kindertrauma

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Grave Encounters (2011)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

I'm shocked by how much I enjoyed GRAVE ENCOUNTERS. I remember checking out the trailer a while back and shrugging. It even dared to have one of those "I'm screaming and now my mouth is stretching bigger than it should!" ghouls in it! Bah, and who needs another found-footage movie and the limited color palette that comes with? Andre from HORROR DIGEST was my canary in the coalmine. She watched it, survived unscathed and wrote a review about how it made her pee and poop her pants. That's all I needed to know to journey forward and so I checked it out one night and found it to be better than it had a right to be. It starts out very mundane with a guy explaining how the footage came into his possession but once the actual footage gets started, it's entertaining all the way.

GRAVE is titled after a ghost hunting program not unlike PARANORMAL STATE which your Aunt John has forced me to watch a zillion times against my will. I'm always complaining because nothing ever happens and the folks on the show are forced to act amazed by the flimsiest evidence. GRAVE works as a clever parody of such a show. There's a phony shit shoveling psychic and an amusing scene where the host pays off a gardener to lie through his teeth about his experiences. The "Grave Encounters" crew (who stand in dramatic, ready-for-action poses) is filming their sixth episode in an abandoned mental hospital that they will find out is indeed seriously haunted. What ensues, though never fully believable, is so fun and gleefully spooky that you'll feel like a kid running through a neighborhood haunted-house on Halloween. You know it's not real, but you can't help getting into the frenetic spirit anyway.

Not only are the shock scares surprisingly effective, but this movie also plays with your mind pretty good too. The asylum turns into a trippy maze of sorts and things get eerily surreal. The authentic setting, not unlike the one employed in SESSION 9 is an indisputably unnerving place. Unlike most films of this kind, the cast is exceedingly likable (particularly lead SEAN ROBERTSON) and are easy to empathize with. Some of the effects don't come off as well as they could, so the blurrier you can make your eyes by drinking alcohol while watching this, the better. There may be glitches scattered about but I think the overall exuberance on display overrides them. I ended up viewing it a second time so that Aunt John could check it out and now I like it even more. I don't mind telling you he jumped pretty high off the couch at one moment. GRAVE ENCOUNTERS is on Netflix Streaming, iTunes & Amazon so check it out; don't take it too seriously and don't be surprised if it ends up leaving you feeling inexplicably tweaked.

Name That Trauma:: Jeremy L. On Blondie Blood

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Hi guys! Love the site!
I'm wondering if somebody could help me with this. For as long as I can remember everytime I hear the song "Rapture" by Blondie I think of blood. When I was a kid it really freaked me out. Does anyone know if that song was ever used in a horror movie or tv show in a bloody scene? It's always bugged me that I can't remember what caused me to think this when I hear that song!

Traumafession/Name That Trauma!:: Reader Dave P. on Angus, Gargantuas and Blood sucking Spiders

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Hello,

I came across your website doing a search for Angus from "Lost in Space". My brother and I were just talking about Angus and how that terrifying scream scared us as kids.

The green monster in "War of the Gargantuas" also creeped me out as a kid. The scene where you see him looking up from under the ocean water has stayed with me all these years. Of course, watching him grab a woman through a window, chomp on her and then spit out her clothes was not easy to forget either! Again, the SOUND the monster makes is unique and unforgettable.

I vaguely remember watching a black and white movie on TV back in the 1970's where (I think) people were being drained (of blood?) by spiders or some type of creature. Do you have any idea what that movie could be?

Thanks, and pleasant dreams!

UNK SEZ:: Thanks for joining us here at Kindertrauma Dave P and thanks for bringing with you an excellent traumafession! I'm sure one of our readers will recognize your blood sucking spider trauma! In the meantime, let us all fail to enjoy what I consider the most upsetting part of WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS! It's the nightmarish tune "The words get stuck in my throat"!

