kindertrauma

Author: unkle lancifer

The Treasure of the Four Crowns

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Hold on now here, howza come, as long as I've lived I've never stumbled across THE TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS? More importantly why has nobody ever mentioned it to me? Is it because it's a terrible film? Have we met dear readers? What do I care from terrible, it's just boring stuff I can't stand. THE TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS is never boring, well, maybe a little but it's mostly not boring and it's got the greatest ending ever…scratch that TWO of the greatest endings ever. Here's one of them…(Careful, this isn't so much a "spoiler" as the climax of the film…)

Did you see that guy's head spin?!? Did you hear that ENNIO MORRICONE score?!? You don't know how much I'd enjoy flamethrowers for arms! If God truly loved me he'd give me at least one flamethrower arm!

I must have seen the video box for this at some point, why did I pass it up? I guess it must have just looked like just another lame Indiana Jones rip-off to me; which it is, but honestly, pound for pound I think I enjoyed it better than the last two Indy flicks. It's fun, it's crazy, stupid, dumb fun and it makes zero sense and did I mention it was in 3-D? Well, originally it was. By the way, are there any lucky people out there who got to see this in the theater way back in ‘83? I want to shake your hand. (provided flames aren't pouring out of it.)

Maybe the reason this one flew past my radar Riley was because it was hatched by the same mind as COMIN' AT YA! (Spaghetti western star TONY ANTHONY). That film, which is regarded as the kickoff to the eighties 3-D revival, I did see in the theater as a kid and I have to say I was not too crazy about it. (Was I supposed to be stunned by 3-D beans being poured on my head?) I guess it's possible that I may have avoided this one for that association alone, but CROWNS is soooo much better than COMIN' AT YA!

The opening of the movie is pretty spectacular too, check this out (and get ready to duck!)…

Stop lying and admit that you want to own that Jacket. I don't blame you, I love it too. You can't imagine how bad the dubbing is in this, I adore bad dubbing.

A friend of mine (it could happen) has a large collection of 3-D movies and I recently got to see T.T.O.T.F.C. with the red/blue anaglyph glasses. That was cool, and I'm glad I did, but considering that this was originally presented with the same 3-D technology as FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH PART 3, I'm thinking it must have been really damn incredible to view in the theater. Man, if only there was some way to properly recreate such things at home…

Let me ruin everything for you by revealing that TREASURE has an epilogue that is completely insane that involves a monster coming out of a swamp for no reason whatsoever. Do you have red/blue 3-D glasses too? Go grab them, I'll wait,… check this out… if I had my way every film for the rest of time would end this exact same way….

How awesome is that? Did you fall out of your chair? People can yack as much as they want about technology stifling artistry. As far as I'm concerned they can yack ‘till the cows come home as long as the cows come home in 3-D!

I'm so happy 3-D is making a comeback because I personally never voted for it to scram. Sure every once in a while you get burned by a METALSTORM: THE DESTRUCTION OF JARED-SYN but it it's worth it for every SPACEHUNTER: ADVENTURES IN THE FORBIDDEN ZONE. As long as we're on the subject, how's about that floating severed arm in JAWS 3-D? Oh, if only life were in 3-D….oh, wait…it is.

The Sender

Posted on By unkle lancifer

I've seen the THE SENDER so many times that its multiple gaffs stick out like Sissy Hankshaw's thumbs, yet I'm compelled to return to it again and again. I blame its exceptional cast and unique (especially for 1982) tone. How do I describe this strange, somber, anomaly? The best I could ever do was A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: THE DREAM WARRIORS (or better yet, 1988's BAD DREAMS) as directed by IGMAR BERGMAN. I should point out though that THE SENDER played with the smudging of lines between dreams and reality before our fedora wearing pal Freddy ever did and that our director here is ROGER CHRISTIAN, who will later curse the world (or bless the world if you're a bad movie fan) with the very less than BERGMAN-esque BATTLEFIELD EARTH.

KATHRYN HARROLD (who you might remember from NIGHTWING and the RICHARD LYNCH starring television movie VAMPIRE) stars as Dr. Gail Farmer, a woman who finds herself captivated by a recent admittance to the psychiatric hospital where she works. The patient known simply as John Doe #83 (ZELIJKO IVANEK) is an amnesiac who recently attempted a dramatic public suicide and just so happens to have the pesky habit of projecting his nightmares into people's heads. I'm not talking about "It's the day of the big math test and I forgot to wear pants!" kind of nightmares, I'm talking about the "Whaddya know, the refrigerator is swarming with cockroaches and a rat just crawled out of my mouth!" variety.

