Wolfgang Peterson’s 1984 adaption of Michael Ende’s book THE NEVERENDING STORY presents a rich colorful world called Fantasia, which is strewn with many dangers. First and foremost is “The Nothing” which threatens to devour and erase everything in existence if a young hero named Atreyu (Noah Hathaway) can’t find a way to thwart it. If that obstacle wasn’t enough, the dark force elicits the aid of a horrific sharp-fanged giant wolf monster with glowing eyes called Gmork who steadfastly shadows Atreyu in hopes to rip him to shreds. Strangely enough though, THE NEVERENDING STORY’s most traumatizing scene involves neither of these embodiments of evil but rather a mundane, in appearance, swamp. 

Early on in his quest, Atreyu and his trusty sidekick, a majestic white horse named Artex, are required to gain information from a giant turtle named Morla. To find Morla they must first travel through what is known as the Swamps of Sadness. Unfortunately, as one passes through said swamp they are taken over by depressive thoughts and hopelessness. Though Atreyu is at least partially protected by an amulet, Artex the horse succumbs to despair and begins to sink slowly into the mud. Atreyu almost laughs it off at first but then begins to realize his best friend may be beyond rallying. Atreyu desperately pleads with Artex to fight against the sadness that has overtaken him. He begs, “You have to try. You have to care. You are my friend. You have to move or you’re going to die! Don’t quit, Artex!” but to no avail. Suddenly the beautiful white creature has completely disappeared into the mud seemingly never to return and Atreyu is left devastated, lost and alone.

It seems impossible that a children’s film could be so emotionally cruel especially at such an early stage of the story. As heartbreaking as the scene would obviously be to children, it also loudly resonates with anyone of any age who has ever lost anyone. It would be one thing to witness Artex gallantly die in battle or be physically defeated but something about his psychological turmoil and loss of will to exist is especially difficult to grapple with. Most stories directed at children inform us that we have the power to will ourselves to victory (think of Tinker Bell’s resurrection in Peter Pan) but here even the most sincere and desperate pleas and prayers are coldly denied. It’s like a harpoon of reality striking a fluffy cartoon bunny. We don’t really even know Artex at this point in the story and yet of course we do; anyone who has ever loved anyone recognizes how Atreyu feels towards his friend. Death itself is eternally painful to deal with and when it’s entangled with the demise of hope, it’s somehow even harsher.

I’ve never been so happy to deliver a SPOILER ALERT in my life. After jumping through a zillion hoops we won’t get into here, Atreyu’s mission to save Fantasia is a success. Turns out there’s a reason the film and book are titled as they are and The Nothingness ain’t nothing compared to the power of imagination. Phew. During a victory lap we get to see the most comforting image to ever grace a screen, that of Atreyu and Artex riding together in full optimistic victorious glory (I have to say, there’s only two types of people in this world, those who ball their eyes out during this movie and heartless monsters who should be avoided at all costs). I’m almost mad at THE NEVERENDING STORY for yanking on my heartstrings in such a brutal matter but how can I not be impressed that its depiction of loss is more devastatingly relatable than a thousand adult dramas that tackle the same subject put together. Watching it again as an adult, I can tell you it has lost zero of its impact, in fact, due to life experience, I can sadly relate to it even more. Damn those swamps of sadness.

Hear me out. I have to get this off my chest and I swear I’m not (totally) crazy.  I’m not a fan of a silent house. If I’m not listening to music, I like to have a TV running in the background to keep my negative thoughts at bay. More often than not, I have my lil’ idiot box tuned to COMET TV because that joint is most likely to air something my speed. During the month of November, COMET aired a double-dip of AMITYVILLE 2: THE POSSESSION and AMITYVILLE 3: THE DEMON/3-D at least 4 or 5 times and I always seemed to find myself catching bits and pieces. Let me say first that AMITYVILLE 2: THE POSSESSION continues to blow my mind with how good it is. It’s genuinely scary and creepy (even when watched during the day), I adore DIANE FRAKLIN forever and I honestly think it’s the best possession film ever made besides THE EXORCIST. Furthermore, I’m totally entranced by the score and I think it has some of the most creative camera work this side of THE EVIL DEAD. The scene where we get a POV shot from a floating demonic spirit that stalks and ultimately ravages and enters a writhing body (the practical make-up effects are phenomenal too) I still find incredible to behold.

AMITYVILLE 3-D, of course, is another story. It’s just not very good overall. You can kind of feel it fighting to convince itself it’s not a sloppily cobbled together cash-grab/also-ran but it’s never entirely convincing. I’m also not down with giving the vaguely haughty TONY ROBERTS the responsibility of carrying the movie as a lead (especially when the charming CANDY CLARK was right there and would have been way more appealing). It doesn’t help that the special effects range from competent to cringe-worthy and that the most impressive 3-D bit involves a wayward Frisbee. Having said all that, I must admit that there is one scene in AMITYVILLE 3-D that truly gives me resilient heebie-jeebies and leaves me with a vague melancholy ache. Just being real. Critics and audience members alike have every right to rake this flick over the coals but I’ve got to defend this one bubble of effectiveness in the questionable stew.

