Category: Name That Trauma!

This really scared me when I was little and I've never known what it was. It was the end, I think, of a movie I was watching on T.V.

There was a man and a woman, I think, trapped in this huge room with hundreds of tiny machines/robots who were crawling all over them and trying to kill them.

That's really all I can remember but I don't know if that's enough information.

There was a big metal structure in it too…can somebody help me?

UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Special thanks to Professor Von Whiskersen for nailing it with RUNAWAY!

Hi!

Here's another Name That Trauma for the gang; Frankenstein fanatics shouldn't have much trouble with it.

I remember catching part of a Frankenstein movie on T.V. as a child (many, many moons ago) in which the Monster and one of Frankenstein's friends/assistants were bouncing a ball back and forth between them. The Monster becomes overwhelmed with joy, and hugs his new friend–unfortunately crushing him to death. It takes the Monster a few minutes, but he eventually realizes he has done A Bad Thing, and he decides to cover up his grave error by opening up a furnace and pushing the body inside.

It was a scary and depressing reminder that the "innocence of childhood"–and the Monster is very childlike and innocent at first–masks a cold-blooded instinct for self-preservation that does not mourn friends.

Hope someone can help me relive that moment!

Thanks in advance,

Grokenstein

When I was a kid, in the 1970s, the radio station WBAL in Baltimore would broadcast a series of scary Halloween stories every October. I've forgotten all of them but one, but this particular story scared the bejeezus out of me. It was about a babysitter caring for an infant while the parents were away. She kept hearing noises down in the basement. When she went down to investigate, she discovered that the noises seemed to be coming from the furnace. Turns out, something lived inside the furnace. Oops!

Cut to the parents returning home. They were baffled as to why the babysitter was nowhere to be found. But later, they began to smell an odd, awful smell throughout the house. It was the babysitter, the narrator said. Inside the furnace.

We had an old unfinished basement with a big oil furnace, and this story totally freaked me out for years. You have no idea how scared I was of that giant, belching furnace that easily could have hidden a gruesome creature and a dead baby sitter inside it.

I'd love to find a recording of this story again. The narrator was extremely creepy, and–at least from what I remember–the sound effects were equally horrifying. Does this ring a bell with anyone?

Thanks to Kindertrauma, I've managed to name nearly all my childhood T.V./film traumas. I only had two more to solve, but I just found out that one was the ultra-tasteless THE AURORA ENCOUNTER (yeah, great use of a prematurely aging child as an 'alien'), which leaves just one I need to name – it was a movie I saw late night at a family get-together in which a man was left wheelchair-bound after a car accident and had some kind of computer or robot looking after him. I think the computer played up, causing him some considerable troubles. I also remember a severed head of a woman in what I think was a washing machine. It screened in the U.K. circa 1990, but seemed to be from the '80s. I recall it being a DEMON SEED style affair. All help would be very welcome. Cheers!

Good to see the old MOOMINS show mentioned with regards to The Groke, but as a youngster, I think The Hobgoblin was even scarier. Around 40 seconds into this episode, as he flies through space, the sights and sounds gave me nightmares for weeks…

Hi guys,

When I was young I remember watching an animated educational film which always disturbed me because of this one character (a bad guy) who didn't have a face. I remember it started and ended live action, and that the main character's dog could talk in the animated world.

He was also given some gifts on the way which included a magic pencil, which I think he used to kill a dragon, and a bag which was filled with either words or numbers, probably words.

If you could help me recognize what this is it would be really helpful as I've been thinking about it for years!

Hey guys — I've got a Name That Trauma just in time for Halloween…

I remember watching an HBO variety special, featuring a live audience, in the late '70s or early '80s. Only two acts still stick in my head: One was a ventriloquist whose dummy was a plant name Phil O'Dendron. (Sample dialogue between man and dummy: "O'Dendron. Is that Irish?" Dummy: "Well, I'm wearing green!")

The other act was this elaborate set of a scientist's lab, a la Dr. Frankenstein. A scientist in a white lab coat, mop-top hair, and sunglasses (?) brings a Frankenstein-like monster to life from the operating table. The monster's dressed in all black, green skin, but a normal-shaped head (no square noggin). Via remote control, the scientist makes the monster do all kinds of body movements, including a forward lean a la MICHAEL JACKSON in the "Smooth Criminal" video. Audience applauds.

Satisfied with what he's done, the scientist puts down the remote and turns his back to work on something else. Suddenly, the monster becomes self-aware, shoots a look at the scientist and starts walking towards him. He stops directly behind the scientist, the scientist turns around, and the monster grabs both sides of the scientist's head and twists it off his body.