Streaming:: Trollhunter, Hobo, Red State & Vanishing

Posted on By unkle lancifer

UNK SEZ: I wanted to do a "Best of the Year" list sort of thing but how could I possibly when I'm so hopelessly out of the loop? Part of it's my fault because I'm trapped in the past but part of it I blame on the fact that many movies never hit my neck of the woods. During the Christmas break I realized that the least I could do was catch up with the recent flicks available on Netflix. This little four-car pileup represents only a fraction of my intake but hopefully we'll get to some of those other flicks soon too.

TROLLHUNTER

To tell you the truth, knowing that TROLLHUNTER was a found footage flick didn't make me run to it with open arms. Nothing against the concept, I just wasn't in the mood for the usual song and dance. I threw all my trepidations in the garbage disposal though as soon as the first troll showed up. He was glorious. If this movie doesn't convince you that CGI is not necessarily the devil's plaything then nothing will. Fun, imaginative and crowned with a great character in troll hunter Hans (OTTO JESPERSEN), this movie easily leaped over my expectations and turned out to be quite the horror adventure.

HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN

I probably found this movie only about half as funny as I think I was meant to. I was not too comfortable seeing RUTGER HAUER my hero, being treated poorly by Tromaville rejects. It reminded me of the awful day my dog followed me to school and all the other kids laughed at her running down the hall. Don't laugh at my dog! Suddenly I understood that HOBO wanted me to feel that way so that I could fully enjoy my blue eyed champion RUTGER killing all the rat faced punks. Sadly that understanding came a little too late for me to get all I could have out of this. In any case, I loved all the nasty neon colors swirling around in this movie, the references to MAD MAX and HALLOWEEN 3 and the blippy soundtrack and excellent STREETS OF FIRE theme song at the end. I just don't enjoy seeing people push RUTGER HAUER around, to me that's like sacrilege or something.

RED STATE

Wait a minute. How is it possible I was so unimpressed with this movie? I like a good KEVIN SMITH rant and it shouldn't be very difficult to get me on board with a movie that skewers religious zealots and features JOHN GOODMAN. I thought RED STATE jumped out of the gate fine but I fell off the back of the truck midway through. Maybe it says something about my lack of mettle that I could not adjust to RED STATE's major shifts in tone of which there are several. There was one point toward the end where I thought perhaps it might redeem itself for me and then instead it went the opposite direction entirely. (Alas, an unfilmed original ending scrapped due to financial restraints sounds more my cup of tea.) As it stands, I felt like the subject matter deserved a far less flippant approach and I was let down by SMITH painting in such broad strokes. I give him much respect for working out of his comfort zone but I felt the wild-eyed caricatures sort of let the garden variety bigot too easily off the hook. I guess this is one of those divisive movies that you either love or hate and I can't be more shocked that here I stand on this side of the fence!

VANISHING ON 7TH STREET

Don't worry RED STATE, you are not my least favorite movie in this grouping! That honor belongs to VANISHING ON 7TH STREET! BRAD ANDERSON is a mega valuable and extraordinary director in my eyes. Not only do I dig his forays into horror, like the excellent SESSION 9, but I also think his HAPPY ACCIDENTS and NEXT STOP WONDERLAND are pretty awesome too. VANISHING has a wonderful plot as far as I'm concerned. It's sort of like WHERE HAVE ALL THE PEOPLE GONE? with darkness itself starring as a malevolent force furiously erasing the world. Unfortunately even though this movie has more going for it than most with ANDERSON's expertise, an involving concept, semi professional (albeit miscast) actors and I'm sure a reasonable budget of some sort it fails to gel into anything solid enough to cast a shadow itself. It's just like a big glob of formless putty. It even has the nerve to have an annoying kid character in it and I was of the understanding that we as of a culture had a silent agreement to leave that pesky stock character to disaster movies from the seventies. I'm not telling you not to check this one out; in fact, do and tell me it's just my imagination that it is as intolerable as I think it is. I don't mind being wrong. I want to be wrong.