Suuusssaaan! I could hear that familiar voice coming from the TV in the other room and I know it’s time for that scene again and yeah, I just felt a sting of sad dread. I’m stuck in a loop and this will happen forever. Here we go again: mother Nancy Baxter (TESS HARPER) hears the front door of the Amityville house open and investigates. She sees her daughter Susan (LORI LOUGHLIN) in the foyer inexplicably soaking wet from head to toe. Susan turns to her mother looking almost confused, smiles knowingly then heads up the stairs. “Why are you wet? What happened?” Nancy asks but she is ignored. She starts getting irritated, “What’s the matter with you?” Meanwhile, outside Dad is returning home with groceries and sees that there is some trouble down by the lake. An accident has happened. Mother yells irritated, “Answer me!” as daughter goes into her room and closes the door in her face. At the same time, Dad has rushed to the dock to see what the hubbub is about and it’s Susan…dead (as semi-predicted by a makeshift Ouija board earlier)! She somehow fell out of the boat and drowned!

Mother Nancy hears the ambulance siren. She runs to the lakeside and is told what happened but she can’t accept that the dead girl before her is Susan; it’s impossible because she just left her upstairs in the house! Maybe TESS HARPER is just a great actress or maybe I have some kind of chronic empathy disease but I’m pained by her every word as she angrily rejects the reality in front of her. She runs back up and through the house wildly bewildered calling her daughter’s name to no avail. As she leaves Susan’s empty room the camera lingers on a smiling doll on the bed. John tries to break through Susan’s refusal to accept events but he can’t. In a later scene in a trashed kitchen, we’ll learn Nancy has absolutely no intention of “moving on” and accepting what has happened. She doesn’t believe that other people’s perceptions of events are more valid than her own. She refuses to attend the funeral that, like the boating accident, the audience will never see.

I absolutely get that AMITYVILLE 3 is a lesser film in the franchise (though far from the worst) but something about this sequence resonates with me on an emotional level. I so understand the desire to carve out an alternate reality in your head when life throws you an unacceptable whammy. I also think that in the entire series this is a rare instance that reads like a traditional ghostly occurrence rather than a demonic event. There’s almost an M.R. JAMES tone for this brief little interlude before we get back to rubber monsters jumping out of wells (it’s rather ironic that this flick’s most powerful moment of horror required no special effect beyond drenching a character in H2O). Maybe it’s not enough to elevate the entire affair but I have to respect any horror movie unafraid to look at the cold randomness of death and the uncomfortable psychological ramifications. Anyway, I like the idea that a not great movie can carry within it a pretty great and effective scene (brief as it may be). That might not be the consensus but it’s my version of reality and I’m sticking to it.

I’ve got a new odd obsession. I was able to purchase one of those small TV sets with a VCR built inside from my local thrift store ($3!) and attached a converter to it so that it could pick up broadcast television. Not only does it get COMET TV, it gets it on two different channels! So now I’m recording movies just like in the old days complete with commercials (I know that’s a minus now but in the future, it will be a plus). It’s so darn delicious that it feels illegal but nope, this is what VCRs were made for! It’s all on the up and up! Of course, I’ve run out of blank tapes so I’m just picking up any second-hand VHS I can find that’s over two hours long and recording over them! So thanks, RON HOWARD for making such long movies! I have no problem covering up CINDERELLA MAN with GHOULIES!

Anyway, the other night I recorded the classic BURNT OFFERINGS, which was a big late-night TV favorite from my youth (as was PHANTASM which utilizes the same abode).  Even though I naturally own it on DVD, I couldn’t help desiring a VHS version that I can play as I go to sleep and will rewind and turn itself off and not leave me with a repeating DVD menu screen. BURNT OFFERINGS has a plethora of memorable trauma scenes and when I was younger, I might have said the scariest bits involved the last-blast falling chimney, KAREN BLACK’s white eyes or that skeezy, smiling chauffer that pops up from time to time. Today though, I’m leaning toward the swimming pool scene for really delivering the uncomfortable creeps.

You must remember it; OLIVER REED as Ben Rolf is swimming in the pool with his young son David (the underrated LEE MONTGOMERY of BEN, DEAD OF NIGHT, MUTANT, THE MIDNIGHT HOUR, etc.). At some point, he discovers a pair of broken glasses on the pool’s floor that triggers him into becoming a wild-eyed abusive nutcase. One moment he’s playfully tossing his kid under the water but soon he’s dunking him viciously as if he means to drown him. The dubious horseplay becomes so savage that BETTE DAVIS, of all people, is forced to be the voice of sanity in the situation. It’s at this point too that you can’t deny BURNT OFFERINGS influence on THE SHINING. I seem to recall Stephen King complimenting ROBERT MORASCO’s novel in his book DANSE MACABRE and I think that affection must have bled into the Torrance family’s drama. There’s something innately scary about losing your sense of safety around someone you love and especially so when you’re a child and that person is your parent. It doesn’t hurt that OLIVER REED is such a gifted and intense actor whose whiplash flip from kind to clobber-y is pitch-perfect in its harsh abruptness. KING famously lamented that JACK NICHOLSON’s performance in THE SHINING was too one-note for his liking and I can’t help but wonder if what he desired to see was closer to what REED delivers here. In any case, it took me off guard just how unsettling this scene remains and it reminded me how great of a movie BURNT OFFERINGS is, even all these years later.

