Category: Uncategorized
Name That Trauma:: Dan Trashcan on Nuclear Meltdown & Anti-Smoking PSAs
A friend of mine told me about a PSA that spooked him, but fully traumatized his younger sister when they were kids, so I had to send it along. Here's the info: "It aired in the late ‘80s, I think it was on either public access or PBS. It was some anti-nuclear power short film with really low production values. It specifically centered around a meltdown at the Seabrook Power Plant and some guy who worked there. When the meltdown happened he went home and his wife was a skeleton who yelled at him. I've looked all around for it" Considering the regional, low budget nature of this, seems like a slim chance of anyone else knowing about it, but you never know.
Also, this is a separate thing but definitely related. A notorious PSA from NYC was considered lost by lost media types but just showed up on youtube in November. I don't think there was ever a name that trauma about it but I know I've seen it show up in the comments on other PSA posts before. I had heard about it in college from a professor who said it was pulled cuz it was disturbing too many kids. Frankly, that, and the description that my Prof gave had me visualizing much more haunting and disturbing. I know in movies and stuff, kindertraumas often lose their punch, but I"ve never felt that way about PSAs….they usually live up to their reputation…like that f*cking heroin monkey! YIKES.
Traumafession:: James Lewis of LARPing Real Life on Reflections of Murder ('74)
The Frankenstein Monster, submerged in a bathtub, slowly emerges from the water and sits bolt upright. Its hair is matted to its squared-off skull. The dark, half moons of its dead eyes are rolled back in their sockets. It steps out of the tub, dripping water on the floor, and towers over a cowering woman in a white gown…
I have carried that image in my mind for as long as I can remember. I'm fifty years old now, and I can recall being terrified by it as a child of five. For 40+ years, I had no idea where that image came from or why it's played on a never-ending loop in my head. Unable to track down its source, I'd come to accept the possibility that there was no movie, no TV show from which it came. It was just something my five-year-old brain invented, something it created to deal with some real life fears, perhaps. As a last ditch effort, I thought I would reach out to the Kindertrauma crew with a "Name That Trauma" post. It couldn't hurt, right?
Before I could pen that post, however, the universe figured it had tortured me enough and decided to cut me a break. By chance recently, I caught sight of a video thumbnail on YouTube that stopped me dead in my tracks. There it was. THERE IT WAS! The very image that had haunted me all my life. The exact image! Feelings of excitement and relief swept over me…as well as a sense of confusion. It seems that the Frankenstein Monster of my nightmares was really…Sam Waterston?
The source of my lifelong trauma is a made-for-TV movie called Reflections of Murder. A remake of Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1955 classic suspense film Les Diaboliques, Reflections of Murder aired on ABC in November of 1974 (when I was three!). It was written by Carol Sobieski, who also wrote The Toy (1982), Annie (1982) and Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), and directed by John Badham, who would go on to direct feature films like Saturday Night Fever (1977), Dracula (1979), Blue Thunder (1983), and WarGames (1983). Starring opposite Sam Waterston and completing the movie's love triangle are Tuesday Weld and Joan Hackett.
I hit play on Reflections of Murder as soon as I saw that thumbnail, but I don't know if my viewing was a watch or a rewatch. Though my mother and father were as lax as most 70s parents when it came to my TV-watching habits, I doubt that they would have let me watch the picture with them in 1974. I can only imagine that I saw the image of Sam Waterston in the tub in a commercial, and it stuck, shambling after me my whole life like a Romero zombie. Many years later, I saw Les Diabolques, and when Paul Meurisse as Michel rises up out of his own tub of water, I had the feeling that it was familiar, but the camera angles were somehow all wrong. He sat up on the right side of the screen, looking left; my Frankenstein Monster looked to the right. Little details, sure, but they were big differences to my memory.
So how did reliving the source of my childhood nightmares go? When Sam Waterston emerges from the bathtub to surprise his wife, I have to admit to being a tad underwhelmed, but not by much. It's hard not to compare and contrast it to the same scene in Les Diaboliques. The distorting effect of the water does much to contort Waterston's face as he sits up. The scleral lenses he wears also give him the dead eyes of Boris Karloff's Monster from Frankenstein. While Clouzot and company kept their scene silent musically speaking, Billy Goldenberg, who also wrote the music for such made-for-TV movies as Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (1973), Helter Skelter (1976), and This House Possessed (1981) uses shrieking violins and skittering strings to punch up the proceedings in Reflections of Murder. There's a very Psycho-like feel to all of it. While Goldberg's score works in the context of the film, I prefer the silence in Les Diabolique. It allows the wife's groaning as she dies of a heart attack and the water dripping off the husband as he stands in the tubs to take center stage.
