Category: Traumafessions

Having started horror at the young age of 5, not much scared me as a kid but what scared me, REALLY scared me. Maybe it wasn't a good idea to start my horror movie experience off with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre before I even started kindergarten. Something scared me more than the chainsaws, blood, flesh, and Leatherface…that something was John Larroquette. His narration at the beginning of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so cold and ominous, would give me nightmares for weeks. Seeing Night Court reruns on television added fuel to the fire. Hearing Larroquette's voice brings chills up my spine. I still can't watch the film without fast forwarding through the opening…

UNK SEZ: Great traumafession Kevin! I'm with you on that narration. Not that there's any part of TCM that I am not terrified by. I was a teen when I first saw it and it really shook me up. I don't now how you survived seeing it younger than that! I'm really looking forward to DON'T GO TO THE REUNION! It looks right up my alley! Folks, if you want to learn more about Kevin's movie check out the official site HERE! Plus you can keep up to date by liking SLASHER STUDIOS' Facebook page HERE! And do check out the trailer below….

Hi, I'm 14 so I don't know if I really count with the whole 'ruined childhood' thing, but I do have a show that continues to scare the crap out of me. When I was around 3, and my brother was 5, we used to watch a kids show with our mum called OAKIE DOKE. It was about a friendly tree guy who helped his forest friends with their problems. But he still managed to be creepy as hell, despite the innocent pretext. He talked to himself, and had this creepy smile that never changed, even when he was talking, so it looked like he'd snapped years ago and was close to brutally murdering all the forest critters. All the characters looked like dolls with painted features. This probably isn't really the sort of thing you look for, but I wanted to submit it. Thanks!

UNK SEZ: Au contraire, Sofia D! This is exactly the sort of thing we're looking for! There is something clearly not right about this Oakie Doke fellow. He looks like he might be related to my childhood nemesis the dreaded MISS HICKORY!

I owe my love for old film to the public domain. When I was a wee lad, our local PBS affiliate could easily afford to broadcast old movies once a week, as long as they had been overlooked decades earlier for copyright protection by the studios that produced them. The usual suspects would appear over the early years of my obsession: His Girl Friday, Scarlet Street, Sabotage, The Red House, Mr. Robinson Crusoe, and so forth. But one of the first old movies I saw on PBS was They Made Me a Criminal, a 1939 Busby Berkeley boxing picture starring John Garfield and the Dead End Kids.

There was one scene in particular that is the subject of today's Traumafession. Garfield and four of the kids drive to a remote irrigation water tower in the middle of farmland and the wooden tower is full of cool, clean water, and they all decide to climb the exterior ladder and go for an illicit swim. A few minutes later, a farmer opens the valve to the tank, sending water gushing toward the crop furrows. Caught up in their fun, the swimmers don't realize that the water level is dropping until it becomes impossible to reach the top edge of the tower. One of the kids is a weak swimmer who is already struggling to stay afloat. Garfield tells them not to worry -— the water will drop down far enough that they will be able to touch bottom. But then the same farmer shuts the valve. Now the top edge is too high and the bottom too deep to touch. They are becoming exhausted, particularly the one boy who can't swim very well. It was all a horrible accident, but I can imagine a less imaginative Jigsaw devising this terrifyingly simple trap as a sort of dry run for his future mayhem.

I was riveted and aghast. Not least because I have never been a great swimmer and could easily sympathize with the boy who struggled in the water. From the very beginning, his friends mocked him for being reluctant to get in and then, once he was in, for thrashing around in a pathetic dog paddle. Well into their predicament, before the boy begins to sink from exhaustion, his friends even get mad at him briefly for being forced to support him while they try to figure a way out. They're tired, too, and the last thing they need is a weight around their necks. The shame layered upon the terror of the situation was too much for me. Thanks to the public domain — again — there are a kajillion YouTube channels that have this film available to watch. The scene in particular is about 40 minutes into the movie, for those who would like to watch it…

Hi everyone at Kindertrauma, Psychonator here,

I've followed this blog for years and have contributed to solving a few Name That Traumas. I thought I'd share a kindertrauma of my own. I was a sickly kid and would contract the flu at least three times during the long Michigan winters. I also had (have) a very vivid imagination (my brother called me "impressionable," a term he got off of the back of the "Disney's Sounds of the Haunted House" which creeped the bejesus out of me.) But I digress.