The doctor/patient relationship in the center of the film is absorbing enough to steer your attention away from many of the film's imperfections. IVANEK is a convincing outcast with a believable supernatural aura (decades later he will be tapped to play a high ranking Vampire in HBO's TRUE BLOOD) and HARROLD has an earthy, nurturing demeanor that makes me assume flowers bloom whenever she's in the vicinity. As John Doe's past begins to materialize so does his creepy, about as much fun as a barrel of dead monkeys, Bible quoting smother-mother ( a memorably melancholy SHIRLEY NIGHT). Dr. Gail has to basically re-parent the young man to defuse his demons as his telepathic "sending" is apparently all tied up in apron strings. Don't feel left out, emotionless carved in stone fathers, you're represented by shock therapy enthusiast Dr. Denman (PAUL FREEMAN a.k.a. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK's bad boy Belloq) In other words, this is horror made for TEARS FOR FEARS fans.

Though not entirely seamless, this is some legit, classy, acne-free cinema. You know I love my garish neon eighties horror movies but THE SENDER, with its muted, mostly beige color palette and candle lit climax, has a timeless quality that I find comforting. I poked a bit of fun at director ROGER CHRISTIAN's TRAVOLT-ing Sci-Fi train wreck but let's not forget the guy was also the art director for the endlessly influential ALIEN too. THE SENDER's cinematographer ROGER PRATT went on to BRAZIL and 12 MONKEYS and the standout score is from the guy who did ANGEL HEART and LABYRINTH (TREVOR JONES).

THE SENDER's noble, non-pandering stance insured that exactly one cricket bought a ticket to see it in the theaters. Over the years it has gathered a cult of followers but this ambiguous oddity I suppose, for some people, will always fall into the neither fish nor foul pile. (You know the drill, gorehounds hate chin music and eggheads tsk-tsk decapitations…what's a stylish thriller with both to do?) As you can tell, I have plenty of room in my heart for a problem like THE SENDER, its body count may end up being a blasphemous zero but it contains the only car chase scene I've ever found even remotely entertaining. In fact, I'd say it's downright hypnotic.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Horror fans often times disagree about what they find frightening. I'd like to ask though, is there anyone out there who is not mortified by TOBE HOOPER's THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE? I mean, I know I'm old school so you have to fill me in kids, is it possible to watch that movie and not be freaked? To me it's pretty much the cinematic definition of the word horror. I can understand someone not enjoying it, it can be a shrieky headache, and I can understand someone not finding it absolutely convincing or perhaps a tad too comical, but it is unquestionably horrifying, no? Come on, a lady is shoved on to a meat hook for Christ's sake.

Cannibals, chainsaws, rotting corpses, a lampshade made out of human skin… what's not to be disturbed by? Still, even with all of those obvious sources of terror flopping around there is something within the film that fills me with an even more intense feeling of dread. I can handle the physical pain and humiliation on display. It's the uncanny elements that unbalance me; the ominous horoscopes, the solar flares, the feeling that the universe is collapsing in on our travelers. Again, I am old school. What's it like to see this movie when your childhood did not take place in the seventies? Are such people free from the full intensity of CHAINSAW's morbid grip?

The thing that scares the hell out of me in T.C.M. is not the ogre known as Leatherface but the fact that it is a journey backwards to a place that is now dead. Sally Hardesty (MARILYN BURNS) and her wheelchair bound brother Franklin (PAUL A. PARTAIN) are essentially guiding their friends on a tour of their lost, corroded youth. Before they are ever aware of the vicious madness of Leatherface and company, they explore the once livable now dilapidated home of their grandparents. Sally laughs off the fact that she once slept in the crumbling shell but from where the pouty Franklin sits, his chair unable to course the terrain, her squeals of delight sound like (and foreshadow) squeals of anguish. It's almost as if they have stumbled into some kind of Langolier-chewed history that's disintegrating beneath them. They truly can't go home again…there are spiders living there now.

Which brings me to the moment that inexplicably sticks out for me in the film. Sally and Franklin's pal Kirk (WILLIAM VAIL) wanders ahead of the group and enters a room. In an upper corner near the ceiling, he finds a nest of seething and scattering daddy long leg spiders. Trust me here, I'm not one to be squeamish about spiders (they're adorable), but there's something about this bit that gets under my skin. It's almost like an animated scribble, a growing negative space or a thousand cracks forming and the scratching, clattery sound applied over top of the visual is so other worldly sinister and so wildly exaggerated that it chills me to the bone. I'm sure that in the real world a psycho with a chainsaw is more upsetting than a nest of spiders, but in the real world a nest of spiders is polite enough not to act like a LOVECRAFTian tear in the universe.

