Category: Name That Trauma!

There's a movie I have been trying to find out what it is for probably 10 years now at least. I only remember one scene, as I was only 4 at the time so that would've been 1991/1992. It was in colour and I'm sure it was a movie and was on TV or video, so I believe it would've been from the '80s (I know, doesn't help.)

The scene I remember was I believe the beginning of the movie, a big mechanical device was in the middle of the floor in a large room, the device was a huge metal pillar leading up to the ceiling, at the top it had 'branches' (metal poles coming out toward the walls) which had humans hanging from the end of them on hooks, and if I remember correctly, the device was spinning the branches around the room.

A person fell from one of them and I remember it was a black guy; then the camera zoomed into him, and he was facing away from it. He turned his head to the camera and had a face with what you would imagine a demon looks like.

I have seen some gifs which I believe are from the movie, but cannot find them now, they are of demon-like creatures.

All I know is that a lot of people thought it was HELLRAISER, as the demons did look rather like cenobites to be honest, but I know for certain it wasn't any HELLRAISER as I am a big fan of HELLRAISER.

Please if anybody gets reminded of the intro or even just a random scene like this, help me out. I've been dying to know for years.

Thank you,

— Adie S.

I have been plucking interesting ideas for film nights from this sight for a while now, and I am pleased and frustrated to now seek its help. I'm dredging my memory to pluck more details about a movie from (I think) the '90s of which I only caught the beginning. In it, a man who looked slightly "off" goes to work in something like an old Fotomat kiosk in a parking lot. Later he comes home and takes off his hair (which had been a wig) to reveal that he is bald.

The only other thing I remember is he and a woman falling gleefully through a canopy over a four-poster bed. This opening hit me in a weird place years ago, and I was pulled away before I could find out any more about it, or see more of it. I've tried search engines and video sites, using every applicable keyword I can conjure, and have had no success in harvesting something that would put my mind at rest.

The memory is incredibly vivid, but I don't have enough of it to place it. Can you help?!

— Ploppa Smerph

UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Special thanks to Rockwater for naming it with WILDER NAPALM (1993).

Hi folks.

As with many "Name That Traumas," I don't remember a whole lot of the film that traumatized me but here it goes.

I would have seen this on U.K TV around 1987/88, and it definitely had a grainy, ‘70s look to it.

The scene that ran me out of the room was of a boy of around 13 going into a service station restroom. He enters the stall and a filthy hand reaches under the wall accompanied by a rough sounding voice (think, TOM WAITS at his gruffest) asking for some toilet paper. The boy is understandably reluctant but after a couple of requests he goes to hand some toilet paper to the filthy hand and is immediately grabbed and pulled under the wall.

I have been trying to figure out what this could've been for so long now and countless Internet searches have yielded nothing.

Hope somebody out there has some idea.

I would appreciate any suggestions as my memory is quite hazy and things may not have played out exactly like the scene described.

Thanks,

— Stevil 1981

I have been trying to find the title of this made-for-TV movie since forever. I watched it in the late ‘90s although it could be early ‘90s, or late ‘80s even. I asked a friend who said the people at Kindertrauma usually can find ANYTHING. However I think this one might stump you as I have asked on every horror site known to man and nobody recalls it.

It was about a department store that may have been called "Boyles" which sold clothes, beds etc… So anyway these people get trapped inside and the mannequins in the store are trying to kill them! The opening of the movie has a man in the store basement that is impaled through the chest from behind by a CHARLIE CHAPLIN-looking mannequin holding an umbrella which he then opens.

I also remember two other specific scenes. At one point, a girl is tied to a pillar and has a very short amount of time to escape before a mannequin squirts acid onto her face from a crystalline decanter. There's also a part where the people who are trapped have to jump across a row of double beds because the floor is electrified. There may also have been a back story about the store's previous owner having a fat son who was bullied.

I can remember a lot of it so vividly but only one person on the entire Internet has described something vaguely similar and he never found out what it was either.

Can you help? This movie freaked the hell out of me.

Thanks,

— Keanu E.

UNK SEZ:: Thanks for the challenging "Name That Trauma" Keanu! I foolishly thought that we had covered every possible mannequin trauma on these pages but this one sounds different! I did notice other folks wondering about this same flick online so I hope one of our readers can help! The mall setting means we can rule out previous mannequin traumas TOURIST TRAP & the short LIVING DOLLS! I hope we can find this one, it sounds cool!

Remember THIS evil little nugget?

My particular trauma-trigger was the scenario in which the reader is confronted with a plate of cheese and crackers and the choice to eat them or leave them. My chubby cheese-loving eleven-year-old self naturally chose to devour the food…and when I turned to the page that revealed my consequent fate, I found that I'd been turned into a MOUSE.

