kindertrauma

Author: unkle lancifer

Ten Great Horror Romances

Posted on By unkle lancifer

February is the month of love, so what better time to take off our kiddie beanies and present you with our ten favorite horror romances. Let us know in the comments section if we missed yours!

JAWS shark revenge hoagie love
10. JAWS: THE REVENGE The death of sheriff Brody (ROY SCHEIDER) left a pretty big hole in the heart of his wife Ellen (LORRAINE GARY). A hole so big, only a guy named Hoagie (MICHAEL CAINE) could fill it. With his cupid-esque curly locks, irresistible British accent and willingness to partake in a spontaneous jig during a street festival, he's every widow's dream come true. Mrs. Brody is indeed in love again… and this time it's personal!
Jodie Foster Scott Jacoby hamster abuse
9. THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVES DOWN THE LANE Young love, how sweet it is! Many have gone to outrageous lengths to win the attention of the wily Miss FOSTER (insert presidential assassination joke here), yet few have succeeded. It would take the greatest guy ever right? Enter Mario (BAD RONALD himself SCOTT JACOBY). He is a master of disguise, a deft magician and he carries a hidden sword in his cane. Did we mention he has a sexy limp? If that wasn't enough, he's open to helping you dispose of all the dead bodies you got lying around. Good catch JODIE! He's a keeper!
witchboard gay love ouija Tawney Kitaen
8. WITCHBOARD You don't need a Ouija board to spell this out for you; long before BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (R.I.P. H.L.!) Jim Morar (TODD ALLEN) and  Brandon Sinclair (STEPHEN NICHOLS) apparently got on a first name basis with the love that dare not speak it's name. Based solely on conjecture it appears, TAWNEY KITAEN can dress in male drag till the cows come home; these dudes only have eyes for each other. I'd say, "Get a room!" but they already did.
lesbian vampire lakme sarandon bowie deneuve
7. THE HUNGER Speaking of the gays, CATHERINE DENEUVE may have promised forever love to DAVID BOWIE but looky here to what's going down to the tune of LAKME! Sisters ARE doing it for themselves! This is some real classy stuff, especially when you consider all this snogging was spurred by SUSAN SARANDON's older than the Bible "Oops… I spilt wine on my Beefy-T" come-on!
sexy werewolf bites Jenny Agutter
6. AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON David Kessler (DAVID NAUGHTON) and nurse Alex Price (can you stand it? T-H-E JENNY AGUTTER) may have just met, but if this ain't the real thing, I don't want the real thing, I'll have this instead. The shower scene alone is enough to get these two into the hall of fame. By film's end, even though they have that whole he's deceased thing between them, you can tell when Jenny looks into that furry dead werewolf 's eyes that she got some primo diary material out of the deal.
my bloody valentine candy three way
5. MY BLOODY VALENTINE What list would be complete with out this blood-soaked valentine to the horror of love triangles? T.J. Hannigan (PAUL KELMAN), after an unsuccessful attempt to move on to bigger and better things, returns home to the dead end town of Valentine's Bluff to find his girlfriend Sarah (LORI HALLIER) knocking boots with his buddy Axel (NEIL AFFLECK). Who will win her? Let's just say one of them wants her heart a little more (literally) than the other!
brundle fly maggot baby geena davis
4. THE FLY In every relationship there is a time when you must ask yourself, "How much slime can I put up with be before I'm out the door?" GEENA DAVIS seems to be gearing up for the long run. This is especially commendable when you consider how dampening the random loss of body parts might be on your sex life. Too bad boyfriend Seth Brundle (then real-life beau JEFF GOLDBLUM) is married to his work! What a shame, they were so close to a life of picket fences, Tupperware and 2.5 maggots!
chucky's in love tiffany tilly
3. BRIDE OF CHUCKY A slasher icon with a girlfriend? Who woulda thunk there would be time between slayings? It helps that Tiffany (JENNIFER TILLY) has the same interests as Chuck (BRAD DOURIF), not to mention the same plastic dilemma. These two dolls may not always get along, but when they're on the same page they're unstoppable. Take notes.
candyman tony todd bees virginia madsenn
2. CANDYMAN What is so romantic about TONY TODD and VIRGINA MADSEN's relationship? If you have to ask you either: A) Never saw this movie or B) Don't know what love is. This is the real deal folks, it's timeless and it knows no boundaries. And we say this kinda love is worth finding… no matter how many bees sting you.
king kong eats fay wray on world's biggest phallic symbol
1. KING KONG! Here he is the Grand Daddy of the woo. He had everything working against him; he was a stranger in a strange land, he was a different species altogether and he was ten times her size. But K.K. was also consistent, he never wavered, and he never gave up. How could FAY RAY help but fall? Maybe it was beauty who killed the beast, but is there any better way to go?      

