Category: Name That Trauma!

A few months back, Geofree C. of Enter the Man-Cave emailed us this:

Hello my fellow Philadelphian brethren at Kindertrauma,

I will keep this short and sweet. When I was a little kid back in '81-'82 (yeah I'm old), I remember HBO used to show a short film as filler between their programming. The short in question is called "The Tape" I believe. It is about a man who goes to a job interview (I think) and is attacked by a massive mound of reel-to-reel tape. The man finds a magnet which he uses to fend off the sinister tape, but puts it down to make his escape. The Tape uses this opportunity to wrap around the man and eat him. All that is left is his clothes…it even spits out a shoe. Back in the day, it creeped me out. Nowadays, I would appreciate a stop-motion, low budget attempt at entertainment by a hopeful filmmaker now that I am older. If anyone knows the name of this short or could point me in the right direction to see this again after many years, I would greatly appreciate it. I researched the internet over the last year or so and have been unsuccessful, so trust me that I am not asking this out of laziness. I put this on my website Enter the Man-Cave as well, but the response and accuracy at kindertrauma is uncanny. And if I can't trust a uber-blog like kindertrauma run by a fellow Philadelphian, who can I trust to help me out? If this has already been posted and I missed it…my apologies!

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!

Geofree

Having addressed this short with Reader Phibes a few months before, I emailed Geofree the answer and forgot about it until it popped up again this past week from Reader Bill P. who emailed us this:

I can't remember if I have submitted this before, or seen it in your archives but his has bugged me forever. Back in the good old days of cable, when they had short subjects between movies; I saw one about a guy who goes to an office for a job interview. He finds the office empty and wanders around calling out and looking for signs of life. He wanders into a sound editing room and suddenly tape begins unreeling off a rack of spools and attacks him. He is chased around and around, at one point he finds a magnet and fends off this seething mass of tape, until one bit of it burrows into the carpet and comes up behind him and the rest follows, swallowing him up, leaving nothing but empty clothes. The entire time the tape is in motion it makes this sped-up rewinding sound, even having weird little conversations with its component parts. Any leads on this would be greatly appreciated.

The answer to both questions is the 1975 short RECORDED LIVE:

Hi Aunt and Unc….

I was hoping one of you trauma-ites may be able to piece this one together..

This harkens back to the late ‘70s early ‘80s, and reminds me of a NIGHT GALLERY re-run, although I can't put a name on the episode(s), nor can I find it when I search. I think there were multiple short stories told in the same hour or half hour. Of course we may have watched a few shows back to back as kids staying up too late for our own good and there is a chance they are unrelated.

What makes this difficult is the trauma comes from the story I know the least about.

Trauma Story: Creepy Smoke-filled Hole

The show is in color.

There is a hole in the ground, in a field. It's spring or summer, and there's a big tree nearby. The hole is bigger than a grave…maybe about 20 feet in diameter. The hole is filled with a thick smoke/haze, like dry ice, which fills it to grass line. You have no idea how deep it is. It is in the tall grass, and no one knows what's at the bottom of it, although awful sounds can be heard. . I think a kid finds it, and goes back to tell someone.

A man either climbs down and back up, or falls in, and when he gets out he is wide-eyed, babbling, and certifiably insane.

That isn't the end, but it's as far as I got that fateful night….I'd love to know where I can see this through to its conclusion, now that I am all brave, and have the option of a pause button. If it helps, the entire vignette was about this hole, it's not part of a larger story.

If it is helpful, I remember more about the short that preceded this one, although The Hole had me terrified far more, since I didn't stay up to find out what was in it, or perhaps we never found out, making it even worse.

Precluding Story: Doomed Teens

A group of teens are somehow privy to the prognostication of a fortune teller, or gypsy. Maybe they are cursed by her. Her enigmatic foreboding (paraphrased) statement is, "One by land; two by air." Two of the three guys in the group are killed, one in a land related death, the other is involved in some death at the airport. The girlfriend of last remaining kid is frantic as she hears the news, and rushes to her boyfriend's home. Landlady/Mom says she just missed him; he's going……skydiving!

Can anybody help me out?