Do you have a horror scene that sticks out in your head as particularly traumatic? Why not right it down and send it to kindertrauma@gmail.com so we can share it with others?

If you’re going to create a work inspired by L. FRANK BAUM‘s THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ chances are you are going to end up with something kindertraumatic. The classic 1939 movie has its witch and flying monkeys. The 1985 sequel RETURN TO OZ has its Wheelers and decapitated heads and THE WIZ wields a truly alarming subway scene. Get a load of a masked puppeteer whose puppet offspring transform into giant slinky ghouls, trashcans that develop sharp teeth and tiled columns bent on crushing anyone hapless enough to walk by. It’s whacked-out, weird, gaudy and nightmarish and so very OZ-some…

UNK SEZ: Subway scene, YOU are truly insane but lest we forget, there are many freaky images to withstand in THE WIZ. Here are some other slices of WTF? from the 1978 musical free of charge!

When a group of good ol’ boy loggers return from the woods missing one of their group, foul play is suspected. Nobody wants to believe their tale of watching their buddy get abducted by an alien space ship. Days later the missing man reappears naked and injured and eventually recounts his experience through a vivid flashback. FIRE IN THE SKY (1993) which is based on actual accounts (!), is more of an investigative thriller than anything else. Its small scale, dialogue driven nature though, may mislead you into thinking that it doesn’t also house one of the most trauma inducing scenes ever filmed (don’t believe me, check out these unsolicited testimonials HERE.)

If you are an adult it’s scary, if you are a kid it’s super scary and if you are a survivor of alien abduction, well, then it’s just plain unwatchable….

NOTE: More scary aliens HERE!

The three collaborations of producer VAL LEWTON and director JACQUES TURNER are glorious testimonies to the power of restraint. I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE and CAT PEOPLE are undeniable horror classics and THE LEOPARD MAN from 1943 contains a segment which I think may be the duo’s most successful stab at cinematic tension. In my opinion, it’s downright kindertraumatic…

As the scene begins the audience is well aware that a black panther has escaped captivity and is roaming around the outskirts of a small New Mexico village. Inside a humble abode a young girl named Teresa is goaded by her mother to go out into the night and fetch some corn meal to make tortillas. Teresa pleads with her mother to allow her to skip the chore until morning or until such time as when a leopard is not stalking their village. The battle axe mother insists and soon Teresa is out in the velvet black night on a completely unnecessary (it’s not like ma ran out of smokes) corn meal run.

When Teresa finally gets to the store she finds that it is closed and that the shopkeeper has a similar temperament as her won’t-budge-an-inch mother. The shopkeeper tells Teresa it is too much of a hassle for her to open her door and hand over some corn meal. This means poor Teresa has got to go to the late night joint farther away and also has to cross under a super creepy bridge. After a tense paranoid trek she does make it to the larger store with the more reasonable operating hours. Inside she gets her goods, tells the shopkeeper to stick it on her tab and then whiles away a couple of moments staring at some mechanical birds in a cage that once fascinated her in her youth. Whatever future plans that Teresa imagines while glancing at these birds will never come to fruition. Dare I say that if she had not stopped to daydream she may have made it home alive? Seconds really do count in situations like these!

Now with bag of corn meal in hand, it’s back on the road for our gal and yet another psychologically strenuous confrontation with that creepy bridge in order to return safe. Thanks to the magic of you-tube you can watch what happens to poor Teresa next….

Can you believe that went down? Besides this scene being seriously suspenseful, I think I also love it because it reminds me of the fantasies I would have in my twisted youth. You know the ones, your parents or a teacher forces you to do some menial crap or punishes you for something and then you start thinking about what if this or that happened and then they’d be sorry! You imagine them all crying at your funeral! Boy, that would show them! Sorta like in A CHRISTMAS STORY when poor little Ralphie daydreams about going blind from all that soap his mouth got washed out with! Oh how his parents would wail in regret!

Besides that personal revenge fantasy element I’m sure Teresa’s journey resonates with anyone who has had to walk home late at night by themselves. THE LEOPARD MAN has several other scenes that utilize this universal fear almost as well. (Worse still, one hapless victim finds herself locked in a graveyard!) As it turns out, that kitty you saw in the clip (feline movie star “Dynamite” who also starred in CAT PEOPLE) is really just a scapegoat for a far more sinister threat. The title may have you expecting a B monster movie but as is the case with most LEWTON flicks, it’s merely a lure. THE LEOPARD MAN certainly has its fair share of horrific moments but expect thriller, noir, mystery and quirkily written romance elements as well. In other words kiddies, my advice to you is, never judge a LEWTON film by its title, never wash your kid’s mouth out with soap and never ever get conned into going out on a late night corn meal run!