Category: Name That Trauma!

O.K., this will probably be a lay-up for most of the folks that read this site, but I'm going out of my mind trying to remember this one. I definitely saw this on T.V. and I want to say on PBS about 25 years ago. It was a half-hour black and white show from the ‘60s, possibly THE OUTER LIMITS or some U.K. counterpart. In it, a family discovers some kind of mushroom in their back yard. If I recall correctly, the mushrooms were extraterrestrial, but I can't be certain.

In any case, the Kindertrauma moment is at the end of the episode. The entire family has been taken over by these things, except for one person, possibly Dad. You can tell because their ears(!!!!!) have turned into mushrooms. Dad looks up at the top of the stairs to see the silhouette of his son with the mushroom ears telling him to 'join them' or something equally freaking terrifying. Then the episode ends.

I tell people this and they think I am nuts. Well, if I am nuts it is due to seeing a kid my age be consumed by ALIEN MUSHROOMS.

Thanks in advance,

Chad

UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Credit where credit is due to the unstoppable senski who got it with ALFRED HITHCOCK PRESENTS "SPECIAL DELIVERY."

Hello,

Here's another one for ya: I remember that there's a bunch of people in some kind of building and there's this pointy-headed green monster that's only seen in mirrors (Although I think it's seen walking through a cloud of smoke at the end.) I also remember a scene where a black guy is pulled by an invisible force up into a ceiling fan where he's presumably chopped to bits. I think there's also a scene where a chick gets killed while taking a bath.

Any thoughts as to what this could be?

UNK SEZ: A pointy headed green monster, death by ceiling fan and a chick gets killed in a bathtub (by snakes?). Sounds to me like you are talking about 1987's THE OUTING also known as THE LAMP!

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.