The Best Thing EVER?

Posted on By unkle lancifer

 

 
Chocolate and peanut butter, ARGENTO and A'HA… DONALD PLEASENCE and monkeys… some great tastes are even better together as this video clearly illustrates. Is it bat-shit crazy or simply the most brilliant thing ever created? You be the judge! 

The Curse

Posted on By unkle lancifer

 

 THE CURSE is one strange little movie. Directed by American actor DAVID KEITH (FIRESTARTER) and produced by Italian gore Maestro LUCIO FULCI, this spaghetti-garnished hot dog, though sometimes heartburn inducing, is at least original in flavor. Slime oozing to the strums of a banjo being picked?…irresistible! WILL WEATON is Zack, a kid that's learning that mixed families don't always mean A VERY BRADY CHRISTMAS. He, along with kid sis Alice (real life sibling AMY WHEATON) are suffering through mom's decision to wed a religious fanatic (CLAUDE AKINS) who comes complete with a fat bully son (CHRISTINE's MALCOLM DANARE). One night, while mom is satisfying an itch step Dad won't scratch with a hairy handyman, a meteor crashes. This giant glowing ball spews fluorescent junk across their farm and contaminates the water supply. Soon a bounty of giant veggies is produced and it seems like a gift from God. Unfortunately when any of the harvest is bitten into or sliced, maggots and slime pour out. Suddenly God's gift looks more like a booby prize for mom's indiscretions. Speaking of mom, she's not looking so hot, giant horn-like zits are beginning to appear on her face and she's acting kinda crazy. Did she really just sew her hand into the sock she was mending? Like most crazy people, mom is quickly hid away from company but soon step Dad and his mean son start to look peeked as well. (WILL and sis were smart enough to go off the farm's crop as soon as the animals started acting wonky). As we get further along towards the climax, things get less and less heartland Americana and more and more blood soaked FULCI-cana. Mom literally ends up looking like a pile of shit and the scary step family gets all pig faced and starts brandishing pitchforks. At the eleventh hour Duke boy JOHN SCHNEIDER, a bespeckled water inspector, lends a helping hand, but by this point we've already seen the house change from real to a miniature model which can only mean one thing… kablooey! Based on THE COLOUR OUT OF SPACE by H.P. LOVECRAFT and filtered through a FULCI-funnel, KEITH's kooky salute to flesh nausea makes up for its weaknesses with sheer good old fashion weirdness.indelible scenes

  • Mom gets a gross puss squirt in the eye from a tomato
  • Alice is attacked by chickens
  • Mom "connecting the dots" on her step son's injured buttocks 
  • The aforementioned sock mending scene…
  • Cow explosion!
  • Looking like an ENERGY HOG Cyrus (DANARE) attacks Alice in her bedroom

 

     

The Bloodening

Posted on By unkle lancifer

 

the simpsons the bloodening wild barts can't be broken
 

    Since THE SIMPSONS MOVIE has proven to be a worldwide success there's only one next logical step. A full-length animated feature of THE BLOODENING is in order. The VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED parody seen in the tenth season's eleventh episode WILD BARTS CAN'T BE BROKEN left us craving more, much MORE. So get on it SIMPSONS animators, we want more of the little blighters. We won't sleep until we get the full story behind the Doctor and the bootblack rogering the fishwife in the crumpet shop!  

