Hi! Here's my trauma:
Two mothers in orange or yellow (very ‘70s) outfits are in a laundry room or laundromat talking about how they like to wash their kids. They open two dryers and there are two kids (both girls I think) in striped knee socks inside of the dryers. One of the women reminds me of LOUISE LASSER (of MARY HARTMAN, MARY HARTMAN). Saw this on T.V. sometime between ‘85-‘89.
If someone can figure this out, they're amazing.
Thanks,
Jackie
When I heard about your site I hoped to God you might be able to identify a film I saw when I was young which kind of freaked me out.
It was a French film about a man who has an affair with some woman he meets on a train and he follows her to a little town where it transpires that almost everyone has slept with her. At one surreal point in their story he ends up sitting front of a huge fridge full of beer, he's a garage mechanic…I think, and at the end he wakes to find it was all a dream and his wife walks into the room, to reveal herself as the woman from the dream… or something…probably…
Can anyone help?
Thanks,
Mick
Hello lovelies, this is incredibly obscure and patchy but maybe SOMEONE can help me out here.
It can't have been later than 1974 or 1975, when I started watching a movie on T.V. It MAY have been set in Australia. A mummy and daddy put their tyke on a carousel and wave to him every time he goes past. But when the ride stops..he's gone. They go searching into the surrounding bushland to no avail. When they return to the carousel site, it is of course GONE, leaving a strange impression on the cement or grass..something frog-shaped, I think.
This is my first memory of being thrilled and frightened and I would love to know if anyone knows what I was watching!
Love,
Aerial
I saw it about twelve years ago whilst living in Greece but I think it was older than that. It was American and the Greek title translated as "The Beast." It was set underground, a bunch of people were potholing and found a cavern filled with trolls or goblins. At one point a man was chained to the floor on a lot of carved symbols and there were flaming torches around. At the end a big troll was holding one of the female characters and got caught in sunlight and they both turned to stone. Then it oddly cut to two of the other characters in bed asleep and the woman waking up saying, 'We forgot about X' or, 'But what about X' (X being the name of the stone woman I think). Then the man hushed her and the film ended.
Can anyone help?
Cheers,
Claire
UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Thanks to reader craig for taking the good & taking the bad and coming up with GRIM:
Hi there,
I would love to send you a link or pic, but have not been able to track down anything on a film I remember being scared of in my early teens (around 1991-1995.) It was in my local Blockbuster Video and the evil antagonist was sort of an evil Pinocchio — a thin man made entirely of wood. He was a kind of Freddy Krueger type and very sinister. He was slender and had a bald head and thin nose, and human eyes in a wooden body.
I think he may have been called "Woody" and the film had "FEAR" in the title, but I really cannot remember.
I'd love to re-live watching it – and would welcome your help if can help find it…
Thanks so much,
Matt
UNK SEZ: Matt, you pretty much answered your own Name That Trauma! I believe the flick you are searching for is 1995's THE FEAR which sports a very wooden villain (whose name is actually Morty!) This straight-to-VHS movie does not have the best reputation but it does have a few things going for it. FEAR's cast includes director WES CRAVEN as "Dr. Arnold" and ANN TURKEL, from one of my faves, 1980's HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP. In 1999 FEAR gave birth to a bouncing baby sequel named THE FEAR: RESURRECTION. Both movies are available on DVD but be careful, rumor has that the picture quality on both is grainy! (Hey, I think I made a pun.)
I'm hoping your wonderful website can help me identify a couple of my Kindertraumas:
The first movie would have been shown on HBO or Showtime in the early 1980s, and would have been made in that same era. It involved the typical group of stupid young people, and they go into a large white plantation-type house or hotel. The building is being used by a creepy man who makes manikins. There are also manikins and manikin pieces stored there. The horror element is that the creepy man actually turns people into manikins, then dismantles them. He can make the manikins, and even just the pieces, come alive and turn inanimate again. He can put the pieces of different people together. I seem to remember him removing one girl's arm while she was alive and it turned into a manikin arm before her eyes.
The creepy man picks off about half the group one by one. Further toward the end of the movie, when the creepy man is going after the last 2 or 3 young people left from the group, all hell breaks loose. Two things really freaked me out:
1) The hanging, jointed, very fake looking manikin arms suddenly turn alive and very human looking and start grabbing at the remaining young people as they run out of the building.
2) The creepy man is chasing the remaining young people. I can't remember if it is just from creepy man's touch, or if he's actually cutting off body parts with something, but one young person's arms and head fly off. You see the body parts flying through the air and landing on the ground and they have turned to manikin pieces. The pieces then turn alive again, but are obviously not attached to each other any more. The head is crying and screaming. This scared the bejesus out of me. I turned it off at that point and switched to a nicer movie so I could go to sleep MUCH later. It was absolutely horrifying to me to think about that head being alive and knowing what had happened to it. Far more scary than just being turned into a manikin head.
I have no idea when this other movie was made, but I watched in the early or mid-1970's, very late at night, I think as part of "Creature Feature." I think it was in color, but I'm not positive.