The audience gasps as the doctor's headless body falls to the ground. The monster then raises the head to his face, turns to the camera and, in a close-up, smirks. Turns out the monster was the performer and the scientist was the "monster."

Pretty cool, yes, but as a kid I was not ready for that whole head-tearing-off thing.

Anybody else remember this show, or if there's a clip online somewhere?

AUNT JOHN SEZ: FilmFather, this sounds so familiar but all of my searches are coming up empty handed.

Hi Guys,

When I was a kid in the ‘70s, many things scared me. Two of them I cannot identify– though I remember snippets of them.

#1: A film made in ‘60s/early 7'0s. Seen on T.V. in late ‘70s. It opened with some kind of tracking station tracking something. A craft/meteorite or whatever crash lands. Cut to a foggy cove with a lighthouse, the lighthouse attendant finds said something and gets attacked by a monster. He screams and later people find his corpse– but there are no bones in it!

I think it starred one of the big three: VINCENT PRICE, CHRISTOPHER LEE or PETER CUSHING. Could have been a HAMMER film or an AIP film, maybe…

#2: A film made in mid/late ‘70s on NBC Sunday Night Movie. I remember the announcer's voice well. There's some kind of wake or viewing of body in a closed casket (i.e. lying in state). The scene seemed to be in the mid-1800s America. All I can remember is the expensively draped casket (head of state funeral), and suddenly it opens and someone says, "President Lincoln's alive!" That scared the bejesus out of me! Who knows if I watched a few more seconds, maybe I would have found out it was some kind of T.V. Movie revival of THE WILD WILD WEST. But it sure seemed to me like Zombie-Lincoln…!

Can you help?

UPDATE: Senski nailed the first one with ISLAND OF TERROR. We are still looking for an answer to the Zombie Lincoln trauma.

Hi!

That's a really cool site you have, brings back memories!

I almost gave up on identifying this one, but maybe you can name that trauma:

I'm looking for a movie I saw about 13 years ago, when I spent a lot of time watching horror films in a friend's basement.

It's probably pretty old. I'm quite sure that it was black and white, but maybe it's just very dark.

The story takes place in a house in a forest (or by a forest). I have a blurry memory of a man arriving at the house and being welcomed by a family, but maybe I'm mixing things up here with another movie.

There was a grown up daughter who was treated like a little girl and I think they had at least two children.

In the end the girl is holding her dead baby in a rocking chair (or a cradle?). I'm not even sure there was a real baby. It might be that she just believed she had a baby and that she was swinging something else.

I know that's not much to go with, but that last scene was really memorable, so maybe someone can recall the name?

Thanks,

Kerstin

UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Special thanks to SlasherChick for answering it with AMERICAN GOTHIC.

Hello, first of all let me say that your website is a cracker! I love it! Made me remember so many good ol' scares.

I have one myself but I cannot, for the life of me, remember the title, nor I can find it with generic searches on Google. It was a sci-fi B-movie, early ‘90s with an alien or some sort of bio-mechanic monster that looked like a vacuum cleaner with a trunk which could suck a bird out of its cage (a scene which was in the film) or a person's internal organs via his mouth. I know it sounds like a mad plot, but it was one of those crappy titles that can only scare you as a very young child.

If you could help remind me of which film it could have been, I'll be extremely glad, and I'll be able to write a new entry for your website. All I remember is that this monster was going around a house, while a geeky kid and his family were hiding from it in a closet. The monster in the meantime ate (or "sucked") stuff out of the fridge, the bird from its cage and I believe someone who entered the house at the wrong moment.

Thanks again,

Errico

AUNT JOHN SEZ: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! After initially writing in, Errico followed up with the answer:

OH MY GOD I FOUND IT!!!

It's actually not a film, but from a T.V. series.

TALES OF THE DARK SIDE, the episode is called "Hush!" It would be great to be able to watch it again. No idea how I could find it.

This is the description (I wonder if it would be still scary to watch nowadays):

Season 4, Ep 18: "Hush"

A babysitter is called in to take care of a sick boy. As a game, the two make up a pretend creature out of household parts, one that eats sounds. The creature comes to life, sucking the sound and the life out of everything in the house. The two try to evade it, but the boy's uncontrollable coughing gives him away. The creature then becomes sensitive enough to the girl's heartbeat to find and kill her too, then goes out into the world for more "food."