    Kingdom of the Spiders

    Posted on By unkle lancifer

    killer spiders william shatner tarantula web
    Super studly swinger WILLIAM SHATNER is a veterinarian assigned to the case of a murdered cow. TIFFANY BOLLING is a woman's libber and an entomologist who's pegged a bunch of creepy crawly tarantulas as the culprits behind the heifer's demise. Even though she has her hands full thwarting Bill's numerous heavy-handed advances, she easily determines the usual loner spiders have gone berserk and teamed up. These tarantulas are so crazy, they've somehow gained the power to produce webs and now live in giant "spider hills," an idea they obviously stole from ants. This would all be pretty exciting news for scientists everywhere except that the spiders want to eat people and there's a big town fair approaching that promises to be a smörgÃ¥sbord for the furry fellows. Eventually most of our favorite characters that are not dead wind up in a lodge where they have to fend off the hirsute hooligans with fire extinguishers and boiling soup. (About half the spiders are played by real tarantulas and the other half are clearly rubbery stand-ins). I don't have to tell you about SHATNER's performance (SHAT-TASTIC!) but who is this TIFFANY BOLLING and why is she so brave when forced to handle spiders at every turn? Seems a year earlier the clever minx played SPIDER LADY on ELECTRO WOMAN AND DYNA GIRL! That spider wrangling gig must have made her a shoe in for the part of the brilliant and brave Diane Ashley! And while we're at it, who is that familiar moppet playing the SHAT-ATTACK's niece who he keeps throwing around like a bag of potatoes and whose screams were obviously dubbed in later by an adult? Why it's little NATASHA RYAN, who the year earlier was busy being psychologically tortured in the SALLY FIELD television TRAUMA-THON SYBIL! Viewers who take this movie even remotely seriously deserve the hell their lives must be. This is trash of the highest order and it's all big fun right up to its mind bogglingly fake-looking final frame. A late night television mainstay of the late '70s and early '80s, KINGDOM is required viewing for arachnophobes and SHAT-APHILES. I for one, learned two important things: #1. Airplanes and spiders not only don't mix, but result in girly screams from the pilot. #2. If there is a spider crawling on your hand, don't try to shoot it off with a gun…indelible scenes

    • Numerous spider POV shots abound from the opening attack on a cow (that ends in a freeze frame of it's startled eye) to the stalking of NATASHA at a picnic
    • The attack at the fair is one of the most hilariously chaotic and jaw-droppingly bizarre things ever filmed. All of the extras deserve kudos for their nutso performances
    • SHATNER must venture into the lodge basement to fix the fuse that the sneaky spiders sabotaged. His dramatic crawl back up the stairs covered with the eight-legged villains is a thing of beauty

    Village of the Damned

    Posted on By unkle lancifer

    One day all of the citizenry of the super sleepy town of Midwich passed out dead in their tracks and took to an involuntary siesta. After awakening, all the women within child bearing years discovered a mysterious bun in their ovens. (The unmarried had some 'splaining to do). Falling asleep and waking up pregnant can be disheartening (just ask my cousin Ida), but the ladies of Midwich take their mass rape with typical English aplomb. When the children are born, it is clear that they are far from normal; in fact, they're blonde AND smart, a chillingly unnatural combination. As they get older, they begin to show further signs of otherworldliness, roaming the streets in flocks like junior Jehovah's witnesses. Residents begin to fear these Aryan-looking oddballs who begin to unabashedly strut their psychic and telekinetic powers all about town. This unrest and distrust is worsened when it's learned that if the creepy kids have a problem with you, they force you to drive your car into a wall or blow your brains out. In fact, it is suspected that Midwich is just a stepping-stone and what the kids really have their radiant eyes on is the whole globe. Are they from outer space? Can they be stopped? Based on a novel by the great JOHN WYNDHAM entitled THE MIDWICH CUCKOOS (on account of Cuckoo birds are such slackers that they make other birds raise their kids) and featuring excellent performances from future INNOCENTS star MARTIN STEPHENS and future suicide GEORGE SANDERS, VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED is creepy, compelling and surprisingly thought provoking. In fact, it's impossible to think of any demonic child movie that doesn't have this 1960 sci-fi "What if?" flick's greasy paw prints all over it. Like INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS before it, it's the absence of humanity and emotion, not to mention individuality (Commie!) that unnerves here. Although there's no over estimating the power of super-imposed, glowing eyeballs over a still framed black and white image of a cherubic child either.
    indelible scenes

