Category: Traumafessions

From my humble beginnings, according to my mother, I was a sensitive child. Quiet, bookish, a catch and release the firefly sort of kid. I would cry when other neighborhood children would keep them in jars or squish them against the sidewalk. This sort of behavior did not sit well with my Father and he would try, to the best of his ability, to toughen me up. We would watch grown up type movies. Not 'adult' movies but movies like TRUE GRIT, TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. These watching habits extended to television as well, THE A-TEAM, KNIGHT RIDER, these were all shows enjoyed by me while my dad read the paper and nodded approvingly whenever MR. T punched a dude, my dad even let me have the recliner when they were on.

"This sounds like a perfect childhood, Fauntleroy, where is the trauma?" you ask.

Okay.

The year: 1988.

The person: An 11-year-old me.

The show: MACGYVER. I had to look up the title of the episode, "Kill Zone," and the year (my memory isn't THAT good).

In this particular MACGYVER, he is sent in to some wilderness to investigate reports of animals dying after a satellite crashes to Earth. I may be wrong about the satellite, but the episode had a real ANDROMEDA STRAIN feel to it. It turns out, a weird bacteria has returned with the crashed object and this bacteria, upon exposure to a living thing, accelerates the aging process to fatal levels. We're talking a lifetime in a matter of minutes. A sample of the bacteria is sent to a lab for analysis where it comes into the hands of a dedicated lady scientist who is softened by the presence of her beloved dog. How could this scientist be so obstinate? Look how much she loves her dog.

The episode progresses. MacGyver fixes stuff with a paper clip, etc. etc. Eventually, he is supposed to destroy said organism, its existence deemed too dangerous to the planet Earth. The dedicated lady scientist isn't having it. The organism is simply too important to destroy. She locks herself in the lab with her dog and the organism sealed in a glass container for further study. Alas, the beloved dog misinterprets the glass container holding the bacteria for a toy and knocks it from her hand, releasing it in the sealed laboratory.

The dog immediately begins to age, its black fur becoming gray seemingly before MacGyver's eyes. It limps to the lady scientist's lap and dies in her arms while she also begins to show signs of age. MacGyver runs to find some way to free her from the lab but by the time he returns, she is horrifyingly old and, in my opinion, kind of looks like a gray haired version of The Hag from the trauma inducing movie CURTAINS. It wasn't enough that a dog withered and died in front of my eyes while its owner apologized and said 'she hoped it doesn't hurt', no, I was also treated to the grim visage of death itself, in the form of a grizzled old woman.

I ran from the room, oblivious to my father's cries of, "For crying out loud! It's just MACGYVER!" I never watched another episode of MACGYVER again for truly this was a one/two punch: soul crushingly sad, followed by horrifying.

Finding the clip online was easy, WATCHING said clip, an entirely different matter. I did not, but I am including it for those whose morbid curiosity is unquenchable. Don't say I didn't warn you:

I was wondering if there were any traumafessions yet about MAKING CONTACT (a.k.a. JOEY)?

There was just something about that dusty dummy opening its eyes that disturbed me when I saw it as a kid. I remember when I was 13, my parents had my grandparents' tapes after their house was burned down. We were watching one of the movies, I didn't know what it was, and it ended up being this movie. I forgot all about it until that scene when the dummy comes to life. At that point I jumped out of my skin.

(AUNT JOHN SEZ: The offending dummy comes in around the 5:35 mark. Also, who's JOEY's interior designer? I want those RETURN OF THE JEDI sheets!)

Then there was this ending which was freaky:

I've been having dreams about a giant head, and I think this may have something to do with it. It always disturbed me when the dummy burnt to death at the end too.

I need to mention the most horribly disturbing claymation dental hygiene film they made us watch at school.

I have hunted it down and found it here…

Just wait until you see Jack Sweet… I swear this scarred me for life. Even worse I LOVE animation and manga, etc. It's practically all I watch and read as an adult but I've had the worst fear of claymation ever since those days…. I can't even watch the old Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman stop motion X-Mas specials to this day. In fact, you might want to add those to your list as well. They're quite creepy too…

I guess the only positive is that I have lovely teeth today…. but at what mental cost????

I'm very happy to have found you and to get this off of my chest.

Hey Kindertrauma, haven't had anything good to report to you in awhile, but the other day during my humanities class I take at City College S.F., I remembered something horrible while we watched PINOCCHIO.

Most of the horrors I've experienced for some reason branch out from that film although I've never seen the connection ‘till now and I'll just mention one of them.

There is a square quilt blanket PINOCCHIO sleeps with that I had as a child, which reminded me of something awful. After a dinner where I had spaghetti and meatballs and a cake and a bunch of other crap I can't remember, I went to bed and had a terrible nightmare. I dreamt that I was eating the hugest strawberry chocolate chip cake (like a mountain-sized cake) and no matter what happened I couldn't finish it.

While I was half asleep all I can remember was puking all over the quilt as I slept; puke and go back to sleep; puke some more. I slept under a mountain of my own puke and for some reason didn't wake up until morning, maybe it was so heavy I couldn't move and no one could help me, even though my sister was asleep in the same room.

Christ who would want to help me?

I have successfully avoided seeing PINOCCHIO since I was 3 or 4 years old when it horrified me in the theater and all the anxieties that I felt throughout my life were harnessed into reality and I forgot how dark and sinister most of that film was.

Then I wondered if kids today would not be so sheltered from reality then possibly they could learn something, either way it's an important film. The reason we watched it during Humanities class was because my brilliant teacher saw a connection between Jesus and PINOCCHIO (both die and become resurrected, "to save one's own life you must lose it.")

