Category: Traumafessions

When I was a kid, 2 music videos made me wish I still wore diapers: "Land of Confusion" by GENESIS and "Rockit" by HERBIE HANCOCK. The former freaked me out – giant ugly Republican puppets flailing about, doing evil nasty things…and the T.V. show featuring them didn't help either. It got so bad I couldn't even hear the song without shuddering until I was in my teens.

"Rockit"…self explanatory. Empty house, freaky beat, robots….I still won't watch that thing.

My mother re-married and my new step father decided that POLTERGEIST II was a fine film to go and enjoy. I had seen the first one and while grossed out and a little creeped out by a few scenes… I was far from traumatized by it. Now I will utter a four word phrase that frankly starts a lot of stories that end badly…

Then…he… drank… tequila.

The sight of CRAIG T. NELSON gagging and puking up that horrible worm, then its morphing into that disgusting man-thing and slithering off down the hardwood… I am in my 30's and even to this day I cannot drink the bottom out of a bottle of soda, or the last third from any vessel I cannot see through, unless I use a straw that I bite hard so nothing more than the barest slip of liquid can get through.

AUNT JOHN SEZ: Kids, let this be a lesson to everyone planning on imbibing New Year's Eve libations tonight… stick to beer, stay in the clear, and for the love of CRAIG T. NELSON… just say NO to Cuervo!

This SESAME STREET sketch used to scare the bejeezus out of me.

I used to make sure my feet were covered up and not hanging over the edge of the bed lest they be munched on.

Also THE WATCHER IN THE WOODS, the Disney "horror" movie. It had stuff in it about spelling things backwards, mirrors, and girls with blindfolds. Am I even thinking of the right movie? Anyway, it's still lovingly remembered as my first taste of scary movies/the occult.

Also, DAVID BOWIE's crotch in LABYRINTH both scared and fascinated me.

UNK SEZ: Dear Laura, it behooves me to report that while searching for a proper image of Mr. BOWIE's crotch to illustrate your traumafession I stumbled across something that may traumatize you even further. "A scientific look at DAVID BOWIE's package" can be found HERE!

OK, WAY back in the early ‘70s I was a little kid who, of course, grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons and "Wonderama" on Sunday morning (I'm in my early 40's and I live in the NY, NJ, Conn Tri-State area). After school on weekdays it was, after homework of course, BUGS BUNNY, THE LITTLE RASCALS, FELIX THE CAT, and various PBS kids programs. I was allowed to watch some prime time T.V. ‘till it was bed time (around 8 PM). Here in the late afternoon/early evening I caught various programs.

My favorite prime time show was EMERGENCY (see, I'm an old geezer!) and also at the time, I got to see syndicated re-runs of THE AVENGERS. Good times! However, also at that time in the early ‘70s there were various public service advertisements that aired. Some were the classic "Cross at the green, not in between," an anti-smoking add that had a dolphin jump out of a tank to pluck a lit cigarette out of a man's mouth, the famous crying Indian in an anti-pollution ad, plus there was another one that was about, if I remember correctly, racism that showed a chain that was unwound and stretched till it began to crack.

Very effective.

There was another one that was out that freaked me out and it came out in 1972. It was a P.S.A. for the U.N.C.F.. There were several out and they always ended with the tag line "A mind is a terrible thing to waste." Well, this one featured a man, who may, or may not be either BILLY D. WILLIAMS or CARL WEATHERS (he does resemble them), sitting in a chair in an empty room staring out into space. We hear the sounds of a city in the background, a baby crying, a radio being tuned and a clock's chimes going off. After that we just hear the sound of water dripping out of the tap. A narrator then comes on and he gives a speech about the importance of education and how one can do world changing things like fighting injustice, becoming an artist, making peace and curing diseases. He then goes on to say that this cannot be possible if one does not get an education.

This is good BUT something is happening as the man talks: The guy in the chair is LOOSING HIS HEAD!!!! It's slowly vanishing!

YIKES!!!

Now this is doing a good job of proving that point especially as it ends with the classic "A mind is a terrible thing to waste" but as a then 5-year old, I found this VERY UNNERVING!!!! The guy's head disappears!!! That quiet part with him staring and looking worried with the water drip helped set that mood and then his head slowly vanished! VERY disturbing indeed! That image would stay in my mind for many years! That image would be replaced in the summer of 1977 by even something worse but that has been covered already!

Personally, I believe it's a milestone in the loss of one's innocence: learning that you can die with your eyes open.

Up to a certain point in childhood, any death you see on-screen ends with a dramatic last gasp and closing of the eyes, like the person died by some form of lethal exhaustion. But eventually, you watch that "grown-up" movie or show where it doesn't happen that way: somebody dies with their eyes open, and it traumatizes you in a landmark sort of way.

For me, this revelation came as a one-two punch in the form of two lesser-known films from the '70s — neither one a horror film and both, strangely enough, starring BURT REYNOLDS.

One is 1976's GATOR, where JERRY REED (in an underrated bad-guy performance) blows a hole in JACK WESTON with his sawed-off shotgun. We catch a fleeting glimpse of WESTON's lifeless body, eyes and mouth open, as REED douses the room with gasoline and sets it on fire.

The other is 1975's LUCKY LADY about rum-runners during the Prohibition era. In a scene where are heroes (REYNOLDS and JAMES CAAN) are ambushed on a cargo boat, bad guy JOHN HILLERMAN (no, not MAGNUM PI's beloved Higgins!) machine-guns down REYNOLDS and CAAN's protege, a very young ROBBY BENSON. As REYNOLDS and CAAN lay wounded as well, they roll over to see BENSON slumped on his side, his pretty-boy eyes wide open and glazed over in death.

