kindertrauma

Category: Traumafessions

Traumafessions :: Brian Katcher on "They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha Haaa!"

Posted on By aunt john

When I was about ten, I was at a friend's house when a song came on the radio. It sounded at first like just a regular pop song about lost love, when the singer's voice suddenly went from a calm tenor to a wailing soprano. To my horror, I realized the man was going insane, and the song was all about his steady descent into madness. He'd alternate from measured, reasonable sounding speech, to the desperate gibberings of the deranged.

I was listening in mounting sympathy and horror when my friend told me we should go outside. I followed, to embarrassed to ask to stay and hear the end. I couldn't get the image of the poor lunatic, probably trussed up in a padded cell, out of my head. I kept trying to discuss it with my friend, who was more interested in talking about the recently released TERMINATOR movie.

I never could forget that haunting song. I often hoped that maybe it had ended on a happy note, but I knew in my heart that the poor singer was doomed to be a lost soul. This was in the days before the internet, so I never could track it down. Years later, I finally heard it on one of my uncle's novelty records, right after 'A Boy Named Sue.'

'They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha, Ha!'

— Brian Katcher

Traumafessions :: Reader David O. on School Bus Safety Short "And Then It Happened"

Posted on By aunt john

Who would think that a safety film would leave such a lasting effect on a person? While in grade school (circa late '70s) we were forced to watch a bus safety film titled AND THEN IT HAPPENED which was intended to scare the crap out of us and keep grade schoolers in the bus seats instead of running around screaming. This safety film is grainy and has poor audio, but it did the trick for me.

For years I wanted to watch it again and see if it even remotely held the same dread and fear it had when I was a kid. Thanks to the Internet I found it and watched it, and am happy to say that although it's lost some of its sparkle, it's still a treasure for me. Unruly kids, knives, pets, bus crashes and children being tossed about like rag dolls. Perfection! Needless to say I never brought a knife onto the bus after that, and I tried to make sure my bus driver didn't have a heart condition before I acted up.

Traumafessions :: Reader Cousin Id on Yellow Submarine

Posted on By aunt john

I remember when YELLOW SUBMARINE was aired on national television in the early-to-mid 1970s. When they were in the Sea of Monsters and the vacuum-nosed monster started to suck everything up it's nose, I hid behind a big chair because I didn't want it to suck me up too. All was better when it sucked itself into oblivion.

— Cousin Id

Traumafesions/Name That Trauma :: Reader Chanter on Sesame Street Fires and Worrying Words

Posted on By aunt john

Hi Kindertrauma!

I recently stumbled across your site via another reader's link, and now I easily lose time poking through the assorted archives. I never knew records of this type of thing existed! I've got a couple traumafessions of my own, and one hard-to-identify snippet that I'm sincerely hoping I didn't dream… but almost equally hoping I never see again!

Silly as it may sound, all three of these are SESAME STREET sketches. I was an impressionable tiny geek with a gigantic imagination and a definite twitchy side – still am, too! I saw all these on Wisconsin Public Television in the late '80's or very early '90's, though they could easily have been recorded earlier and rerun. Both my clearly-remembered sketches had what was to me some seriously terrifying background music; intense, menacing minor key piano playing, brrrrr!

One featured a group of kids shouting in unison 'Go to the exit!' while an on-screen a someone or someones tried to find the way out of a house or building. I'm not sure, but the sketch itself might have been black and white. The off-screen kids repeated 'go to the exit!' at least a couple of times, and I distinctly remember one of them speaking up solo to warn 'oh no, that's a closet.' Someone else might've murmured 'wrong way dummies' somewhere in there, but it didn't much detract from the overall scariness of the thing! At the end, everyone apparently did get out, as the unison kids all yelled 'yaaaaay!' just before the scene changed. Didn't help me feel any less creeped out, though!

The other began with a lower-voiced woman yelling 'Help!' at the top of her lungs, which was extremely jarring and terrifying if you weren't expecting it! To this day, remembering that yell makes me shiver. I believe she yelled 'help!' a second time, though very slightly less in-your-face obviously do to the background music that had started up. The sketch itself had to do with a person getting rescued from what was very likely a burning building, because the woman narrator said something like 'It looks like she needs some help', and then later on 'he's a real swinger', referencing the firefighter assisting whoever was trapped. I'm assuming everyone got out, but again, the sketch was plenty scary despite everyone being safe in the end!

Those are closer to traumafessions, but here's the one I'm not sure whether or not I dreamed. I almost hope I did, although I remember sitting on the living room carpet in front of the T.V. and watching it on a warm morning. This one had to do with a specific sound rather than the meaning of a word. There's odd, spare staccato trumpet and drum music in the background, and I'm not clear on the setting, but there may have been a desert on screen? A male narrator is repeating first the sound, and then short words all featuring -ut. 'Hut' comes to mind as one of them. At one point, he says something to the effect of 'let's try tut.' A few seconds and a little of that same strange music later, he yells 'tuuuuuut!' This was the point where I ran into the other room and did my best to forget what I'd seen.