    • Plane flies over slumbering Midwich, pilot nods off and plane goes boom!
    • Mom with psychic assistance, attempts to scald own hand after accidentally presenting infant with a too hot baby bottle
    • A HELLRAISER like Chinese puzzle box reveal the kids communal learning skills
    • SANDER's imagining of a brick wall to block off munchkin's Jedi mind tricks.
    • Miniature house explodes into flames

    Kinderguest Peter of HorrorsNotDead.com

    Posted on By unkle lancifer

    Of all horror films, GHOULIES II had the biggest impact on my life. This is not a point of contention, this is literal. The world is round, GHOULIES II scared me shitless. When I was 7 or 8, the babysitter let us watch the schlocky sequel that features a sequence of a man getting his cheeks chomped off by a bald ghoulie hiding in the toilet bowl. Of course, when you're 7 years old, nothing is schlocky.

    I was fucking terrified. My cheeks did not touch a toilet bowl for months.

    Fact: DEAD MAN WALKING was inspired by my fate every time I made that journey to the bathroom. Every time I entered that porcelain closet of terror I knew, knew with more certainty than any supercomputers can muster, that a hideous, bald child of Lucifer was going to enjoy the flesh of my rump. Not only that, but it turned me off of horror for years. I would not touch the genre. I would not even be on the same floor in a house playing a horror movie. I am now 22 years old and read Fangoria while I take a dump.

    Cute how the wheel of Kah turns.

    Thanks Peter, I think you just singlehandedly justified the existence of this site with that TRAUMAFESSION! Where else can you read a tale like that folks? Well, for starters you might try HORRORS NOT DEAD The recently engaged (congrats!) Peter's regular stomping ground. If it's a unique take on the genre you're looking for, look no further!

    Cellar Dweller

    Posted on By unkle lancifer

     

    JEFFREY COMBS (don't get too excited he's only in the prologue) is Colin Childress, a comic book illustrator responsible for an EC-like series entitled CELLAR DWELLER. Unwisely, he decides to crib some text from some ancient old necronomicon-y type book he has lying around and POOF! A giant monster appears and kills him and some anonymous lady to boot. Thirty years later, loyal fan Whitney (DEBRAH FARENTINO) shows up at his previous home that is now an exclusive (there's four students) artist colony. She unearths the work he left behind and consequently conjures the beast from hell as well, who wastes no time laying waste to the entire group. What's fun here is Whitney's ability to alter events with her artwork; making a banana peel appear by drawing it, just in time for rival Lisa (a post-DYNASTY PAMELA BELLWOOD) to slip on it, thus sealing her fate, etc. Sadly this idea is not exploited further as it could have injected a lot more life into the movie. (It kinda reminded me of the rewindy remote control utilized in FUNNY GAMES, if not my favorite A-HA video.) There are many more missed opportunities to be found here, but none are so bad as to outweigh the presence of YVONNE DE CARLO (AMERICAN GOTHIC) who I'd pay to see tie her shoe. The real problem besides just how stagnant the proceedings are, is that the title monster is the cutest thing I've ever laid my eyes on, and pentagram-embedded chest or not, I just wanted to fix him a sandwich and knit him a scarf. Written by CHILD'S PLAY scribe DON MANCINI and directed by (not to mention special effects by) FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 7: THE NEW BLOOD's  JOHN CARL BUECHLER, CELLAR DWELLER may not always work, but there's never any mistake that creative minds are at play.  indelible scenes INDELIBLE SCENE(S):