Lancifer and John, I put the question to your readers:

What was the first movie or T.V. show that showed you that you can die with your eyes open?

AUNT JOHN SEZ: That's a really good question FilmFather. As a kid, I was of the school of thought that when you died, you ended up with your legs in the air, like a recently deceased horse in a cartoon. In hindsight, it makes no sense, but I really thought a pair of legs at a ninety degree angle was a sure sign of death. As for the eyes wide open approach, I am drawing a complete blank. Readers, please sound off in the comments or shoot us an email.

The recent Puppet Show at the ICA resurrected the memory of a particular childhood fear.

While I enjoyed both the HOWDY DOODY SHOW and PAUL WINCHEL's show on T.V. every week, I once had a frightening dream in which these amusing and friendly T.V. entertainers appeared in my bed room, hovering over the foot of my bed, and when I crawled over to them to greet them, they attacked me, tormenting me physically (lifting me off the bed by pulling hair and ears, pinching skin, and interestingly, nothing sexual, as far as I can recall, given that I was far too young to experience that in my dream world). The fear of these puppets, and, moreover, my bed, where the attack occurred, remained with me for years.

I am not sure if the two shows were contemporaries, so I cannot say for certain if I continued to watch both after that dream, but I do know that I did not stop watching whichever was still shown, despite the fear these images brought me at night, because there really was nothing scary about these puppets, as presented on T.V.

I was afraid of many things as a child, but nothing proved to traumatize me more than the old Tristar opening before movies with the Pegasus running towards the screen. I can honestly say that I have never watched that little 15 second opening all the way through. When I was young, I was convinced that if I watched it all the way through, the Pegasus would jump through the TV and attack me. (Which makes no sense, seeing as the Pegasus of mythology was a good creature and I knew this, being a mythology nerd from a young age.) I would run out of the room or hide behind a couch as soon as I heard the highly recognizable music. Everyone in my family found this amusing, but at the time I was scared to death.

A few years back, I got bored and popped in an old VHS tape I hadn't watched in years. As I stood in the middle of my room contemplating fast forwarding, I heard the music and saw the Pegasus head enter the screen. I lost my breath, my chest tightened, and the sense of doom I felt was overwhelming. The Tristar Pegasus caused an irrational minor panic attack. You think I would be over this by now, but to this day, at 23, I cannot watch that opening.

My sister and I were part of a "board game" family. Many an after-school evening or a Saturday was spent playing the whole gamut, anything from Ker-plunk, to Don't Spill the Beans;  Uncle Wiggly, to Parcheesi. We had ‘em all, and it was all good fun.

That is, until the dreaded "Operation" game found its way out of the closet and onto the kitchen table.

I'd like to revisit this "Classic", which showed up one Christmas, although it was most certainly nothing Santa was asked for by means of a list.

From the illustrations on the box and game board alone, you just know something is horribly, horribly wrong.

The premise is you, the "Wacky Doctor" (that is to say, you, granted  the temporary license for a first-grader to perform surgery),and your friends take turns trying to remove problematic organs from all over the bloated, naked body of an irritated looking man with a CRISPIN GLOVER-inspired haircut. The man is all pale and fleshy. The organs and such are white like bones. The openings in his body where they reside are, of course, blood red.

Oh, it's supposed to be amusing enough…he has an Adam's Apple shaped like a little plastic apple, a Funny Bone, and a Charlie "Horse". But here's the rub…touch the metal sides (exposed nerves I would wager) with your metal tweezers when performing an extraction, and what do you get? A loud, God-awful buzzer noise and his nose lights up bright red! Based on the "wackiness" factor of the doctors on the lid of the box, and the fact that the uninsured man is clearly conscious through these harrowing procedures in spite of there being some kind of gas tank pictured, it's pretty evident that he is going through a living nightmare much the same as TIM ROBBINS in JACOB'S LADDER, and you are playing the role of one of his demonic tormentors. I can only guess he was "gassed" just long enough to get his corpulent form up on the table, and carved open. Where did he come from? My guess is he was a homeless "Joe Everyman" found on the streets, probably offered a free lunch in exchange for some volunteer work.  The fun ensues when he wakes.

The lid artwork also sports such tools to be used as a bone saw, an oil can, and a blow torch! One doctor is smoking a cigarette as he operates, with the ashes falling in the man's face. The other doctor is wearing no pants. Wacky, indeed!  I'm sure it was only the technological restrictions of the 70's that kept the buzzer noise, jolting as it was, from being what it was intended to be: a long gut-wrenching scream of pain and terror sound clip.

Yet the wackiness continues, in spite of the poor fat man's objections, and gleefully another inept surgeon gets to take a crack at these procedures.

Look at the board again. Clearly, the patient is looking down at all the openings that have been hastily been carved into him, and he's none too happy about it. Even if he has been numbed, open-heart surgery (removal, actually) is just one of the gruesome extractions to take place while he is helpless to do anything but watch. His fate will take one of two paths, that of continued unsuccessful extractions and mind-blistering pain until the young "doctors" lose interest, or being dumped in a bathtub full of ice water, without ribs or kidneys, and a note telling him to call 911, if he wakes from the shock.

This is what echoed through my mind, when I was slated for a tonsillectomy at age six. All the assurance in the world going to sleep and waking up with a big bowl of ice cream did little to quell the fears of an "Operation."