I have no idea what made the narrator yell like that, as my vision was crummy and my comprehension of what little I was seeing was even more so. I've just now realized that saying 'tut' may have invoked King Tut somehow, if it was truly a sketch set in a desert, and maybe brought a mummy walking out of the woodwork – stonework? That's a true guess, though. Whatever it was, it scared and severely unnerved tiny!me, as did the other two. Brrrr!

— Chanter

Traumafessions :: Writer/Director Chris Moore on Wes Craven's New Nightmare

Posted on By unkle lancifer

WES CRAVEN'S NEW NIGHTMARE had just come out when I was around 4 or 5 years old. The T.V. spots were saturating the airwaves and all I remembered from them were a little boy, a furnace, and a "witch" with razor hands and a mouth that could expand and swallow children whole. At the time, I thought it was a version of Hansel and Gretel. I was not a fan of scary things. I remember going to see THE SWAN PRINCESS at my local multiplex and almost having a panic attack when I discovered MARY SHELLEY'S FRANKENSTEIN was playing right next door. Somewhere in my tiny little mind, I thought my parents might get confused and walk into that auditorium instead.

The video soon came out and its presence was unavoidable. It was everywhere! I'd sneak a peek at the back of the box and wonder how terrifying this film must be with images like that, so proudly displayed. My local Party City even got a huge, cardboard standup of this razor fingered witch and that made shopping for Halloween costumes awfully difficult. They positioned it right by the exit. Smart move!

I had the worst dreams about this witch. I dreamt that I'd come home from school on a nice, sunny day, walk into my room and there she'd be, smiling and tapping at my rather large window. It got so bad that, in real life, I'd come home from school, jump on my bed, praying that if I jumped quick enough, the witch wouldn't be able to grab me under my bed. I'd hope every day this wouldn't be the day the dream became a reality.

I went off to a summer day camp a few months later and this group of older boys (couldn't have been more than 9 or 10 years old) kept talking about all these scary stories. They told me about a burnt child murderer with razors for fingers, a masked madman who only comes out on Halloween, and a little boy who drowned…in the lake around the camp, who will return and kill those who don't follow the rules.

Keep in mind that this was the summer before SCREAM was released, so slashers had been dead for awhile at this point. I never saw ads for such films, except NEW NIGHTMARE. This was all new to me. I started scouring the newspaper and TV Guide, hoping to find these films. I loved the simple, terse descriptions they gave of each film "Halloween- Babysitters stalked by a killer on All Hallows Eve!" SOLD!

My late father and I would watch these films every Friday and Saturday night together. Looking back, it's some of the best memories I have of my Dad. He'd lead me into darkness, we'd face my fears together, and discuss them the next morning over breakfast at Waffle House.

I remember seeing FRIDAY THE 13TH 7 & 8, THE FLY ('86), A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2 & 5, and HALLOWEEN 1 & 2 during this time. Since then, I rarely have nightmares. Who knew horror films could be such great therapy?

UNK SEZ: Thanks for the traumafession Chris! Multi-talented Chris Moore is the writer, director and star of the slasher inspired flick PERVERSION. You can check out the trailer below, find ordering info HERE and jump on over to our pal Pax's pad BILLY LOVE STU for a review over HERE!

Traumfessions :: Reader V. on Sesame Street Short "Electric H"

Posted on By aunt john

Hi Kindertrauma,

SESAME STREET had a sequence about the letter H augmented with animation from a Scanimate (an early analog computer animation system) that COMPLETELY. EFFING. TERRIFIED me. You'd be hanging out, minding your own business watching Big Bird and whatever, and all of a sudden this droning, existential, solarized, hypnotic meditation on the letter H came on. That first stoned animal growl of "Riiiiight . . ." from Luis was the call announcing that we had left the safe world of SESAME STREET and were going to enter a frightening Interzone parallel universe. I called it "Electric H", in the same tones of "He Who Must Not Be Named."

The worst was that it was a clip that wasn't in heavy rotation, so you never knew when it would come on. It got to the point where I would check to see what the letter of the day was and wouldn't watch any shows that said they were "sponsored by the letter H." My parents knew I was terrified of this and were very sympathetic about me running to turn the T.V. off as soon as it came on, but I remember one day in the kitchen when it came on, right after a Bert and Ernie sketch (and it wasn't even an H day!) and there I was, trapped, because our old black and white T.V. was on top of the refrigerator and I wasn't tall enough to reach it. Electric H, beaming its satanic bizarreness from little me from on high, for what seemed like eternity. I screamed and screamed until one of my parents came to rescue me. (Electric H is even scarier in black and white, btw. It's like ERASERHEAD.)