I remember a statue of a woman, maybe even a Medusa, that turned people to stone at night. I remember the statue's face would be shown very close-up and then the people would turn to stone. I also remember close-ups of bushes and vines. I think the statue was deep in a large garden or park. People would walk through the vines and run into the statue. I seem to remember a striking cuckoo or Black Forest-type clock being shown right before or during the attacks. I think maybe the statue would only turn you to stone at midnight, but I'm not sure.
I was pretty young when I saw it and never came across the movie again, so I may not be remembering that part correctly. I know this is not much to go on, but I'm hoping it rings a bell for someone.
Thanks in advance,
Rachel R.
UNK SEZ: Rachel R., thanks for the NTTs! Even though all the details don't fit snug, I think the first movie you're talking about must be 1979's TOURIST TRAP. I can't think of any other movie as mannequin crazy as that one. Check out the trailer below…
My guess for the second trauma would be the 1964 HAMMER flick THE GORGON but that seems almost too easy. There is a simple way to confirm that one though, you can watch THE GORGON in its entirety HERE or check out the trailer below! Let us know!
O.K., here's one that scarred me in my youth and after 25 years I've never seen a mention of it again, anywhere.
It was in the ‘80s, cable T.V. when you had the remote control tethered with the long cable, a row of a gazillion buttons, and a lever to switch button levels (and to jam the buttons so you could watched the scrambled Playboy channel in the hopes of seeing a wavy boob.)
My folks went out for the evening so it was wavy boob time. I flipped on the T.V. and it went directly to HBO, Showtime or Cinemax where I caught just the very tail end of a movie. But those few moments would scar me for the rest of my life. It was a typical ‘80s low-budget horror flick where the person at the end was like, "Oh it's all over now" or, "It was all a dream" when, of course, you knew it wasn't.
As soon as they said it, right behind them the floorboards erupted; fire and smoke belched from the hole and you could hear the screaming of souls in torment. From the hole rose a terrifying demon, which grabbed the person from behind and sank back into the abyss. As they disappeared back into the hole, the floorboards went back into place perfectly as if nothing had happened and then the credits rolled. At the least, I was impressed with the demon's flooring skills.
Anyone ever see a low-budget ‘80s horror flick with this ending?
— bdwilcox
UNK SEZ: That sounds like the ending of WES CRAVEN's 1981 movie DEADLY BLESSING which is woefully not available on DVD. From what I've heard that particular bit was not directed by WES himself but added on by producers after he finished the film. I'm told that in the U.K. DEADLY BLESSING was released without that over-the-top supernatural close.
DEADLY BLESSING is one of my earliest theatrical horror experiences and I have to admit, that ending, directed by WES or not, got lil' Unk good. It doesn't really fit with the rest of the film but it sure flipped me out anyway. I tried to find a clip of that scene on YouTube but had no luck. I did scrounge up a few blurry screenshots, I hope they help!
Hey everybody,
I stumbled on this site pretty recently and have been chewing my 62-year-old mom's ear off about it. Which, to my delight, prompted her to offer up her own trauma for identification.
She thinks she was about 11 (which would have made it 1958 or so) and living in New Jersey. She saw an episode of what might have been a weekly T.V. program depicting eerie stories. (I just combed the episode guides of THE TWILIGHT ZONE and ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS and viewed every title that seemed a possibility, even straying into the early sixties to be thorough.)
In the damaging episode, a beautiful young girl receives instructions to climb a spiral staircase to the top of a castle turret (?). She does so carrying some sort of light source (lantern? candle?) and reaches the top to find a room with a mirror.
Peering into the glass, she glimpses herself as a withered old woman (possibly just old, but also possibly torn up- or debauched-looking in some way.)
Y'know, it may have been my mom who actually saw this, but the act of describing it has planted such vivid imagery in my own mind that I'm as eager as she is to have the thing named!
Thanks, all.
Hi there,
I've just discovered your wonderful site and wonder if you could help me with a kindertrauma my mum experienced as a kid.
It was a fairly old film, set in some kind of circus or carnival. There is a little girl who is always skipping around singing a song – it might be "Bye Baby Bunting" — and annoying everyone.
In the scene my mum remembers, a scary man (possibly a clown) snaps and starts jumping heavily on this kid, singing her annoying song in a kind of staccato as he stomps on her, finally realising she is dead. I think this happens behind a parked car.
My mum was going crazy trying to remember the name of this film.
Any suggestions?
Heidi
UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! After some back & forth with Heidi, she came around to the realization that Unk was correct with DAY OF THE LOCUST.
Greetings Kindertrauma,
I watched a movie with my parents when I was very young that has haunted me to this day. It was not a horror movie but I think more of a dumb action movie.
I cannot remember anything except for the end where the ‘bad guys' are chasing the ‘good guys' in some kind of animal reserve or something and one of the guys dunks another one's head into a thing of water where he is then eaten alive from the chest up by piranhas.
That scene has scared me for years and now I think its time to face those fears.
If anyone can help that would be awesome!
Regards,
Jonathan
