Category: Name That Trauma!

In the early 1980s (need more specific? Let's say 1983-1987), my mom wanted to a see a movie for her birthday in November. She picked out what she thought was an indie film with a non-scary plot; I was 5-6 and would be tagging along. About half-way through the movie, the main character wakes up in the middle of having open-heart surgery. There's a curtain hanging between his head and chest, and there's no one in the stark white operating room. He pulls the curtain apart to see his chest cavity is split open. All of a sudden, millions of cockroaches come pouring out of his chest, spilling all over the floor. At that point, my dad swooped me up and quickly removed me from the theater. I think I remember seeing SNOW WHITE posters in the lobby and I see that it was re-released in 1983 and 1987.

I know that's not a lot to go on, but won't someone please help me out?

— Allison

Hello all!

First of all, a big shout-out to the readers for helping me solve my last Name That Trauma about artist Laurie Lipton that I posted back in October.

My next query is also art-related. When I was around 9 years old (circa 1981), my family and I visited my 'hipster' uncle's house. He was always very avant-garde and into all sorts of art, music, and film. During our visit there, I came across a coffee-table book he had that was about a group of humanoid characters that were like colors personified. There was a yellow man, a red man, but the one that stuck out in my mind was an indigo man, mainly because I had never heard that word before. I don't remember much about the theme or the story of the book, but the paintings/drawings had such a surreal quality that they stick in my mind to this day.

I'd love to find out what the book was and the name of the artist, anybody? Bueller? Beuller?

—MD2112

Hi hi! I first wrote to the Kindertrauma site in 2010 about "Night of the Lepus" and other films. (HERE)

I am writing again now for I recall someone, around that same time, trying to find out the name of a children's monster book that featured tons of worried monsters who all lived on the same street and were suspicious of their new neighbors who had just moved in…At the time I remembered having the book but it was on the other side of the country in storage at my parent's house so I couldn't remember the name of it or anything specific!

I am not sure if it has since been identified by others on the site, but…In case it hasn't I have just posted about it on my blog for I finally went back home and found it. The book is called 'Guess Who's Just Moved in Next Door?' It's by Colin McNaughton and it features tons of great monster drawings.

I devoted two blog posts to it HERE and HERE!

I hope this helps!

-CAP

UNK SEZ: Thanks very much Charles! That Name That Trauma from reader Kathryn (HERE) was never solved! Nice of you to remember!

UNK SEZ: Nathan W. was kind enough to solve a Name That Trauma and now he has one of his own!

I remembered seeing it on the ABC Afterschool Special (I think…). All I remember is a boy is running down a boat dock being chased by an animated weird bat. The boy trips and tries to fight it off. I'm sorry if it is too vague but that is all I remember…

Hello there, long-time reader here.

Perhaps the readers can help me with this; unfortunately 20+ years have left me wondering how much of this actually happened in what I saw and how much was assumption on my part.

Sometime in the late '80s I walked into the rec room while my father was watching something on TV. I believe the scene involved a group of people that survived a crash in some form of space ship, though it could have easily been a plane. One of the group convinces the others to leave the ship/plane and explore. The next thing that I remember is one of the group, having stayed behind, is crouching down or sitting near some sort of vent or other slim opening and sees what looks like sliced or ground-up meat coming through. He freaks out as he thinks that it is one of the other group members having been murdered or otherwise killed in gruesome fashion. I think the film heavily implied or flat out showed that he was wrong and that whatever was coming through the vent was not the result of someone's gruesome death. It's possible that I decided that on my own, though, I can't remember. I do have this image in my head of someone standing on the other side and may have intentionally been pranking the guy into thinking someone had died by stuffing something through that vent.

Not really a traumatic memory, but it was somewhat unsettling at the time. Does this sound familiar?

— Brad R.

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.

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

I was wondering if you could help me find a commercial that I haven't seen since the '90s. I think it was an advertisement for a car stereo system. In the beginning of the ad you see the inside of an alien spaceship with a couple of aliens looking down on Earth. One of them says something like, "This is Earth which is home to humans, a friendly race."

Next we're on Earth on a country road and a guy pops a CD into his stereo. He cranks up the volume of a death metal song that has a guy screaming, "DESTROY! DESTROY!! DESTROY YOU!!!" The song is so loud that the aliens can hear it from space. They are offended and now sense that humans are a hostile species instead. They lock a target on Earth and blast it away. I'm not sure if it actually showed the planet exploding or it just showed the logo of the product being advertised.

It greatly impacted me because it introduced me to the idea that music could be used to offend and anger others as well as have a cathartic effect on the listener. I went on to order a bunch of GWAR and Slayer albums from my Mom's Columbia House ordering catalog. I eventually started listening to death metal, black metal, or any kind of aggressive, loud, or fast music I could find.

My Wife, Step-son, and I were looking up funny commercials on YouTube one night when I told her to try to find it. We had no luck. All we found was the black and white Pioneer car stereo commercial where it shows the guy listening to his metal so loud that it's shacking the entire bridge that his car is sitting on.

Also, I'm in the midst of making a documentary about painting and I was hoping you post this preview of it….

Thanks,

Phil Mertz of Grimpressions

I want to preface this with it is not THE DAY AFTER.

Only aired once as far as I know in the early to mid '80s. Two hour special by one of the networks in the same vein as ORSON WELLES' "War of The Worlds" about a terrorist group taking hostages on a Navy vessel. Looked just like a newscast with reporters on-site and going back to the anchor for updates and experts throwing in their opinions. Whole thing ended with the terrorists detonating a nuclear warhead and then the credits rolled. Like I said, this was 30 years ago so my memory is sketchy but I do remember the disclaimers were before and after every commercial break which seemed odd because I don't remember every seeing that level of precaution every before on a "faux-newscast" type program.

I know this existed and just want to remember a name. Thank you in advance.

— M.Nelson
Evansville, IN

UNK SEZ:: I think I got it! We once got a NTT about another faux TV news broadcast (HERE) and a movie called SPECIAL BULLETIN was brought up by reader Nathan Wade as a possibility. It wasn't the right answer that day but I think it's the right answer today (Thanks Nathan!) I found SPECIAL BULLETIN available in it's entirety on Google video so check it out below and tell us if it's what you're seeking!

P.S. For a full review of SPECIAL BULLETIN look no further than our buddy JOHN KENNETH MUIR's joint HERE!