Category: Name That Trauma!

Here's hoping you can assist me with a Kindertrauma by proxy –

A friend of mine tells me of a movie she saw when she was younger, which would place it around mid-80s or perhaps a little later.

Details are vague, but here's what she knows:

There's a girl who keeps having visions of a demon surrounded by fire. She goes somewhere – an island? a cave? – because it's her "destiny" to confront this demon.

My friend thinks that the title is one of those totally generic 80s one-word horror movie names like DESTRUCTIONATOR or KILLMONSTRINATOR or DEVILATOR or something to that effect.

Hope you all can help!

Hi!

Love your site!

My friend has a traumafession and I told her you could help her out. The details are spotty but here it goes…

Late '90s, early 2000s movie that her parents had rented….there was a little girl locked in a closet, a kidnapping situation. And then spiders got involved!

This is probably a tough one.

Thanks for everything, whether we can solve this or not.

UNK SEZ: This a tough one and I have a wild, wild guess. Could it be possible that the spider mentioned was not in the closet but in the film's title? I'm imagining a kid watching ALONG CAME A SPIDER (2001) which involves a kidnapped girl, who at some point, I believe, is kept in a closet and thinking that at any moment surely a spider was going to make an appearance. I know it's a reach but you never know. Of course, there is probably a movie out there with a little girl in a closet with an actual spider in it too! Do any of our fine readers know of such a movie? Please come into our parlor and let us know!

I recently heard about your site through one of Geeknation's podcasts and was hoping to submit, for your approval, a "Name That Trauma."

The trauma– that I can't get out of my head after 20 something years– is a film where a group of people are held up in a junkyard (?), where the survivors are trying to figure out who is human and who is a killer robot, I think. Anyway, my trauma is a scene in the film where each survivor cuts their finger to prove their humanity. One of the survivors cuts his thumb too deep and it gets infected. That scene traumatized me just because the dirty and sweaty feel of it all. If you can help me find out the name of the film I will be eternally grateful. Kindertrauma, you're my only hope.

UNK SEZ: I sadly do NOT know the correct answer for this one! I was hoping it might be MUTANT HUNT (1987) if only to justify my posting a video from MUTANT HUNT. Oh well, we can still watch a scene from MUTANT HUNT as we try to identify the correct answer can't we? Yes, we can! MUTANT HUNT used to be on Netflix Streaming but then it ran away! Come back, little Sheba!

Dear Unk!

I can't tell you how long I've loved your site, but it's been quite a while now, and I can't stay quiet any longer! May I submit for your approval my own (two!) Traumafessions?

First one is sure to confound and confuse, as it's about as obscure as I think one can get. It was a childrens' record album released about 30 years ago that concerned the noises a house makes. I believe its purpose was to reassure young people that the creeks and groans one might hear at night were not, in fact, perpetuated by spirits of those long dead. Of course, all that did for me was present the potentiality that they might easily be mistaken for such.

Now, in my late thirties, I *want* to hear this evidence of a proper haunting, though three decades ago, of course, I was quite terrified of the idea. Anyway, all I have for anyone to go on is the fact that I think the record was one of those "plastidiscs" or whatever. (You know, the floppy, colorful kind.) It had a colorful, illustrated jacket, depicting I think a young boy and his dog with a cutaway of the support beams of an average 70's home.

But alas, my memory of this is very, very foggy, indeed. Hence, any help at all would be immensely appreciated, without a doubt.

And there is just one more thing that will likely be far easier to unearth. That is, an old "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" episode that began with a man admitting his role as a murderer. All I remember is this character looking straight on into the camera, discussing his dastardly deed in somewhat shady detail, and ending with the line "That's right, I'm a murderer."

Please, please someone tell me what episode this could be, for I'm nearly more desperate to find this out than the "noises a house makes" record.

I just discovered your site when I was researching a sci-fi/horror flick I remembered being traumatized by when I was a kid (turned out to be Strange Invaders—you know which scene I'm talking about), so I was hoping you might be able to help me figure out another obscure trauma.

