Category: Name That Trauma!

Oh how thankful I am to have stumbled upon your site! These two movies have been in the back of my mind for years! Yahoo Answers couldn't help me, so I'm really hoping you can.

Both of these I saw around 1977-79, but I'm not sure when they were made. It is possible they were made-for-T.V. movies/shows since I saw them via hiding behind my mom's lazy-boy when I wasn't supposed to be up.

The first movie featured an evil totem pole or carved Indian statue (not huge, probably 2-4' tall.) It was a round, wooden thing with a carved face and it seemed to glide around. I remember it sneaking down a hallway because it was going to kill someone. There was a good guy who was trying to save the lady and they had to make a protective circle to keep the evil totem out. I think at one point he had to protect someone in a hospital bed and was trying to beat the totem there.

The other movie was about witches – maybe Salem trials, since it was portraying 1600-1700s. I remember it showed a woman strapped to a big wheel or huge wooden spool and people rolling it to crush and kill her.

Any ideas are appreciated!!!

Dear Kindertrauma,

When I was very small, in the late ‘70s, I watched a movie on T.V. that seems to me was in color and made in the late ‘60s or early ‘70s. I think there was a "woman" who invited a few, select, people over for an extended stay in her huge mansion and I think they start dying.

Two parts I kind of remember are: a person wakes up in the middle of the night with a man standing at the foot of their bed in the shadows (but I also kind of remember that he goes back to that room twice and the second time gets hit on the head with something; and at one point we see the "woman" go into a room way, way in the back of her huge mansion house and see her take off her make-up – to show us that she is really a super creepy man (who snuck into people's rooms in the dark)!

That freaked the freak right out of me.

Does this rambling sound familiar to anyone?

Thank you so much for creating this amazing site!

Howdy!

First off, I've been a visitor for a while now and all I can say is awesome site. I have finally decided to write in seeking help in attempting to figure out the title of a bizarre movie from my childhood. For years, I've been trying to track it down. From what I remember, I watched it one afternoon on the Sci-Fi channel back in late ‘90s (the movie had to of been from the 1980s though) and it really disturbed me. I think it could have been from an anthology movie, but I'm not sure.

From what I can recall, it starts out with two middle aged guys driving, they drive through a thick fog or a mist and they end up in some weird village where they're treated with hostility. I think the villagers want to or plan on eating them, and I think they kill the one guy while the other is more or less the hero of the story. The main guy meets some girl who tries to help him escape. Near the end he tries to escape but can't make it out from the fog. The setting and atmosphere makes me think it might be British but I don't remember British accents.

I'd like to find out what it was as it really scared me back when I was a kid and would love to watch it again only to realize actually how terrible it was, as what happens with most movies from my childhood.

Thanks,

Geri

UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Kudos to craig for knowing that this trauma stemmed from THE MONSTER CLUB!

Hello again,

I was just wandering aimlessly through the halls of kindertrauma this morning and landed upon a Name-That-Trauma of no real importance to me. It was determined that the movie in question was THE HORROR STAR. I had never heard of it and found it mildly interesting and decide to watch the attached video and – lo and behold – I believe one of my very own Name-That-Traumas may be part of the intro to that clip!!!!!!! In the clip – after the blood red title – are 3 old black and white stills of old "horror stars" – Frankenstein, Dracula and ???? Maybe Dr. Jeckyl? I don't know.

When I was very very young, maybe 5 or 6, in the ‘70s, I was already kind of weirdly obsessed with horror movies and with being scared. I remember one day I was playing with my sister in our bedroom and my grandma was watching T.V. in the living room and a commercial came on with the music for one of those day of the week movies (Monday Night Movie, etc. – if you lived through it you know what I'm talking about) and – for some reason – even as a wee tyke – I knew that it was probably a scary movie and I RAN out to the living room to see what it was and all I remember was it was various shots of a "man about town" in a tall hat and a scary face – and in the last shot it was his full face looking right at the camera and it scared me so bad that I started sobbing and my grandma had to bring me some water to calm me down. Since then the only movie I have seen that even comes close to the creepy feel of that guy is CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG – the child stealer guy – and, while he is really creepy, it's not him.