Check it out again with this frame of mind and see what you get, it could also be applied to BRITNEY SPEARS puppet-like existence as well.

AUNT JOHN SEZ: Thanks for checking in Crankenstein of CRANKY TOWN. If it's any consolation, the Vicar of VHS shares a somewhat similar aversion to this cautionary tale about a piece of wood who's turned into a boy and then turned into a donkey before finally being turned back into a boy.

I love your site!

It brought back a flood of scary T.V./movie memories, particularly that my sister and I were obsessed with watching ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS on Sunday nights in the mid-‘80s, followed (or preceded) by STEVEN SPIELBERG's AMAZING STORIES which were often VERY disturbing and kept us up at night.

There was one ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS called "Final Escape" that still creeps us out to this day. It was about a rich, mean woman who gets sent to jail and where she strikes a deal with the elderly prison coroner. She promises to pay for his expensive eye surgery (I think) if he buries her with the next inmate who dies and then comes back to dig her up. They agree that the next time the death bell tolls she will climb into the casket and wait for him to come and get her after the burial.

Before long, the bell tolls, she sneaks into the morgue area and gets into the casket and gets buried in the prison graveyard. She waits and waits and waits, but the prison coroner doesn't come. After a while, she lights a match and finds herself lying next to the DEAD coroner!!!! Zoom out to hearing screams coming from the ground.

Shivers!!!

Does anyone else remember this series/episode?

Keep up the good work!!

D.

AUNT JOHN SEZ: Thanks D. for the sweet traumafession! While I don't recall that particular episode, I did manage to locate a clip from the '60s ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR on which the plot of the '80s re-hash is based:

Hi, as I'm sure you've heard before, your website is fantastic. Lots of fun for the horror lover. Anyway, I was wondering if anyone has mentioned DUMBO as a traumafession. Though I visit regularly, I'm sure I could've missed it.

For me, DUMBO (like many a Disney film) was quite upsetting. I was very little of course when I first saw it and even with its scary moments, I liked it and watched it a lot but that didn't mean I walked away psychologically unscathed. From the time poor Mrs. Jumbo had to watch all the other mother's get their babies while she stood all by herself, hopes rising and falling like the ridiculous temperature out here in Northern Cali, to those snooty, gossipy, elephant companions they were forced to bunk with, all the way to the near end, when the feather slipped out of DUMBO's grasp and he nearly died painted up as a clown, I couldn't help pondering why all of this was happening.

It was all so unjustified, especially when that horrid kid teased little baby DUMBO and got a well deserved spanking from Mrs. Jumbo, only for her to end up in jail (I guess Disney, like local law enforcement, don't sit well with spankin's ) I mean it was so sad and depressing.

Of course, no mention of the film DUMBO can go without the discussion of the 'Pink Elephant' sequence. Though it was horrifying, I thought it was pretty cool, just like Asian Horror is today! But my friends sure didn't think so. A couple had to leave the room when it came on and one's own mother forbid them to watch that part, she always fast forwarded it while telling us to close our eyes. I didn't blame them. The parts where the elephant is made up of heads and the high pitched voices are singing, is completely and understandably frightening.

As I've said, it was the emotional turmoil that got to me…that and DUMBO as a clown, I swear that image just won't go away! Oh well, I've come to realize that it's really not so bad being traumatized, slightly enjoyable even.

That's all for me, thanks for reading!

Luv,

Nita

I ran across your site after looking for info on the scary preacher Kane from POLTERGEIST 2. I am now in the midst of a full-fledged reading of everyone's confessions! Fantastic stuff!

I have some rather run-of-the-mill scary memories from childhood. Mostly ones already covered here, like Freddy, PET SEMATARY, and IT. But I also have a huge hang-up on a totally unscary movie actually made for kids.

To this day I cannot stand to listen to, or see scenes from the SCOTT BAIO/JODIE FOSTER 1976 epic musical BUGSY MALONE. The one about kid gangsters where everyone throws cream pies at each other instead of using guns. But herein lies the rub- some maniacal producer thought it would up the camp factor by making all the kids voices dubbed with disembodied adult singing voices- just for the songs. For the regular dialogue you have the pleasure of hearing JODIE and SCOTT use pseudo gangster accents. I don't like the whole sketchy 1970s feel of the movie, even hearing clips of the songs makes my stomach turn. The way the adult voices are dubbed onto kid bodies creeps me out. Disembodied voices in general are scary I think, but something about that movie just makes my skin crawl and an icky feeling go up my scalp. I am also hunching my shoulders and making a face like I sucked a lemon just recalling details of this "harmless" movie.

I have even heard that there is a children's musical theater version based on the movie, and I can't imagine why anyone would want to participate in something like that. Here is a youtube clip of the final song.

As an accompaniment to that, I also cannot listen to Shirley & Lee's version of "Let the Good Times Roll" on the STAND BY ME soundtrack. I almost wore out the tape as a kid, but I was ALWAYS fast forward through that song. The lady's voice is disturbing and scares the beejeezus out of me. Almost like a disturbed munchkin.

A final traumafession is the scene in GHOST where VINCENT SCHIAVELLI is playing a ghost who comes tearing through a subway car to scream at PATRICK SWAYZE, "GET OFF MY TRAIN!" I saw GHOST in the theater in 1990 as 12 year old and hated the movie for a long time because of that scene. The actor is, in general, a super creepy guy.

Ick.

Thank you!

Anne