Maybe I see too much in that mass of spiders or maybe it's the potential absence of anything being there at all that riles me. Do they simply remind me of the daddy long legs I used to encounter on my back porch when I was little (and by encounter I mean rip the legs off of)? Leatherface is ultimately human and no matter what his efforts he'll end up eventually just like his grandfather, barely able to lift a hammer. I guess to me those spiders say that time itself is the bigger monster carving through Texas and that it's a monster that no one can outrun.

Name That Trauma :: Reader Karen on an Artistic Killer Teen

Posted on By unkle lancifer

I have a real stumper – just a few flashes of memory. An unpopular teenage guy is walking home and is taunted by a younger girl on the way. He throws a rock at her – maybe he hits her with a rock – anyway, she dies. His mother's solution is to move him into the basement and conceal the entrance to the basement. His mother dies, and another family moves in. I remember he steals food from them at night.

The final scene I can recall shows him stabbing one of his paintings/ drawings/ murals in the subject's eye and blood coming out. Saw it on T.V. in the mid-‘70s. I don't know if it was made-for-T.V. or if there'd been a cinematic release.

Cheers,

Karen

UNK SEZ: Karen, that one's a cinch, you're talking about the made-for-television classic BAD RONALD from 1974. It starred SCOTT JACOBY and was based on a novel by JOHN HOLBROOK VANCE. If you'd like to know what we here at Kindertrauma think about that movie, just buy the DVD (there's a link right down there on the right) and check out its back…we're proud to have a laudatory blurb posted there for all to see!

Hospital Massacre

Posted on By unkle lancifer

There's one last Valentine chocolate in the box and it's called HOSPITAL MASSACRE, known in some parts as X-RAY; it's working title was the sublime BE MY VALENTINE…OR ElSE! Directed by BOAZ DAVIDSON (by the way, I'm still broken hearted by the conclusion to BOAZ's THE LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN…how could you, DIANE FRANKLIN !?!), this early eighties shocker has somehow avoided DVD capture though its giant silver MGM VHS box can be spotted hiding out in the back alleys of Amazon.

Kids, we're talking a 1982 slasher that takes place in a hospital, is centered around a second rate holiday and kicks off with a prologue revealing a unsettled grudge from the past! Sounds like it can't fail right? Sure it can! HOSPITAL MASSACRE puts the "ail" in fail but it's just so screwy and peculiar that I can almost forgive it for cutting into my valuable PS3 time. Let's take a look at the symptoms, shall we?

BARBI BENTON

As if sashaying her way through HEE-HAW and FANTASY ISLAND wasn't enough to enrapture me, BARBI BENTON (born Barbara Klien) also starred in the uber-incredible DEATHSTALKER. Plus, the gal's got….er….PIPES!

TWO OF THE THREE BLOODY BIRTHDAY KIDS!

In H.M.'s opening we learn that when BARBI's character Suzy was a child, a spurned admirer killed her brother on Valentine's Day. I thought it fortuitous enough to find BLOODY BIRTHDAY's super creepy SUSAN HOY playing young Suzy when suddenly up pops the ever-brilliant BILLY JACOBY as the crazed, can't take a hint psycho. Horror-synchronicity at its finest!

MY BLOODY VALENTINE NOD

Early in the film an elevator ride is cut short when the doors slide open to show three men in HARRY WARDEN gas masks, a nice playful jab at that other earlier released Valentine horror film!

LET ME OUT!

Poor Suzy just stopped by the hospital to pick up some routine test results but because her stalker switched her X-rays, the doctors, along with their seven foot tall nurses, won't let her leave! H.M. may think it's a slasher but it's really a SNAKE PIT movie at heart. Which is good because SNAKE PIT movies are as campy as they want to be and that's why I love them. (Slap me five 1985's HELLHOLE with JUDY LANDERS and RAY SHARKEY and 1990's COMMITTED with JENNIFER O'NEIL and RON PALILLO!!!)

THE FREAKS SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH!

So what if the surgeon killer is more goofy than scary, the chanting occult soundtrack is wildly inappropriate and the pacing, on occasion gets slower than an IV drip. HOSPITAL MASSACRE has a kooky KAFKA on Quaaludes vibe that should carry lovers of cult film straight on through to the other side. I was a doubter myself until BARBI stumbled into a room with three patients bandaged head to toe that just start convulsing like break dancing marionettes. Like most of the film, it's surreal, funny and not meant to be taken too seriously. Plus, in HOSPITAL MASSACRE you get a decapitated head in a hat box, that's a pretty good Valentine gift, right?