Reader Bigwig

UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Extra special thanks and a round of high fives are in order for eggplantq who knew that Reader Bigwig was talking about 1973's ENCOUNTER WITH THE UNKNOWN.

My question is about a T.V. movie that aired in the U.S. sometime between '85-'89. A group of male criminals in Halloween costumes (a Santa Claus, a bird of some sort, maybe a turtle) are hiding out or digging in a tunnel and then going after people. I vaguely remember them ringing someone's door bell then killing them. It is night when they are running around and I think there is snow on the ground. If someone can solve this they are amazing!

Thanks,

Jackie

AUNT JOHN SEZ: Jackie, unless there is another movie with hardened criminals decked out in costumes, I am pretty sure you are thinking of the Australian export FORTRESS which played ad nauseum on basic cable in the mid-to-late '80s.

Congratulations – Kindertrauma is an AWESOME site! Here's my half-remembered trauma:

Sometime in the late '80s/early '90s I saw a scene on UK television; (I think) a man was on a bed, possibly a four-poster, and somehow bars appeared from the sides of the bed turning it into a big cage. I think the bars shot up from the edges of the bed, but I'm not sure.

A very hazy memory, but it scared the crap out of me at the time. If anyone can name this film or T.V. show that would be amazing.

Thanks!

Liam

Hi,

I'm wondering if anyone remembers this movie, I saw it when I was really little probably 5 or 6, I can remember this movie scaring me and it's always been in the back of my mind but I can't place it, it's some kind of kids movie.

A girl is playing in her front yard, it's back in time because she and her parents are wearing old fashioned clothes, dresses down to their ankles. Some men come across them and take them hostage, there's a shoot out with the bad guys and the family inside and someone else outside. There's a secret passage in the fireplace I think it was where you could climb into a tunnel. The father sneaks towards the secret opening and is shot, the mother rushes to him and is also shot, then the daughter rushes to the mother.

The next part I remember is one of the bad guys and the girl climbing into the tunnel, the girl runs away ahead of him and she suddenly screams and disappears from sight, I think it's years later and there's this mystery as to what happened to this girl.

My next memory is of another girl in modern time running down the same passage and falling but a guy catches her or pulls her up before she falls, they both look down and see the skeleton of the girl who fell years before, and I think the guy says something like now we know what happened to _________. He says her name I think. I'm pretty sure this was the end of the movie.

Any ideas? I can still very vividly remember the little girl falling while trying to escape and her parents being shot in the crossfire and collapsing. I would love to know the name of this movie. I'd appreciate any ideas. Thanks!

UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! The unstoppable Senski got it with 1983's MYSTERY MANSION!

I posted a post yesterday on the IMDb I Need To Know board, asking if anybody knew what the name of this movie was, but nobody answered. All I remember is a dark haired young man getting possessed or turning evil, and getting lumpy looking skin. There's a scene where he goes under the kitchen sink and while he's under there he sees a hand hanging from the top.

In one scene he's chasing some older woman in the house, I think in the basement, and she tries to run away from him from on one side but then runs into him on the other. It was like a scene in EVIL DEAD 2 when Ash was possessed. AMITYVILLE 2 came on T.V. a couple years back, and I thought for sure that it was the movie, but these scenes weren't in it. I saw it when I was about 3 or 4, it's a distant memory and those are the only scenes I remember.

Just wanted to see if anybody out there can name this movie, I know it's really vague.

Thanks in advance.

UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! After further investigation, it was AMITYVILLE 2.

Ok. Here goes.

When I was in elementary school (possibly 2nd grade?), I checked out a collection of scary stories from the library (this part is hazy because I can't remember if I bought this book at a book fair or checked it out). In the book I read a story about a boy who finds his dog lying on the floor in a pool of blood struggling to breathe when he gets home from school one day. He calls the vet and they come to get the dog (either they come to get him or he drops the dog off…either way…the dog gets to vet somehow).

The boy finds himself back in his house after this and hears noises upstairs. While slowly walking up the stairs to check out the noise he receives a phone call from the vet telling him something along the lines of "GET OUT OF THE HOUSE NOW!!! THE OBJECT WE FOUND LODGED IN YOUR DOGS THROAT WAS A HUMAN FINGER!!" at this moment the boy FLEES the house and the cops are already pulling in (my guess is the vet called them before the boy) and they run inside to apprehend the possible suspect.