Being home-bound, a latch key kid, I'd entertain myself between bouts of vomitting by watching day time TV. There was one particular cartoon (this would've been mid to late sixties) that set with me wrong. It was "Tales of the Wizard of OZ." Totally creepy. Every episode was frought with downbeat drama. All the characters were drawn in a surreal, unnatural way, especially for this time period. The "Munchkins," if I recall correctly, looked like fat rain drops with arms and legs. For some reason, I always watched this when I was sick; so, sort of like only ever having drank Seven Up when I was sick, this cartoon (and the taste of Seven Up) cannot be seperated from the light headed feeling of a high fever and the seasick feeling of a sour stomach!

The theme song is uber creepy to me to this day. The background music harkins back to the appearance of the wicked witch from the classic movie (not such a good choice, IMHO). The first scene shows the Tin Man pulling a prank on the Cowardly Lion, punching him in the kisser and making him cry. I think I need a Zoloft.

Hi there, dear folks at Kindertrauma

My name is Antonio Augusto, I'm from Brazil and a regular reader of your amazing blog. So many awesome posts and traumas I totally identify with. One of my biggest kindertraumas is probably the reverend Henry Kane from Poltergeist II. I saw it when I was very little and couldn't sleep for MONTHS thinking about him. And more recently in my life, a really big trauma is BOB from Twin Peaks.

UNK SEZ: Thanks for the traumafession Antonio and for letting us know about Cinema Parasita! I don't speak Portuguese but I like what see! Nice work!

I was born in 1965, and actually did not see Star Trek for the first time until I was ten years old and it was in reruns. One would never think of Star Trek as a scary show, and this episode has been panned by most critics. But it scared the crap out of me. The garbled speech made by the victims of the Zetars is probably a source of amusement for most, but to me it was the stuff of nightmares. My brother knew this and would try to imitate it to get a rise out of me. As well, like Dr. McCoy, I found the scene where they teleported into darkness on Memory Alpha unnerving.

I've always found the idea of having one's mind taken over frightening. I was raised Catholic, so the concept of demon possession was very real to me. However, although I can't watch The Exorcist alone in darkness, I could still watch it alone with the lights on. I can't watch "The Lights of Zetar" alone at all, and I'm now almost fifty years old!

I think what makes "The Lights of Zetar" so intensely terrifying, even as opposed to the concept of demon possession, is that they destroy the ability of the victim's brain to function at all. Once the demon vacates the host, the brain is still intact. Not so with the Lights of Zetar. They blow out every circuit. Their attack is comparable with a deadly stroke or seizure, something that none of us wants to think about. You can't hide behind a strong door or shield and you can't run away in your ship. If they want you, they'll get you.

It's a funny thing: I saw Alien with my father (rest in peace) when I was fourteen years old, and even though sometimes if I enter a dark room I swear I can see those things in the shadows, nothing has scared me quite as much as one unpopular episode of a 1960's TV show which generally was anything but scary.

Back in the shrouded past, before the formulas of TV were set, HBO had Short Cuts. It was a short film series acting as interstitial material between the movies. Amongst the shorts was one of the earliest sources of my nighmare fuel…Flesh Eating Film Reels!

I've been haunted by the memory of a telepathic, wide-eyed, blue decapitated head with wires protruding out of its skull and frighteningly strong arms dangling from a wall that are controlled by brainwaves. I always wondered if this was a dream, or a traumatic memory that I invented. Now I know that it was this film I'm about to discuss and not THE BRAIN THAT WOULD'NT DIE. That film is a trashy classic in its own right, but I must admit, I was mildly disappointed when I first saw it because as demented as it was, I needed some closure in the form of a whispering blue head that controlled people's will and minds.