Traumafesions :: Reader Hillary B. on Image Union

Posted on By aunt john

Hello,

Love your site! I don't have a site to promote, but I do have a traumafession. I live in Chicago and I grew up watching WTTW 11, our main PBS station. There is a program called IMAGE UNION and back in the '80s the "mascot" (or whatever) promoting it was this animated figure.
I attached a photo of the figure I found by Googling it, which just reignited my fear of this thing, so yay. YouTube clip of the figure at the 0:45 mark:

Whenever I was watching the station with my parents and a commercial with that figure came on, I would quickly leave the room. I don't think I ever told my parents that the image freaked me out but it became my own personal boogeyman. If I had a dream of something scary chasing me, it was THAT THING! Usually accompanied by a sidekick in the form of a tarantula, my other kindertrauma.

I've never ever watched IMAGE UNION, which still comes on WTTW 11 and I still watch that station, for the simple fact that it is connected to that horrible image. The movement of the animation was weird and the face really didn't move at all. It just wasn't right. Not at all.

Cheers,

— Hillary

Streaming Alert:: Black Noon (1971)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Today's selection is not so much streaming as hiding out on YouTube like a gangster. As always, when it comes to YouTube, I suggest watching it as soon as possible for fear that it might disappear. BLACK NOON (1971) delivered your Unk some genuine willies, so it's my duty to pass the possibility of similar willies on to you. Fans of seventies T.V. movies, especially those that fret about Old Scratch coming to call, need to see BLACK NOON. Truly, it deserves to be spoken of alongside other celebrated, post-ROSEMARY'S BABY Satanic cult films of its time period. I'm thinking that the only reason it's not more notorious is because it wears the cloak of a western. As far as delivering the horror goes though, I assure you the film has a sneakily wicked scorpion tail.

A young reverend and his wife lose their way in the desert en route to their new home. Luckily before they die of thirst, they are discovered by some townspeople who take them in and as the wife recoups, the preacher finds his services much in need as the isolated town is suffering various hardships. His presence and his preaching seem to have a positive effect. A new vein of gold is found in the local mine, a crippled boy begins to walk and a bullying bandit is disposed of. Everybody is doing the happy Bible boogie except the preacher's wife who is getting sicker and sicker. As the wife begs to scram, the preacher finds himself more and more enthralled by the residents, particularly a beautiful mute named Deliverance. In fact, reverend's ego is so stroked by the townspeople that he is willing to ignore a sudden rash of vivid panic dreams and waking hallucinations of a bloody anguished man. Clearly things are not quit as they appear in the town of Nilbog San Melas. Something fishy and witchy is going on…

If that doesn't pique your interest (and really why should it?) allow me to sell you on the cast. ROY THINNES (THE NORLISS TAPES, SATAN'S SCHOOL FOR GIRLS) plays the passionate, sometimes wild-eyed reverend, mac daddy super pimp RAY MILLAND (THE UNINVITED, THE LOST WEEKEND & THE ATTIC) is the town's head honcho, and the enticingly beautiful mute cat wrangler Deliverance who scares rattlesnakes with her stare is played by a bewitching YVETTE MIMIEUX (she of THE BLACK HOLE.) We also got ourselves some porn-stached HENRY SILVA (BUCK ROGERS, TRAPPED!), some twitchy GLORIA GRAHAME (BLOOD AND LACE, MANSION OF THE DOOMED) and even a dash of DEVIL TIMES FIVE's LIEF GARRETT. If you need more than that you are crazy and should be put down like a rabid raccoon. To be honest, GRAHAME doesn't have nearly enough to do, but it's always good to see her showing up anyway.

Now you have to be a little patient with this one; it was made in 1971 which means it does not tap dance, wave sparklers and shoot gold coins and bubble gum balls out of its mouth every five minutes to keep your attention. It uncoils slowly with a subtle foreboding but when it goes in for the kill, it's remarkably vicious. There's actually still a ringing reverberation in my psyche from the sound of its bear trap snapping shut. Furthermore, some of the visual nails that are hammered home during the finale are remarkably ahead of their time. I'll put the links in the comments section. The picture and sound (maybe use headphones?) aren't the best, but I think it's worth the extra effort. That's it. I'm saying no more. The less known the better. Hope you enjoy this grade-A 74-minute cut of lean mean Beelzebub marinated T.V. beef and do let me know what you think!