Moments later they bring a man outside the house clutching his hand and the boy sees that one of his fingers is missing. I think he was carrying a large knife as well. I remember being terrified of going into my house when I got off the bus every day and would always stay in the kitchen to do my homework since the door was right near the table.

All of this is quite fuzzy to me and I apologize for leaving out any details but I guess my question is this:

Does anyone know the name of the book that this short story belongs to? Or even the name of the short story would be wonderful! I would LOVE to re-read it again. I think there was another scary story collection that featured a large rat on the cover with creepy red eyes. The background was red too I believe.

Anyways, if anyone can help that would rock!! Thanks!!

— Rotting Rushton

I have a real stumper – just a few flashes of memory. An unpopular teenage guy is walking home and is taunted by a younger girl on the way. He throws a rock at her – maybe he hits her with a rock – anyway, she dies. His mother's solution is to move him into the basement and conceal the entrance to the basement. His mother dies, and another family moves in. I remember he steals food from them at night.

The final scene I can recall shows him stabbing one of his paintings/ drawings/ murals in the subject's eye and blood coming out. Saw it on T.V. in the mid-‘70s. I don't know if it was made-for-T.V. or if there'd been a cinematic release.

Cheers,

Karen

UNK SEZ: Karen, that one's a cinch, you're talking about the made-for-television classic BAD RONALD from 1974. It starred SCOTT JACOBY and was based on a novel by JOHN HOLBROOK VANCE. If you'd like to know what we here at Kindertrauma think about that movie, just buy the DVD (there's a link right down there on the right) and check out its back…we're proud to have a laudatory blurb posted there for all to see!

Trying to find the name of a fire safety film that scared the crap out of me in the ‘70s.

When I was about 13, around 1977, they put us in the school auditorium and showed us a fire safety filmed that haunted me for years.

Here's the setup: there's a family of 4, Mom, Dad, and two red-haired kids, one boy and one girl. You spend the first part of the movie following them through the nice summer day: the dad goes and sits in an office, the mom cleans things and maybe goes shopping, and the kids walk over to some pond and go fishing. The narrator remarks on what a lovely day it's been.

Then, after dinner, the dad is sitting on the couch smoking and drops some ash behind the couch. Then in the middle of the night the couch catches on fire, and then the house, and everyone dies. The son dies because he's sleeping in the top bunk and smoke inhalation gets him without him waking up. The daughter wakes up, but tries to leave by the bedroom door instead of the window and the smoke gets her. The mom dies because she tries to get the kids instead of leaving the house. I forget how the dad dies.

Pretty horrible, huh? Thank goodness home smoke detectors came out around then or I wouldn't have gotten any sleep for years. I have Googled around for old fire safety films but nothing seems to match. I don't think it looked particularly dated when I saw it, but it could have been filmed in the ‘60s and I probably wouldn't have noticed in '77. It was definitely in color.

Any ideas?

– JLP

Hi, I love your site. Here's one I don't know the title of:

I remember this as a horror anthology that was shown on ELVIRA's TV show in the mid 80s, but I checked a list of the films she played and it did not match any of those. The part I remember was about a strict schoolteacher who is mean to her students. Eventually the children attack her in her home. I think they were wearing Halloween masks, which may have been removed to reveal actual facial deformities.

This scared the crap out of me as a kid, and I've never seen it mentioned in discussions about horror anthology films. Maybe you can help.

Thanks,

Ryan

UNK SEZ:: So there I was grabbing my magnifying glass and galoshes, prepping up to sleuth the Googles when I get another email from Ryan saying:

Actually I just found it. It was a segment of the film HOUSE OF THE DEAD, and was indeed shown on ELVIRA.

UNK SEZ: So Ryan solved his own "Name That Trauma" and I got to learn about a movie I never heard of. Thanks Ryan, I'm always interested to hear about any horror movies that I may have missed especially if they happen to be an anthology. HOUSE OF THE DEAD aka ALIEN ZONE is from 1978 and any interested folks can watch it HERE.