Dana Andrews plays Dr. Norberg, a Ronald Reagan or Walt Disney-esque Nazi with an experimental basement lab (similar to the one Grandpa Munster had). It's filled with Maytag-like appliances and giant red and green buttons. He lives in a mansion with a butler that looks like a German Michael Berryman. Dr. Norberg is hiding frozen Nazis in his basement and has a failed reputation in cryogenics. His mannerisms and personality have all the charm of a honey-baked ham. The ghoulish prison like lab is filled with cripples and brain surgery failures. Two hippie girls show up outside, one of them is Norberg's niece Jean and the other will soon be decapitated. His lunkhead, Igor-type assistant must find a brain and the search is on, this will somehow help the Dr. reanimate the Third Reich (not exactly sure how). When Jean's friend Elsa (Kathleen Beck) is strangled by a loose dimwit in the house, the doctor, a supposed Nazi, actually objects to murder! Did he forget he's a former Nazi? Later on he tells his murdering assistant that things in this age are different and Nazis only killed for political reasons!

The eerie blue makeup of the woman's head in the box is a cross between Jambi from PEE WEE'S PLAYHOUSE and Margaret Hamilton. Later on, a burn victim named Mrs. Smith shows up in one of the oddest moments, in an already unhinged ‘60s film, she puts on a leatherface like false face and answers the door. This strange moment is confusing to me and I'm not sure where it ties into the story. As a kid, the blue face gave me the heebie jeebies, especially when she whispers incoherently (I'll leave the final cryptic words up to the ears of the viewer). THE FROZEN DEAD is one of those bizarre British horror films in league with CIRCUS OF HORRORS, but not as heavy and sadistic as PEEPING TOM. It's a fun B-movie that was worth revisiting in order to get some confirmation that it all wasn't some fever childhood nightmare.

UNK SEZ: Make sure you Visit Crankenstein regularly at THEATER OF GUTS!

Every horror fan of a certain age talks about it. The thrill of the VHS covers in the horror section at the video store. They were so deliciously unlike anything that existed in life that you couldn't imagine what sorts of evil magic those tapes contained. The first image that drew me to the horror section was actually a "New Release" poster on the wall for the movie Waxwork (1988, Anthony Hickox). I was enchanted by the image of a redheaded little person in a tuxedo standing in front of a huge door filled with screaming heads. The image seemed strange and yet familiar, unnerving and yet comforting, as though I had experienced it in another life.

I realize that I must have started renting horror movies before I knew how to read, because I remember pointing to the poster and asking my mother to read me the title and the movie's tagline: "Stop on by and give the afterlife a try." I wanted to, desperately. The idea of a doorway that opened to a world filled with formal wear, screaming heads, weird lighting, and hot pink credits fonts appealed to me then as much as it does now. I insisted on renting it, and miraculously, my mother obliged.

When I watched the film, I was actually disappointed. I've now seen it multiple times and I still can't remember what it's about. Something about Zach Galligan and Deborah Foreman going to a wax museum in the middle of the night and entering the exhibits. Waxwork proved to be a rite of passage that every young horror nerd must go through: I learned that the image on the cover doesn't always take place in the film. I didn't like it, but I would be forced to experience it again and again.

Ironically, even though Waxwork disappointed me because it did not feature a scene in which a redheaded little person opened a gigantic door to a wild and wonderful world of strange, sublimely beautiful faces and weird lighting, that is precisely what Waxwork's poster, and the video store, did for me. They welcomed me in to the wild and wonderful world of horror movies, a world in which you could find anything you wanted and needed.

More of Ben's video store memories HERE!

While scouring through IMDB during my lunch break, I recalled another film that "traumatized" me as a youngster: 1979's "Escape from Alcatraz" starring Clint Eastwood.

The part that scared (scarred?) me was when the inmate artist "Doc" chops off his fingers after his painting privileges were revoked. I could watch a murder onscreen without flinching (much, anyway), but for some reason his stone-faced self mutilation really freaked me out. The funny thing is that for years I would mentally place this scene into another Clint Eastwood film, "Bronco Billy". I was convinced that when they visited the asylum, Geoffrey Lewis chopped off his fingers. And THERE is an interesting idea for a YouTube mashup, if anyone with the video skills wants to piece it together.

Thanks again!

Dustin in Minnesota