So, when I saw that photo on that clip it stopped me dead in my tracks. Could that be the guy? Could that be the movie? Does anyone know what that still is from?

An interesting side note that has no particular relevance to anything – but something I find really odd. I clearly remember when I was in first grade having this friend named Robin. She had long, scraggly dark hair and was sort of a loner type – even in first grade. One time she told me that she had a TV Guide that was only for this one channel that only played horror movies (and I think she might have even told me that her and her mom were witches.) I was so excited when she told me that that I became obsessed with finding that channel and that TV Guide. At some point she eventually told me that that wasn't true and I was so disappointed. But how odd is that – two little first graders chatting about a horror channel and a horror TV Guide.

Thank you so much! This site is my horror dream come true!

Carol

UNK SEZ: Carol, thanks for the fascinating NAME THAT TRAUMA! The third still in the trailer for HORROR STAR (AKA FRIGHTMARE) is LON CHANEY, Sr. from TOD BROWNING's 1927 silent film LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT. If you saw the clip you're looking for in the seventies than the likelihood that it was, in fact, LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT is zero because the last known copy of that famous lost flick died in a fire back in 1967!

So what did you see? Was your grandma watching that phantom horror channel your witch friend conjured? Could it have been a documentary on LON CHANEY? LONDON was remade in 1935 as MARK OF THE VAMPIRE with BELA LUGOSI but his get up was completely different. I think we're going to have to take it to our readers. Can anyone think of a figure that could be mistaken for LON CHANEY, Sr's horrifying creation from LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT?

AUNT JOHN thought maybe it could MR. SARDONICUS and I thought possibly VINCENT PRICE from MADHOUSE. Any other ideas out there?

Hello all, I have faint memories of two separate T.V. episodes I saw during my youth and hopefully my description is enough for someone here to decipher what they are.

The first is of a SciFi T.V. episode/movie around the late ‘70s, in which people are in a town but they can't escape because there is a giant glass wall all around. I think one group of people in a truck tried to ram the wall and the truck exploded, however the glass wall remained intact. Another scene had this white chair which looked oval like an egg, and when people sat on it they dreamed or hallucinated, or something to that effect. I remember one guy grabbed the chair and ripped it open and revealed the inside of the chair to be organic (I think it starts spewing out blood or fluids or something.)

Also, every so often when people would be walking around town minding their own business, a giant shadow would appear around them as if something was flying above – I don't think they ever showed what it was, only the shadow it cast. Everyone in the vicinity of the shadow would immediately try to grab onto something anchored to the ground, like a tree, as to not get sucked up by the thing floating above. Finally, near the end I remember that one guy was excavating next to the glass and finally found the bottom of it but I don't remember if he escaped.

The second memory I have is a very short clip but also on T.V. and about the same timeframe – late ‘70s, it is of this man holding some sort of huge mutant insect/bug about the size and shape of a turtle, and he is arguing with some other guy. Then the bug man drops the bug on the ground and the bug slowly crawls toward the other guy and catches up with him and attacks (I think the bug's wings extended during the attack.)

That's about all I can remember. Ring any bells?

Thanks,

rock_hardplace

UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Special thanks to Derek Obrien for knowing that the first one is THE FANTASTIC INVASION OF PLANET EARTH (aka THE BUBBLE) & additional kudos to Brother Bill for getting the second one with THE OUTER LIMITS episode "The Invisibles."

Hello to you good folks at Kindertrauma!

When I was young and glued to every T.V. cartoon I could find (this would be the early ‘90s), I saw an anime fantasy film that stuck in my brain. I have never been able to identify it, and I was hoping that you or your readers might be able to help me. Unfortunately I am not sure when the anime itself was made – it may have been from the ‘80s or early ‘90s, probably not earlier than the early ‘80s.

