posted on By unkle lancifer

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!

Dear Mr. Gacy

Posted on By unkle lancifer

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.

Traumafessions :: Drew B. on Flight of the Navigator

Posted on By unkle lancifer

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.

Traumafessions :: Reader Josh K. on Freddy's Nightmares Ep. "Judy Miller, Come On Down!"

Posted on By unkle lancifer

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.

Name That Trauma :: Reader 442 on a Creeping, Colorless Clown

Posted on By unkle lancifer

This has been bugging me forever and I hope you guys can help me solve the mystery. So when I was around 5 or 6 my brothers and I came in from playing outside on a gloomy day. The gloom is just so strong in the memory I don't know why. Anyway I turned on the T.V. and saw the creepiest clip ever. It was a black and white film. There was a little short clown who was tip-toeing across the living room floor, I think. It was the way he was moving that creeped me out the most. He would start walking then stop really quickly and look at the camera. Then he'd start walking again.

Anyway, it moves to another scene where a little girl is asleep in her bed. She wakes up only to find that the creepy clown is on top of her toybox staring at her. Oh yeah, he has this, slightly too happy, smile on his face. So anyway the girl runs to her parents bedroom and is freaking out and the parents tell her it's nothing, and to go back to sleep. That was when I turned off the T.V. and freaked out until just now 13 years later. I really want to confront this fear and nagging memory. What was the name of the movie??

Please help!

— Reader 442

Burning Bright

Posted on By unkle lancifer

I was all set to purchase a Bengal tiger and now BURNING BRIGHT has turned me off of the idea completely. BRIANA EVIGAN (GREG EVIGAN's daughter who you might remember from SORORITY ROW) portrays Kelly Taylor, a gal set to go off to college. Trouble is, her mother's recent suicide and her stepfather's general flakiness have left her feeling personally responsible for the well being of her autistic younger brother. Her sense of being trapped becomes all too literal when she wakes up in her home to find it boarded up in anticipation of a hurricane. I should also mention that somebody has also barricaded the front and back doors, and only after setting her stepfather's recently acquired bloodthirsty tiger within the house. Not only does Kelly have to survive but she also must keep her sibling who doesn't register the danger alive too. It's safe to say that this is an unlikely situation but the matter of fact way it's handled is convincing and the resulting intensity is impossible to deny. At one point I'm pretty sure I yelped.

I gotta say that although they don't get as much attention as some other sub genres of horror, the good ol' "man vs. fill in the blank beast" movie has been discreetly advancing in quality and effectiveness over recent years (BLACK WATER & THE REEF come to mind). BURNING BRIGHT is the latest example of such a film to wisely focus on and utilize the actual animal in question, producing an authentic primal response in the viewer. (It looks like some CGI is used in BB but only around the edges to position a genuine tiger in specific places). The tiger (or really tigers, as more than one is credited) in question is a magnificent natural effect and don't be surprised if something way down in the pit of your DNA well flashes red when it's on screen. The action is all the more impressive that the lion's share (har) takes place in a limited space. Director CARLOS BROOKS even had me thinking back to HALLOWEEN with the way he transforms a recognizable everyday home into a cavernous battlefield and the last segment of TRILOGY OF TERROR with his dedication to relentlessness.

As tight as the director's craftsmanship is, a movie this intimate and concentrated could easily collapse if occupied by a feeble cast. I was impressed by every one present. GARRET DILLAHUNT (LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT) is always interesting, EVIGAN could be the king of the scream queens if she had a mind to and CHARLIE TAHAN as Kelly's autistic brother gives a temperate, modest spin on a role that many an actor (of any age) would have demolished with hammy ostentation. His approach fits right in with the film's general manner of getting the job done succinctly and without tiresome ornamental bombast. Truth told, I did end up yearning for a little more fleshing out of Kelly's relationship with her shady stepfather but the movie is so lean, compact and uncluttered maybe it's best that boat wasn't rocked. It's probably better to be left hungry for a little more than overstuffed and I don't mind filling in some of the blank spots myself. The bottom line is that this movie really worked for me as a precision suspense dispenser and I don't need anything more than that.