Traumafession:: Ytje V. on The Box of Delights
To be honest , I never was that adventurous or courageous when it came to suspenseful and creepy TV series. I got scared easily. My mother probably meant well when she suddenly would change channels because she thought something might upset me. She once even put her hands over my eyes while I was watching a TV show; she thought some monster on the screen might scare me. I think her sudden shrieking and putting her hands over my eyes was more scary than anything that might've been on the telly at that very moment.
My parents subscribed to a TV guide. The other magazines my parents subscribed to were too boring to even flip through, so I devoured every issue of the TV guide with gusto.. I must've been seven or eight years old when I saw a TV series that I just knew would be great to watch. I persuaded my parents to let me watch it, I even told my friends at school that I was going to watch a great TV show. It would be magic! I would be adventurous for once! I felt great.
The series was called Box of Delights. There is quite some praise for this series, even after its release, some thirty years ago. The story revolves around a magic box, given to a boy by a magician. Dark forces want to get hold of the box, so suspenseful adventure would be duly unfolding, or so I thought.
I didn't make it through the first episode.
At some point during episode one I realized I got more than I bargained for. Why had I persuaded my parents letting me watch this? Why had I bragged at school?
I knew retreat would be imminent. And I know the exact moment; when 'Rat' (a man, made up and costumed as a stinky, skeevy rat) reared its ugly head. I jumped up from the couch, did a spin and buried my head in a couch cushion. I think I cried. I was so disappointed; in myself and in the show that dared to be way too horrifying.
Needless to say I had raging nightmares that night.
In recent years I did try my best to find Box of Delights online. Because the series aired under a different title (original title loosely translated to Dutch) I had a difficult time actually finding it. But when I did, I was delighted.
I can see why Box of Delights scared me, but there are other scenes standing out now, that I find very creepy. The leader with the freaky puppet! Those priests! The fake looking make up on the old magician to make him look aging and wise!
Because I couldn't find other reviews or confessions deeming Box of Delights scary, I consider myself alone in this.
Well, not all alone. In fact, my sister, who's four years younger than I, would start crying just by seeing a picture of Rat. There was a picture of Rat in the TV listings, along with the article about Box of Delights. That's right. I already knew there would be a creepy character somewhere in the series and I still thought I could make it.
My brother would taunt my sister by sneaking up on her and brandishing the TV guide. My mom got so fed up that she took a pair of scissors and cut the picture out. She did this very neatly. Because the week wasn't done yet, we still needed it.
Here's the first episode (part one anyway):
I also included a pic of Rat. Man, is that guy creepy!
Name That Trauma:: M.W. on a Skeleton Glider Picnic
In the late 1950s or early 1960s I watched a movie on television that scared the hell out of me. Help! Do you know what movie it was?
It was about a jovial group of friends who went on a picnic where they took turns going up in a glider plane in smaller groups. One of these small groups of friends went up in the glider plane and neither the plane or the group returned.
Either on the first anniversary of the disappearance of the glider and their friends, or years later on the anniversary of the disappearance of the glider and their friends, the surviving friends went to the exact same location to picnic and remember their friends.
And guess what . . . the glider returned and in it were the skeletons of their friends.
Scary stuff!
Do you know the name of this movie, or maybe it was a Twilight Zone or Outer Limits. Help! I want to see this again.
UNK SEZ: Thanks for writing in, M.W.! I got lucky with some googling and I think I found your Skeleton Glider Picnic! It seems you are remembering an episode of ONE STEP BEYOND entitled "Reunion". If the Youtube comments are any indication you are not the only person with a strong memory of this episode. Interestingly, there seems to be some debate about wether the skeleton was originally shown or if viewers just remember it that way based on the narrator's description. Watch below and let us know if it is anything like you remember!
Name That Trauma :: Reader Daniel on a Cheeky Doll in a TV Studio
Hello my name is Daniel, and first of all I wanted to say thank you! I have been a fan of your site for years. Without your site, I never would have seen Summer Girl!
Anyway, I can't remember the name of an early 1990s horror movie. I thought it was called "Time Killer" or "Timekill"?, but sadly no. The basic plot is a man in a TV studio, it almost seems like he is on some kind of soundstage, and he holds a small doll with puffy cheeks, and there are lots of shots of the doll, and also a weird announcer dude. The whole movie is very dark, almost no daylight shots. I think there are a couple kill scenes, but its super minimal/atmospheric.
I rented it once from a video store in 2002, lol! It was one of the scariest movies I have ever seeeeeen!
Any help would be appreciated.
—Daniel
Sunday Viewing:: Offerings (1989)
What does OFFERINGS (1989) have against me? I was not even able to finish it the first time I tried to watch it back somewhere in that missing decade. I am forever searching for that elusive hidden classic and I doubt I was too far into OFFERINGS before I realized it wasn't classic and should probably stay hid. Its title evaporated in my head but it left all this stupid debris anyway. Sometimes I'd wonder to myself, "What was that movie with the terrifyingly hideous orange wallpaper?" or "What was that stupid movie that had that poorly executed bit about kids eating pizza with human flesh on it thinking it was sausage?" or "What the heck was that boring movie with the strange cake eating parents who laugh maniacally while watching cartoons?" In all cases the answer was the same; gosh darn OFFERINGS. This was before KT so it wasn't like I could write up a Name That Trauma and Googling "hideous orange wallpaper" would get me nowhere. Plus there was the fact that I had absolutely no desire to watch whatever movie it was again to consider. That really curtailed the search.