The irony is, I grew up to be quite fascinated with the computer animation and video art of this era (Nam Jun Paik, for example), so even though this was a traumatic experience maybe it horrified and fascinated me in equal measure? In any case, after finding "Electric H" on YouTube I'm not going to sleep tonight.

Thanks,

V.

Streaming Alert! :: Frayed (2007)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

I just have to give all the dyed-in-the-wool slasher fans out there the heads up that FRAYED is now available on Netflix Streaming. Long time Kindertrauma readers will probably remember that a while back we featured traumafessions from the makers of this independent film (check them out HERE). I have a bit of a soft spot for this under the radar gem because it feels just like the eighties horror movies I gravitated toward in my youth. It owes much to HALLOWEEN (who doesn't?) but it's not afraid to shake the formula up a bit to keep things loose and freshly off kilter. I'm not crazy about all of the performances but the actors that really need to go for broke certainly do. If you are one of the folks who recently enjoyed the small town killer on the loose atmosphere of SCREAM 4, I think you'll find some fun to be had here too, just remember to turn the lights off before you watch and don't be surprised if when the film is done, you reach to rewind the tape only to remember it's not on VHS.

I'm happy to see that many people who have watched FRAYED and left comments on Netflix Streaming, IMDb & Amazon seem to appreciate it as much as I do for what it accomplishes. No, there are no big stars in the movie and sometimes its budget is apparent but if you settle down and get yourself into the action, it's really a fun and thrilling old school ride with real scares. In fact, I'm kind of surprised that FRAYED did not make more of a splash when it came out on DVD. I'm sure it would have if it was given a better push by distributer LIONS GATE. I mean they didn't even put images from the movie on the back of the DVD case and that is just lazy loco! I know I never rent stuff without pictures on the back because it makes me assume that the movie has something to hide! Well, FRAYED has nothing to hide (especially in the cool visuals department) and the days of reading the back of DVD cases in video stores seems to be over now anyway. Looks like us horror fans are going to have to rely even more on word-of-mouth from now on. You probably already know if a low-budget slasher salute suites your appetites or not. I know for me every once in a while I need that certain late-night fix and FRAYED, now available on Netflix Streaming is one good way to get it.

NOTE: FRAYED will also be making its cable premiere on THE CHILLER CHANNEL on May 6th at 10pm EST! You can check out its home page HERE & its FB page HERE! This is a film that really deserves horror community support. It is made by real fans rather than hired monkeys so I say check it out! HORROR MOVIE A DAY has called it "The best slasher in years!" and you can read that review HERE!

Traumafessions :: Reader David O. on The Changeling

Posted on By aunt john

I was reading a post this morning about the episode of THE WALTONS called "The Changeling," which I personally don't remember but now want to see, badly. Seeing the name of the episode immediately took me back to a scene in the movie THE CHANGELING with GEORGE C. SCOTT that scared the pants off of me as a kid and still elicits creepy memories and an avoidance of dark stairways.

The scene is when GEORGE is sitting in the study reading and a red ball comes bouncing down the stairs in the foyer. Perplexed, he picks it up and looks toward the top of the stairs, which are dark and foreboding. He picks up the ball and drives to a bridge, tosses the ball into the river below and returns home. As soon as he gets back to the house and takes off his coat the red ball comes bouncing back down the stairs. I was frightened enough the first time the ball bounced down from some unseen force's hand, but when it happened a second time I was nearly pissing myself. The feeling of dread and the question of, "Would I dare go up there to see who tossed it?" stuck with me. Living at my grandparent's house at the time they had an old stairway that led to the basement, with open slats between the stairs. I had spent many days frightened that some monster was living under the stairs waiting to reach through and grab my feet as I walked down. After watching THE CHANGELING I now added the rubber ball fear to my stairway phobia.

The entire film is creepy and frightening; really one of my favorites. It's really well-made and worth a viewing if you haven't done so. I've watched it numerous times since childhood and still don't like seeing that red rubber ball, or any red ball I come across.

— David

Traumafessions :: Reader Celeste on The Halloween Tree

Posted on By aunt john

Hello KinderTrauma!

I read the LITTLE NEMO: ADVENTURES IN SLUMBERLAND submission and have another Ray Bradbury kindertrauma: THE HALLOWEEN TREE (1993)!

I didn't find this movie in your archives, although if I missed it and it is, I apologize. I don't remember all that much about the movie (I only watched it once and was terrified) but the thing that I remember (which helped me Google and then Wikipedia it) was that there was a sick boy with freckles (Pip) who had a doppelganger pumpkin. I hated that pumpkin face. In the movie, Pip had to be rushed to the hospital on Halloween, but he appeared to his friends as a sort of ghost and they, thinking he was playing a prank on them, chased this apparition through some woods throughout the movie, and at some point, Ghost Pip acquired a pumpkin with his face.

After reading the description on Wikipedia, it's supposed to be a really nice film about the origins of Halloween. Too bad I could only think of SLEEPY HOLLOW and the pumpkin head and relate this film to that scary story.

— Celeste