Seriously, it was scarier than it sounds.

Really.

— Propagatrix

I absolutely love your website and have been visiting it daily since I discovered its existence! I've been knocking around the idea of sending in my own Name That Trauma for quite some time now, but I had always held off on it because I'm not sure how solid my memory of the scene I want to reference is, and also, I'm not entirely sure it wasn't just some crazy fever dream. But I decided, what the hey, I'll just submit it for some peace of mind and if someone knows what I am talking about, I will have ended a many, many years long mystery, which will be a relief!

I remember being 8 or 9, and I want to say the movie had to be from the mid-to-late ‘80s or early ‘90s. I remember that there was a class of children who made lanterns as a project and they were going on an evening parade to show off the lanterns to their parents and families. They went over a hill and disappeared on the other side. I remember being extremely creeped out by seeing the lanterns going over the hill, just little lights in the darkness, and you could barely see the children. There was a boy who was in bed when this happened, and he was watching out of his bedroom window. I think he had gotten in trouble or had not completed the project or some other thing, so he was not at the parade. He watched through those curtains with horizontal slats in his bedroom, and he saw the kids go over the hill and then saw a bright flash of light…he didn't know what had happened, but it was at that moment when the kids went over the hill that they all disappeared. Which makes me want to believe that this was some kind of alien abduction movie, or some other sci-fi flick. But that one scene is all I remember of this movie because it made me horrified to go outside in the dark – I might suddenly disappear like the kids in the movie, you know!

I apologize if it is a really well-known movie (or, for that matter, if it is not even a movie, and just something that I dreamed). I will feel stupid. But I do not typically watch alien movies or sci-fi movies…I'm much more into slasher flicks and survival horror. So forgive me if this is a common film…it just isn't in a genre that I usually watch!

If anyone has any ideas about what movie this might be, I would be so grateful! And please keep in mind that it was fifteen years ago and my memory of the scene may be shaky; so take my synopsis of the scene with a grain of salt. I'd appreciate anything that sounds at all similar, just for the leads, and who knows, it might be right!

Thanks so much for your help!

— Lizzie C.

Hi there! Dig the website!

Anyway, I have a vague recollection of either a T.V. show or a movie…all I remember is a man bursting into a hotel room to find his wife having an affair. The man shoots both his wife and her lover. In one of the next scenes, he's shown filling the dead guy's chest cavity with bricks, and has decorated the woman's coffin with icing or something of that sort. Very vague, but it freaked me out majorly as a kid and I'd love to know what the hell it's from after all these years!

Thanks and happy traumatizing,

— Dane

Hey there, I adore your website. I was wondering if maybe somebody could shed some light on something that has bothered me for years. I used to watch NICK AT NIGHT back in the '90s/early '00s when I was a little kid, and used to be a big fan of the sitcoms (which all sort of run together in my mind now). I remember I saw something on that network on one of the sitcoms (a rerun, not sure of the original air date), and then refused to turn on nick at night for maybe about a year after because it upset me so badly.

I don't remember what show it was, but I remember that a young boy got some sort of small rodent (either a hamster or mouse or something) and a bully (I have a feeling that it was his older brother, but I could be wrong) murdered it by sucking it into a vacuum cleaner. I was really shocked by it, because I didn't realize that the older boy had killed the cute little animal until the two younger boys are shown having a funeral for their pet, which I clearly remember was in a brown paper bag. I ran out of the room crying, and never finished it, but I remember that it bothered me for weeks.

Does anybody know what show this was?

— Ashley R.

UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Special thanks to Facebook kinderpal Heather S. for knowing this trauma comes from the Season 2 WONDER YEARS episode "Hiroshima, Mon Frere."

Hi,

Probably early-mid '70s anthology horror T.V. movie/special, not part of a series, which means it could be ABC.

Male child killer, possible family member, kills child, and then in the mansion where it took place, is tormented seemingly by the dead child.

At the end, child killer is on long winding stairs leading to ground floor, at wits end. I'm not sure who says this, but he is told that the dead child couldn't be here, but he sent us to etc, etc. Screams, black out.

Scared the shit out of me. Don't remember anything about the rest of the anthology, but I think there may have total three stories. But I was too traumatized to remember the other two parts!

Thanks Kindertrauma!

— Ken J.

UNK SEZ: My bet Ken J. is that you were rightfully terrified by the last segment of DAN CURTIS' 1977 anthology DEAD OF NIGHT entitled "Bobby." Check out the clip below and my review from long ago HERE! Wow, I just watched the scene again myself and it just never stops being scary does it? BTW, "Bobby" was remade by CURTIS in 1996 and appeared as the second segment of TRILOGY OF TERROR 2!