The Wolfman (2010)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

There are two movies I can always count on to put me in the proper spooked-out, gleefully morose mood I crave. They are both seriously flawed yet provide the comfiest old fashioned creep quilt you'd ever want to bask beneath. BRAM STOKER's DRACULA(1992) is lush and sweeping, though famously marred by dingbat acting and TIM BURTONS SLEEPY HOLLOW(1999) is brisk and haunting, though convoluted and scarred by numerous doofus moments. Well, I'm happy as hell to add THE WOLFMAN to my short list of beautiful losers; it is a relentlessly gorgeous visual stun-athon that hits the ground running but ends up stumbling and falling on its face like a damsel in knotted woods. The good news is that this wolf's room emptying flatulence takes place so late in the party that you can only shake your head and chuckle at it as you push it out the door.

Does anyone else think that BENICIO DEL TORRO resembles DEAN STOCKWELL mixed with BRAD PITT's way hotter brother? There is inspired casting everywhere you look here folks and although ANTHONY HOPKINS is a ham and cheese hot pocket, that's what he's paid for. I know that I'm a sucker for all things pasty and raven haired, but EMILY BLUNT and her ice shard eyes are almost too much for me to bare. I've had a mild case of stalker love for her ever since WIND CHILL but now I think it's time to start cutting out letters from magazines and assembling a message for her eyes only. Man oh man this movie with its lantern lit caravans, leather bound libraries, silver canes and whiskey drinks, gnarled branches and autumnal fervor is just plain ravishing. I seriously just wanted to walk into the screen and stay there forever; y'all know what you can do with your iPads and GA-GA's (No offense, fame monster!)

So how's the story (or the wolf's tale?) well for the most part great. It all pretty nicely moves up to an incredible peak at a mental institution where our pal Larry gets the FRANCES FARMER treatment. In fact, the psychological spine of this flick is sort of a reverse FRANCES that replaces mommy issues with daddy ones. Maybe a subtler approach would have worked better here (we are basically dunked into an icy bath of HOPKINS' Freudian faux-pas) but it's an undeniable super blast watching the inevitable head shredding of numerous head shrinkers.

Now I don't want to get too spoiley here but things do go downhill eventually. The films climax borders on cartoon ridiculous and the father /son conflict becomes a tiresome diversion from what's really interesting about THE WOLFMAN, the subjugation of our animal impulses. The final battle we are shown doesn't even visually mesh properly with the rest of the picture. Whereas before we were shown awesome half-man/half-wolf hybrids suddenly there are fuzzy super hero creatures bouncing around. Any CGI subtly you may have been hoping for is (literally at one point) thrown out the window.

I bet you dollars to dog biscuits that this BATTLE OF THE GARGANTUANS looking ending (I'm not exaggerating by the way) was part of the film's notorious reshoots. The only thing that scares me more than the idea that Hollywood thinks audiences are so dumb that they need this type of crap to enjoy a film is the idea that Hollywood may be right. THE WOLFMAN was doing quite fine without the adolescent action figure shit and a more somber conclusion was called for.

The fact that THE WOLFMAN revealed its desperation and lap dog subservience in the end does not spoil the fact that me and the old boy had an excellent run. I'm sure that future viewings will smooth my distaste for the third act but I'm sending out a prayer for an alternate director's cut of some sort anyway. THE WOLFMAN is mostly just too goth-glorious to miss, my eyeballs are still writing home about it as we speak. It's sad though that certain people could not trust the tale enough to allow it to take its natural course. As usual, somebody somewhere confused setting the beast free with pulling in the reigns.

Name That Trauma :: Reader Ryan on a Strict School Teacher's Comeuppance

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Hi, I love your site. Here's one I don't know the title of:

I remember this as a horror anthology that was shown on ELVIRA's TV show in the mid 80s, but I checked a list of the films she played and it did not match any of those. The part I remember was about a strict schoolteacher who is mean to her students. Eventually the children attack her in her home. I think they were wearing Halloween masks, which may have been removed to reveal actual facial deformities.

This scared the crap out of me as a kid, and I've never seen it mentioned in discussions about horror anthology films. Maybe you can help.

Thanks,

Ryan

UNK SEZ:: So there I was grabbing my magnifying glass and galoshes, prepping up to sleuth the Googles when I get another email from Ryan saying:

Actually I just found it. It was a segment of the film HOUSE OF THE DEAD, and was indeed shown on ELVIRA.

UNK SEZ: So Ryan solved his own "Name That Trauma" and I got to learn about a movie I never heard of. Thanks Ryan, I'm always interested to hear about any horror movies that I may have missed especially if they happen to be an anthology. HOUSE OF THE DEAD aka ALIEN ZONE is from 1978 and any interested folks can watch it HERE.