When all is said and done, however, I have to say that Reflections of Murder is a pretty darn good little thriller. While perhaps lacking in the black-and-white moodiness of the French original, Reflections of Murder's setting and muted, 1970s color palette does create a unique sense of gloomy atmosphere all of their own. The entire picture, with its rainy locale, spooky schoolhouse, and falling leaves, has a wonderful, autumnal quality to it. Compared to other made-for-TV movies of the 1970s (and we're talking the Golden Age of MFTVMs), I think it more than holds its own and is well worth checking out.
I am also very pleased to have finally solved my little mystery. For a while there I was really doubting myself. I was thinking this was my own personal, one-man Mandela Effect. Instead, I have a fun story to tell and a new film I can recommend to people.
Now…if I can just prove to the world that it's "Berenstein" and not "Berenstain"…
-James Lewis of LARPing Real Life
Rest in Peace, Paul Kelman of My Bloody Valentine (1981)
Sadly, Paul Kelman star of MY BLOODY VALENTINE ('81) has passed away. He was an incredibly positive, supportive guy who really enjoyed engaging with fans of his work. He was so cool and so kind to once honor us with an interview so I'm reposting it HERE in his memory. I'm sure you can tell from reading it what an interesting and exceptional person he was. Rest in peace, my friend.
Storm of the Century (1999)
I love watching winter-set horror films in the summer for a little mental relief from the heat but I also love to watch wintry horror flicks in the heart of the season when they are the most relatable. Come to think of it, I also dig them in fall and spring so I just took a long time to say I enjoy them all year round. Recently I popped in an old double VHS tape of Stephen King's STORM OF THE CENTURY, which I enjoyed when it first aired and I found myself surprised at just how well it has aged. It's truly chilling, has atmosphere you can cut with a knife and is filled with so many interesting characters performed by a cast of truly talented actors. There's also a phenomenal central villain, a runtime that provides full immersion and a rather nasty moral dilemma that could leave you with frostbite. King himself has called it his personal favorite of all the television productions based on his work and I'd totally agree if not for the fact that SALEM'S LOT (‘79) exists.
A small town is presented in full frenzy as they prepare for an oncoming winter storm. I can tell you from experience that New England storms are especially fierce when you reside by the ocean, as is clearly the case with fictional Little Tall Island (which we've visited before to meet DOLORES CLAIBORNE). Enter Andre Linoge (a perfectly unnerving Colm Feore) who begins offing oldsters with his wolf-faced cane, causing suicides, revealing everyone's darkest secrets and leaving graffiti everywhere that says, "Give me what I want and I'll go away." I don't want to reveal what tree this dog is barking up but I will say that I have a psychic hunch that Shirley Jackson would give his wicked proposal a big thumbs up.
Helping to make the horrific circumstances all the more harrowing is the fact that those caught in Linoge's crossfire are played by cream of the crop character actors like Jeffrey DeMunn (THE BLOB ‘88, THE GREEN MILE '99), Julianne Nicholson (personal fave THE OTHERS (2000) & Emmy award winner for MARE OF EASTOWN in 2021), Becky Anne Baker (the mom from FREAKS AND GEEKS! She's excellent) and even good old ‘80s staple Casey Siemaszko (THREE O'CLOCK HIGH, STAND BY ME). Some may be surprised that Tim Daly, best known for the sitcom WINGS is wonderfully nuanced, earthy and relatable as the troubled, narrating lead, but anyone who has seen 1988's fatal witch attraction flick SPELLBINDER knows the score (plus, who doesn't amongst us want to support Tyne's bro?).
Director (and former stuntman), Craig R. Baxley would go on to bring other Stephen King teleplays to the small screen (ROSE RED (2003), KINGDOM HOSPITAL (2004)) but he's best at his game here juggling compelling performances, creating a believable town to get lost in and throwing out striking imagery (with the help of cinematographer David Connell).
I'd even say you could take this in as a precursor to the type of work Mike Flanagan (MIDNIGHT MASS) has been excelling at delivering to Netflix recently. Like Flanagan's output, STORM OF THE CENTURY helps to erase the delusion that the big screen is superior to the small, especially when weaving such expansive tales. Though a hit with ratings and critics alike, STORM OF THE CENTURY has seemed to fall toward the bottom of Santa Stevie's bag of horror toys but I'm of the thinking it deserves to be much more appreciated. Personally, I think it's the gift that keeps on giving. It's top-tier Stephen King in my book.
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