I am also not sure what American channel it aired on (I watched Disney, Nickelodeon, and Cartoon Network, among others). The protagonists were two kids, a boy and a girl, and I believe both were blond. The girl gets kidnapped by a witch and her son (?, or a prince-like character that the witch creates). Actually, it may have been an evil sorcerer, I can't remember the gender! Anyway, there are two scenes that I remember:

1.) The evil prince hypnotizes the young girl into a zombie-like state in order to force her to marry him. In the middle of the wedding ceremony, the boy hero bursts in to stop it. The church doors open to reveal that all the pews are filled with paper cut-outs instead of people, and even the priest is a paper cut-out. When the boy yells at the girl to snap out of it, all the paper cut-outs crumple and flutter to the floor. The boy still can't get the girl to snap out of it – he even grabs her and shakes her.

2.) At the end, the boy hero faces the evil witch/sorcerer. They are on opposite corners of a huge, floating chessboard way up in the air, and the chessboard tips and rocks like a ship. I think the girl is still hypnotized, but once the boy defeats the witch, she wakes up.

I hope someone out there can help me figure this out! By the way, people have suggested the UNICO series as a possible candidate, but it is definitely not from any UNICO film I've seen (despite the giant chessboard and evil witch/sorcerer).

Thanks,

— Corvid

UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! SENSKI is back y'all and he is in on F-I-R-E! Kudos to him for realizing that Corvid was referring to the 1974 Japanese version of JACK & THE BEANSTALK.

I've got one for you. This has been bugging the shit out of me for years. Back in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s, I caught the ass-end of a movie on T.V. Its plot – as far as I was able to tell – concerned a young girl, around the age of twelve. I only remember two scenes. The first depicted said young girl sitting in front of a television, watching what seemed to be a vintage Atari game and talking to her mother. At one point, she asks her mother for a hug. Her back has been turned against both her mother and the viewer throughout the entire scene, but when she turns for her hug she suddenly and quite violently launches herself at her mom, her face now demonic and ugly.

The second scene was the films end and featured the same young girl – her head now shaved and her face back to normal – hugging a guy who looked like Jesus (no I'm not kidding) whilst someone can be heard saying: "She thought we were going to hurt her" or something to that effect.

The film admittedly had an EXORCIST-rip-off feel to it, but was definitely NOT THE EXORCIST. It seemed to have a sci-fi slant to it, although I could be wrong – it was thirty some years ago, after all.

Any idea what the hell it was I saw?

UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Special thanks to reader Billy V for putting a toe tag on this one with THE VISITOR!

Kinderpals,

I have a Name That Trauma and if anyone can help me to find the title I can promise him/her riches beyond imagining! (Which is tragic as they will need to imagine them as I am broke.)

Okay, a possibly made-for-T.V. movie with a GIL GERARD-ish-type male lead. Said male lead gets into a pissing match with a gang of untamed youth.

Traumatic scene:

Untamed youth lure the guy's St. Bernard out into the street and play catch with him while one of their friends plows pell-mell towards the dog in a car. They leave the dog's crumpled corpse on the male lead's front porch where he finds it and cries into its fur.

I had forgotten this until we adopted Homer, a St. Bernard, then it all came flooding back. He was most distressed when I told him about, but said that he felt strangely compelled to see it. So, to satisfy his want for canine horror, I really need to figure this out.

Thanks,

Dylan Donnie-Duke Dali Lama

UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Let's all give a big KINDERTRAUMA salute and welcome back hug to SENSKI who came out of hibernation today and solved this one with 1973's OUTRAGE! (We love you SENSKI!)

O.K., the first one may be easy. When I was about five, I was at my grandparent's house and saw a black and white movie where a tights and leotard wearing invisible woman was walking up a staircase. Then the tights I think fell away and it was just a leotard walking up the steps. It freaked me out so bad. I "think" it may have been an ABBOTT & COSTELLO movie but am not sure.

The second one is very vague and I don't expect an answer but I vaguely recall some kids had a box and in the box was a face or a head that could talk and I think its name was Chico. I could have that all wrong but that's what I seem to recall. Wondering if it was the INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS from the ‘70s… The Chico name really seems to stick with me though.

Any help???