I'm afraid the details are sketchy since I was probably 4 or 5 when I saw it. It was on cable, probably HBO, in the early-'80s. I remember late one night happening upon the end of either a movie or a short film in which a mother with short curly brown hair I believe had killed her family and, at the point I tuned, was in a life and death struggle with her teenage son on the stairs, trying to stab him with a kitchen knife, which he wrests away from her and proceeds to stab her with in self defense. Of course she pops up for one last scare, screaming bloody hell, forcing him to finish her off.

It was chock full o'blood and screams and quite disturbing. Naturally, I must know the name so I can track down a copy to watch in full.

Thanks in advance,

James Y.

It's a killer bee movie (not b movie!) – I've recently seen The Deadly Swarm and Killer Bees to no avail. My trauma is the death of a little black girl who is innocently playing a kazoo or horn -and the Queen was inside it which then attracted the swarm. The girl is stung to death. Anybody know??

I had to have been like 2 or 3 b/c my sisters hadn't been born yet so it must have been around 1980 or so- my parents took me (WHY??) to the drive-in with them, and all I remember of the movie were clowns, horrible, terrible, clowns, I think one (at least) had a knife, and a scene in a kitchen with the doors getting all blocked up with rocks, lots and lots of rocks- I think the entire kitchen ended up being filled with the rocks, but my parents kept trying to make me lay down in the back seat so I couldn't watch, also it's been over 30 years, so I'm a wee bit fuzzy on it all. If you can identify this craziness for me, I'd be full of gratitude.

Hello!

I was hoping somebody could name this one. As a child, an irresponsible adult I knew sometimes let me watch horror films. The ones I remember best are The Thing, Prom Night 2 (I think), and a third film that I simply cannot track down. The only scene I recall from this movie involved the main antagonist, a sexy lady monster, in a hot tub making out with a curly-haired guy. A monster hunter is after her, apparently, and she knows it. So at the, ahem, moment of truth, she morphs into a hideous monster with lots of mouths all over her body (that's what my five-year-old self interpreted them as, anyway…) and kills the guy. The monster hunter shows up and finds the guy's corpse in a hot tub full of blood. This would have been mid- or late-80s. It definitely wasn't Species, although there are more than a few similarities.

Thanks for the help!

-Jeff T.

I have a very vague memory of a movie I saw as a kid. I must have watched it in the '90s but it could have been a movie from the '70s to '90s. I don't remember which part happened when but I'll try my best. I didn't watch the whole movie either, just a few scenes. It was about this woman and her son in a winter setting and it was like no matter where they went, something totally bizarre and scary was happening. They went to a middle school or high school and all the kids looked either possessed or demonic or like ghosts. They wanted to hurt the woman and her son but they ran. Then she is driving and to her right she sees a guy standing in the snow and he suddenly falls through. I think she investigates this and finds a facility underground and there are a bunch of people fighting this machine/alien; not really sure what. Like I said, very bizarre but I would love to find out what it is called and watch it as an adult.

— Luke

I remember my sister renting a movie when I was about 9 years old (1992) and it was about a young woman (20-ish) who has nightmares about her dead father being under her bed. At one point she is telling her boyfriend about it, and I think she says "I told him to go to hell, and he did." They look under the bed and a snarling head appears, with glowing red eyes. Do you have any idea what that might have been?

Thanks!

Warren C.

UNK SEZ: If I'm right about this one it's a very strange, weird, uncanny occurrence. As you might be able to tell, I watch a lot of movies and I have been doing so for decades. I even worked in a video store for 20 years, all the while picking up & watching every stray VHS horror title I could get my grubby hands on. I tell you that because I thought it slightly odd that I had never come across GRAVE SECRETS aka SILENT SECRETS (1989) until the other night when I noticed it was expiring from Netflix Streaming. GRAVE SECRETS closes with a couple in bed and the then the woman looks under the bed to see her glowing eyed father growling back at her!!! I don't remember her making the "hell" comment but that certainly fits within the story! If GRAVE is the correct movie, how bonkers is it that I watched it the night before you sent in your Name That Trauma??? Kinder-synchronicity!!! On the hand, I might be totally wrong.