Category: Name That Trauma!

One fine afternoon in the early '80s, I zipped my cable box channel indicator to the left, locked on to HBO and caught part of one of the most depressing and bizarre bits of animation I've ever been witness to.

It was done up in a very minimalist style, simple colorless line drawings against a blank white background. There were no character voices, only a narrator with a British accent. I don't know how long it had been on, but here's the part I caught:

A plane was zipping around the sky, out of control. It was apparently being flown by an outdoorsman who had his team of sled dogs on board. The plane crashed and everyone on board perished.

The next bit involved a child who needed an operation. You saw him standing alone in the middle of the screen and then an arm snatched him off-screen. It was then revealed that due to complications he died during surgery.

There was then a scene featuring a family huddled together. The scene switched to a shed and the narrator revealed that the family sought shelter inside but had no food. It was some sort of storage shed filled with containers of chemicals, and all the family members ended up drinking them and dying. This was represented by several bubbles rising above the roof that then turned into question marks.

At this point I had decided to forgo the ending of this ever-so-joyous offering and quickly zipped right, desperately hoping to catch an episode of "You Can't Do That On Television" or possibly "Danger Mouse" and forget what I had seen. But it's stayed with me ever since, and despite searching for clues online, I have never found out what it was.

Given the tone and the times, I figure it had something to do with the after effects of a nuclear war. There wasn't much more to the narration than descriptions of what was happening with the various characters. And given the narrator's accent, I assume it was made in the UK. Perhaps the BBC or some film company didn't want kids to miss out on all of the fun adults were having when watching "Threads" or "The War Game." So did anyone else out there happen to see this?

I was watching "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" one night recently, and it reminded me of a TV-movie trauma I saw in the late 1970s or early 1980s.

As best as I can remember, it involved a girl (possibly Eve Plumb, but I can't find this in her filmography) whose new stepmother was committing her in a psychiatric hospital, under the guise of taking her to a summer camp for near-sighted girls. I do recall the girl said, "Great, we'll all be bumping into each other."

At the asylum, the girl didn't "play ball", so the staff tried various methods of breaking her, one of which was putting her into the same cell as a violent inmate, hoping she'd get beaten up – but the two girls became friends instead, playing patty-cake when their cell was opened later.

I didn't get to see the end, as it was past my bedtime, but I was told the nurses there wanted to sterilize her – but she was rescued in the nick of time, possibly by her father.

The concept of being institutionalized frightened and fascinated me at the same time, and I have always enjoyed movies involving psychiatric hospitals. Does anyone else remember this TV movie? I am guessing it aired sometime between 1979 and 1983.

Thanks!

Dustin in Minnesota

This movie might have been on USA Network's Commander USA Saturday morning in the early to mid '80s but I don't know if they showed anything this gory. I was in an appliance video store with my parents and this scene came up on a row of big screen televisions. I was probably 5-6 years old. It freaked me out.

Here is the scene:

It was in a grassy wooded area during the day. A woman slams a logging axe into a man's back who was facing a man on the ground. Blood starts gushing from the wound around the axe. The man turns around to face the woman and the man on the ground pulls a boot knife, throws it into the back of the man's neck, causing him to spit blood from his mouth.

That's all I saw.

I have been looking for this movie for years.

Martin

Hello! I recently discovered your site, and spent (no lie) about a day and a half going through the archives trying to see if I could find a movie that no amount of googling has been able to turn up. It was something my mom was watching that I caught pieces of in the early 90s. I think it was a made for TV movie, because of the quality of the production, but it could also have just been an older feature film (I want to say it was made in the late 70s to early 80s, going by the guy's haircut that I can remember). Here is what I can remember, in non-chronological order:

*A woman in a red dress with long dark hair who either lost a baby, or wants one to the point where she is treating a doll as a real baby.

*The abusive husband/boyfriend of crazy red dress lady, who at one point flips the hell out, and rips the doll away from her and tears its head off.

*A mother and daughter are driving in a car, when the windshield suddenly starts to frost over/crystallize, causing them to panic.

I think the aforementioned daughter was kidnapped by Mr. and Mrs. Crazypants at one point. Crazy red dress lady eventually is killed by her equally crazy man. I think this event is seen as a vision by another one of the characters, who sees the man hulk-out in rage as the background flashes in a weird effect. This may have happened immediately after he tears the head off the doll, but I don't think so. Her body is found on a shore, but I don't remember if it washed up or if it was ditched there.