    • Whitney's not-so-great comic book art
    • Philip's (future NORBIT director and HEAD OF THE CLASS alum BRIAN ROBBINS) not-so-great abstract art
    • Amanda's (MIRANDA WILSON) not-so-great performance art
    • Norman's (BEN CASEY star and Noir legend VINCE EDWARDS) not-so-great desire to act out scenes from his forthcoming detective novel by shooting at vases and pointing a gun at a woman's head
    • Lisa's pretty great death by banana peel
    • Norman's very great decapitation

    Ghostwatch

    Posted on By unkle lancifer

     

    On October 31st, 1992 while American kiddies where storming suburban streets demanding their fair share of LEMONHEADS and MARY JANES, across the pond in the motherland little nippers were being funnel fed the fear of God thanks to a BBC broadcast that left some scrambling for psychiatric aid. GHOSTWATCH was a faux-reality specter hunt starring familiar television faces that, like ORSON WELLES' famous WAR OF THE WORLDS radio broadcast, blurred the line between reality and entertainment as it blurred the line between this world and the next. Viewers were brought along to observe the goings on in the household of one Pam Early who, along with her two young daughters, was experiencing poltergeist activity. Instead of the usual non-events that one would assume would take place on such a show, many were shocked to find themselves witness to extraordinary happenings. The presence in the house nicknamed "Pipes" by the girls, because of his penchant for banging on pipes, was cleverly inserted in various scenes where observant viewers might catch him for a fleeting second. Things go from creepy to alarming as it is discovered that the broadcast is working as a giant séance and effecting households all over England. Finally, even the studio that is hosting the show begins to experience the phenomena. Even knowing of the show's inauthenticity is small comfort for much like THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, it's the slow progressive mounting dread and the systematic worsening of circumstances that really gets under the skin. Having decided not to break the illusion of reality with breaks explaining the show's identity as simulation, police were flooded with panicked phone calls and some viewers were rumored to have committed suicide. At least two children were diagnosed or treated with post-traumatic stress disorder and the hoopla lead to a national ten-year ban. Contemporary cynical audiences may find all this hard to swallow but dozens of factors lead to the lightening strike of GHOSTWATCH that Halloween night. Sadly, I was in the States gorging myself with MALLOW CUPS and NECCO WAFERS.

     INDELIBLE SCENE(S):

    • Pipes by the bedroom curtain. (All of pipes' nearly subliminal appearances can be viewed HERE )
    • Playing the audio tape of Pipes' voice
    • Daughter Suzanne possessed by Pipes
    • Reporter SARAH GREENE trapped in the "Glory Hole" while the cats howl and the transmission fails.
    • Stalwart host MICHAEL PARKINSON succumbs to Pipes' will

    Official Traumatot :: Michael Stephenson

    Posted on By unkle lancifer

     

    MICHAEL STEPHENSON starred in two films for Italian director CLAUDIO FRAGASSO. The first was the little seen BEYOND DARKNESS (LA CASA 5) and the second was TROLL 2, an in-name only sequel widely regarded as one of the worst films ever made. Is TROLL 2 really that bad? Yes, it is, but it's also strangely lovable, endlessly entertaining and probably ten times funnier than anything intentionally so. Fans are rabid and legion; most can recite the film verbatim. There might be better child actors out there, but certainly none of them have ever been required to swallow the spoonful of insanity that poor STEPHENSON had to, and for that he deserves, if not our praise than at least our pity. The great news is that MICHAEL is currently working on a documentary about his experiences and the phenomenon that followed. If it turns out anything like the trailer, we're in for a (green) treat! If you'd like to keep up to date on all things TROLL2, stop by BESTWORSTMOVIE, the official TROLL 2 fansite! Â