Then again, dipping my psychological pigtails in ink is a great way for a crap-tastic movie to endear itself to me and it's not as if my sensibilities have not nose-dived towards the bottom of the barrel lately. OFFERINGS is terrible and rather hypnotically so. It's like watching a dozen HALLOWEEN rip offs in one sitting because it goes on forever and whatever trance everybody in this movie is in, is highly contagious. Let's face it too that at the end of the day I'd rather see something atrociously flawed than something all Hollywood-sanitized and pruned of all character. It's my curse.
Here's an example of why OFFERINGS is maddeningly stuck in my craw. One scene finds our dazed heroine preparing dog food for the family pooch. Her front door bell rings and so she goes to answer it carrying a full spoon of dog food because who has time to put a spoon down? At the door is her friend who sees the spoon sporting an unidentified substance and then bends down and eats whatever it may be and is alarmed to find that she has just eaten dog food. Who does that? And more importantly why am I so fascinated by the idea that somebody out there at one point thought human beings might behave this way. I will give points for the line, "Serves you right!" which is the spoon girl's response to her friend's insane actions because truer words have never been spoken. There are dozens more inexplicable occurrences in this guesstimated 9-hour long movie but I should really just let them go and move on with what is left of my squandered existence.
Maybe you shouldn't watch it. Maybe you should just put it on and do something else while listening to its wonderfully shameless rip-off score. It's up to you. All I know is that I found it on YouTube with a better picture than I recall and spectacularly enhanced with spicy Spanish subtitles! Yay! It's called OFFERINGS because the killer leaves random body parts like ears and noses behind as gifts. If it was up to me though, I would have titled it THE HOUSE WITH THE SCREAMING WALLPAPER.
Name That Trauma:: Philip W. on Shell Shocked Plane Crash Survivors
Had this resurface from my subconscious the other day…probably the most obscure T.V. memory I have floating through my head. Back in the '70s I saw either a T.V. movie or show that featured an actor with grey or white hair that I believe may have been PETER GRAVES (or looked like him). He and a younger actor and actress (can't remember much about them, but they were about mid-20s I think) were traveling somewhere overseas to locate the wreckage of a WW 2-era bomber. They were in a helicopter and were looking out over terrain that had rolling hills and lots of oak trees (kind of what you see in a lot of movies filmed on location in California). They finally spotted the plane and landed, getting out and checking over the wreckage. But the pilot had a combat flashback, panicked, and took off without them. After that they came upon one of the crash survivors who was pretty old by this time and pretty much out of his mind. They tried to persuade him to return with them, but he wouldn't, preferring to stay with the plane and his fellow crew members (who were all dead and buried). I can't remember the ending, but I'm fairly sure he stayed behind when the other three were eventually picked up.
April Fool's Day Funhouse
These two APRIL FOOL'S DAY posters have ten differences. Can you find them all?
Traumafession:: Crafty Pants Carol on Bloodrage (1979)
Ok so Bloodrage (1979) had a very big impact on me when I first saw it. I was prob about 11 or 12 and when my sister and I would spend the weekend at our cool grandmother's house she would always let us pick out whatever movies we wanted and then leave us alone with them and go spend the evening ordering things out of a catalogue. I don't really remember what my sister would pick – but I usually picked a horror movie – and this was one of them. The main things that stuck in my head were the apartments in the movie and the whole 42nd Street atmosphere. And those images have swam around in my head for decades – leading to a near obsession with SRO hotels, NYC and sleazy 42nd street (oh and windows!!!).
But there was also some issues surrounding seeing the movie again that just made it all incredibly mysterious and alluring to me throughout my teens and 20s. I remember years later – when I was in high school – I really wanted to see it again and asked for it in every video store I went to but no one had even heard of it. Then one day I just happened to be in the neighborhood of my grandmother's old house and went into the video store we rented it from and thought "this is where I got it – they HAVE to at least know about it!" I looked around and didn't see it on the shelf so I asked for it at the counter and the dude looked at me like I was crazy – which made me want to see it like a thousand times more!!! Like it was some secret movie that no one knew about or would talk about! I think I half heartedly looked for it for the next decade or so -and then about 10 years later in the mid 90s I came across a copy of the VHS at Movie Madness in Portland while I was visiting my mom. I told her about how I had seen it when I was 11 or 12 and how excited I was to find it again and she sat down with me and watched it and about halfway through asked – with a bewildered look on her face "how old were you when you saw this???" And if you've checked it out since I uploaded it on youtube you'll understand why. It's full of hookers and sex and naked dancing ladies and killing hookers.
I did eventually live in an SRO hotel (just a room with a single bed and small fridge and TV where the bathroom and kitchen were out in the hall) and – big surprise – it was just like living anywhere else. It was even a house arrest hotel with petty thugs roaming the halls – and all I really wound up doing every night after a hard day of being a fry cook in a diner was watching 7th Heaven on crappy cable. I also eventually lived in NYC for a few years – but it was well after the sleazy 42nd street times. It was fun but nothing I'd ever want to do again. But I do still have mild obsessions with those things and sleazy 42nd street in general! It was seared into my brain by Bloodrage!!
And eventually I found a copy of the VHS on ebay and finally got it transferred to DVD so I could actually watch it again and then I forwarded the VHS on to the only person I know who both has a working VHS player and would appreciate the movie as the bizarro classic I think it is – Uncle Lancifer.
It's actually still really hard to find too! It never shows up on youtube. So I'm proud to be the purveyor of filth and sleaze that is Bloodrage for anyone who's interested.