I'm pretty sure there was some supernatural element to the movie, hence the vision and the windshield weirdness. It's also possible that I'm merging elements from different movies in my head. The weird flashing background as the guy flips out gave me nightmares, and I haven't been able to forget it!

Thanks,

Vi

I am a huge horror fan and have been since I was a kid. I watched all the horror shows I could. One that stuck with me was one where there were people in a room that had a sticky floor and they were trying to get out of it. I want to say in the end it was revealed to be just a giant glue trap made for people. I have no idea what it was from and I did some searching and I know it is not from Tales from the Dark Side, Tales from the Crypt or even the Monsters series. I do know that it was in color and not back and white so we can eliminate the old Twilight Zone episodes. I want to say this was during the late '80s to the late '90s. If you horror fans can help me remember it I will be eternally grateful.

In the late 1950s or early 1960s I watched a movie on television that scared the hell out of me. Help! Do you know what movie it was?

It was about a jovial group of friends who went on a picnic where they took turns going up in a glider plane in smaller groups. One of these small groups of friends went up in the glider plane and neither the plane or the group returned.

Either on the first anniversary of the disappearance of the glider and their friends, or years later on the anniversary of the disappearance of the glider and their friends, the surviving friends went to the exact same location to picnic and remember their friends.

And guess what . . . the glider returned and in it were the skeletons of their friends.

Scary stuff!

Do you know the name of this movie, or maybe it was a Twilight Zone or Outer Limits. Help! I want to see this again.

UNK SEZ: Thanks for writing in, M.W.! I got lucky with some googling and I think I found your Skeleton Glider Picnic! It seems you are remembering an episode of ONE STEP BEYOND entitled "Reunion". If the Youtube comments are any indication you are not the only person with a strong memory of this episode. Interestingly, there seems to be some debate about wether the skeleton was originally shown or if viewers just remember it that way based on the narrator's description. Watch below and let us know if it is anything like you remember!

Hello my name is Daniel, and first of all I wanted to say thank you! I have been a fan of your site for years. Without your site, I never would have seen Summer Girl!

Anyway, I can't remember the name of an early 1990s horror movie. I thought it was called "Time Killer" or "Timekill"?, but sadly no. The basic plot is a man in a TV studio, it almost seems like he is on some kind of soundstage, and he holds a small doll with puffy cheeks, and there are lots of shots of the doll, and also a weird announcer dude. The whole movie is very dark, almost no daylight shots. I think there are a couple kill scenes, but its super minimal/atmospheric.

I rented it once from a video store in 2002, lol! It was one of the scariest movies I have ever seeeeeen!

Any help would be appreciated.

—Daniel

Had this resurface from my subconscious the other day…probably the most obscure T.V. memory I have floating through my head. Back in the '70s I saw either a T.V. movie or show that featured an actor with grey or white hair that I believe may have been PETER GRAVES (or looked like him). He and a younger actor and actress (can't remember much about them, but they were about mid-20s I think) were traveling somewhere overseas to locate the wreckage of a WW 2-era bomber. They were in a helicopter and were looking out over terrain that had rolling hills and lots of oak trees (kind of what you see in a lot of movies filmed on location in California). They finally spotted the plane and landed, getting out and checking over the wreckage. But the pilot had a combat flashback, panicked, and took off without them. After that they came upon one of the crash survivors who was pretty old by this time and pretty much out of his mind. They tried to persuade him to return with them, but he wouldn't, preferring to stay with the plane and his fellow crew members (who were all dead and buried). I can't remember the ending, but I'm fairly sure he stayed behind when the other three were eventually picked up.

Hi, I love your site and you have helped me to i.d. numerous kid traumas lost to the sands of time even with the Internet. I have one left.

I saw this movie on free T.V. in the NYC area in the mid-to-late ‘70s/early ‘80s as a kid on the weekend. I remember the ending only. Basically, it's two men (prisoners or soldiers) struggling to make their way through the jungle to an escape army helicopter as they are pursued by the enemy. The prisoners are worse for wear as the helicopter lands with a soldier or two getting out to provide cover fire for the escapees. The returning fire proves overwhelming and the chopper leaves without being able to pick up our heroes. The movie ends with a freeze-frame of the men's faces.

Does anyone know what the name of this movie was? Over 35 years later, I still remember this downbeat ending.

Thank you,

George H.