Movies scenes I have very vague memories of, but have not idea what they were. Any help would be appreciated. This is very early ’80s stuff here. Late night T.V., before cable:
1. A woman becomes possessed by some power, and she is cutting her own fingers off in the kitchen with a kitchen knife and a cutting board.
2. A young girl and guy are fooling around in a barn, on a pile of hay. I think there is a crazy person/monster that is kept in this barn. It makes weird noises, maybe grunts. It either attacks or kills the young couple. Maybe with a pitchfork? Hard to say.
3. Maybe the same movie as number 1. Little people with giant sewing needles sneaking up on a woman in her bed. Not making that up. I know I saw it. Traumatized by that scene! I thought those midgets were going to get me while I was in bed, for weeks after seeing that.
4. Maybe the same movie again. A mother gouges her own eyes out. You don’t see the actual gouging, but she suddenly looks at the camera and there’s just 2 black holes where her eyes should be.
I definitely didn’t dream these movies.
Great idea for a site, btw.
Thanks,
— Bill B.
Florida
UNK SEZ: Hmmmm, I thought I might be more help than I ‘m going to turn out to be! #4, the “eyeless mother” could be THE STEPFORD WIVES. I’m wondering if #1 may be STEPFORD too, a hand is cut in that movie but not actually on a cutting board. #3 sounds like DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK but I don’t remember there being giant sewing needles. #2 the barn murder with the pitchfork has got me stumped! Pitchfork deaths show up in THE OTHER, THE SLAYER, THE BOOGEYMAN, FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART III and a host of others! If it was more of a shed than a barn it could also be THE INCUBUS! I’m hoping some Kindertrauma readers can help!
Unk, I thought of Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark as well, although like you I don’t remember the sewing needles. Whatever it is, I would like to see it.
I also thought of the Slayer for the pitchfork murder, although I think I only remember a guy being killed that way. However, there is a monster, so it might be worth checking out…
ABN,
These are tough, I know that details do get a bit sketchy over the years! I’m thinking if there was another “little people” movie besides DBAOTD we would have come across it many times before.
The pitchfork thing also reminded me of HALLOWEEN 5 but that seems much later. Maybe we should just compile a list of all the pitchfork barn deaths we can think of!
Speaking of barns, I also thought of “Deadly Blessing” but that didn’t quit fit either…! color me stumped.
I think #2 could be from the first Critters movie.
A young couple is making out in a barn, and when the guy tries to turn up some 80’s music from the nearby radio a hidden critter bites off his fingers.
Although I’m not sure if there’s a pitchfork in this particular scene, I know there’s one used at some point in the film.
BTW,
I knew I had seen something with a hand being cut in a kitchen before and then it came to me…
There is a scary “cutting into a hand” scene in “Suicide Circle/Club” but its from 2001 so clearly that’s not it!
My brain feels better having remembered though. It’s in the last part of the clip below…
THE PROWLER (1981) features an excellent double pitchforking murder, but I seem to recall it taking place in a gazebo…still, it’s a possibility, I guess.
Was there a hand or finger cutting off scene in BLUE SUNSHINE? It’s been so long since I’ve seen it but I think something goes on in a kitchen with a knife. Or maybe my memory just went crazy.
I also immediately thought of HALLOWEEN 5 with regard to the pitchfork/barn scene. If I remember correctly: 2 teens are fooling around in said barn, Michael pitchforks the guy while he’s on top of the girl, she takes the pitchfork and tries to stab Michael, he blocks it, and then he pulls a scythe (?) on her and does what he does best.
Ring any bells??
I think they had a barn scene that may be similar in “The Shuttered Room” a movie that got me as a kid in the drive-in at about 5 or 6 and known to me for the next 20 years as “That red door with a spiky hole in it ” movie
Derkaese, the first Critters movie was what jumped straight to my mind too, it’s a young Billy Zane who’s fooling around in that barn. For the little people one I initially thought of the Puppet Master series, but if it’s very early 80’s I guess it doesn’t fit.
Well, the discussion of a certain farming implement brought to mind a film that has haunted me for a long time and can genuinely be classified as traumatizing, inasmuch as it permanently killed a certain kind of fun for me. That is, the kind of fun that would involve leaping out of a hayloft into a big fluffy pile of hay in a barn. Not that I’d ever be likely to have the opportunity for such horseplay, but similar situations have arisen, and I have reflexively turned away from them with a lingering tremble of nausea because of a movie involving a hayloft, a pile of hay, a mean kid, and a pitchfork.
As I recall it, and this just makes it worse of course, the intersection of summer fun and puncture wounds was not accidental, but rather a vengeful act by the sociopathic kid. Sure, evil kids are always a potent element in a horror flick, but I think I respond to them a little too well owing to my early exposure to this film. Before that, I guess I was rather a virgin about willful evil. The discovery that someone might arrange a crippling injury in retaliation for a minor slight (and arrange to make it look like an accident) scared the crap outta me. I had previously assumed only I was capable of such vile impulses, and I figured I could trust myself never to inflict them upon myself. Other people, though…I’d have to start being more careful.
Via an IMDB keyword search I pretty quickly determined that it was 1972’s The Other, but not before discovering that the keyphrase “pitchfork-through-neck” doesn’t even include Friday the 13th III in 3-D, which is what you get if you Google those very words!
There’s a scene in the movie “Beast in the Cellar” where a couple is making out in a barn and they get attacked by a growling, grunting monster.
“The Shuttered Room” came to mind for me, too, for 2.
For 3, perhaps the Stephen King anthology movie “Cat’s Eye”? I seem to recall there was a rather evil little gnome in one of the segments, and I want to say it had some sort of vicious needle for a weapon.
I’ve been trying to find your #1 for a few days now. Could this be it? Starship Invasions (1977) and here is the clip: