Sequel Match Up Funhouse
Name That Trauma:: Philip W. on a Short Train Trip to the Cemetery
Hey everyone!
One day back when I was in (yes, really) kindergarten during the late 70s, our teacher showed us a creepy little film that has stayed with me over the years and I was wondering if anyone else remembers it. It was in black and white and was basically footage of a train trip, but there were no actors or actresses. It seemed like stock footage that would be used for advertising or movies, and there was a voiceover track with various people talking – but you never saw these people. So the train pulls out of the station, moves through the countryside and everything is fine and dandy as the passengers chat away. Except the train eventually wrecks. Here's where it gets fuzzy: I don't recall how it crashed and I don't believe the crash was actually shown, but I remember the people hollering and panicking and shots of the train moving fast at night. After a fadeout, the camera pulls back to show a cemetery and the film ended.
Yes, this was actually show to us in KINDERGARTEN (and yes, our teacher DID have issues as well as a wicked temper). It seemed like the film was made in the late 50s or early 60s given the trains featured and the manner of speech on the soundtrack. And it was an actual filmstrip that was loaded onto a projector. I'm not sure of the length, but it seemed like it had to have been over 10 minutes long.
Despite this, I really dig trains and am big on model railroading!
Traumafession:: Popcornmonster on the Stop Motion Swiss Miss Spokespuppet
I have a new traumafession that has recently resurfaced after lying dormant for decades.
Thanks to the marketing folks, my old nightmare fuel from Swiss Miss has been resurrected.
In the 1970s Swiss Miss ran ads with a disturbing stop motion doll. She always gave me the creeps and contributed to at least one early childhood nightmare. I think part of it is simply the evil smile and dead eyes but the way she would yodel and the way it would echo was another contributing factor.
I remember being relieved when the company moved away from using her image in their advertising and switched to the more cartoonish version of the girl. However while shopping recently I spied her scary face once again as she is back on the packaging with the old advertising artwork. Let's hope if she makes new commercials they are CGI.
Name That Trauma:: Bud on Body Swapping Oldsters and an Occult Mystery Solving Rock Band
My dad was the associate pastor and song director of a small Baptist church when I was growing up in the 1970s, and on Sundays he would take me to a nursing home to visit elderly shut-ins. Some suffered from senile dementia, and one particularly spooky lady carried a small baby doll around, presumably because she thought it was one of her children from the past. She had wild white hair that she refused to let anyone groom, and it stood out very much like those old Troll dolls from that period. I was horrified of her, and the fact that she resided in a small room in the nursing home where the shades were always drawn and the lights were always out made her especially creepy. For some reason, though, she adored my father; he had copper-red hair, and maybe that was why, because he stood out, but she didn't seem to like me much (I had black hair like my mom). Regardless, my dad was the only person she let touch her "baby," and one time she let him hold it and he decided to see if she would allow me to do the same. No dice. When she saw him pass the doll to me, she leapt up in her hospital gown and slippers, and started screaming, and the nursing staff ran in to calm her down. I can still hear the piercing wails that emitted from her to this day. I was a nervous wreck for the rest of the evening after that, I can assure you.
At any rate, with that story as a back drop, I remember seeing one of those late-night TV movies back in that time period that revolved around an elderly couple who could somehow transfer the youth from others and entrap their victims in their old bodies. For some reason this horrified me as much as the "Aunt Ada Has Come to Stay" episode of NIGHT GALLERY I wrote about earlier this year — and thank you guys for helping me find the very movie I had been hunting down for over two decades: HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM, and the comic where Santa's sleigh hangs that crook as it flies in front of a full moon (I've written a blog post about the help you all gave me, and I really appreciated it — the fact that I found these things on my birthday made it all the better). At the end of the movie (and I'm sure it was one of those 90-minute deals, and ran on either CBS or ABC), the victims of these body or energy swappers are looking down from an apartment window at the now-youthful villains, and I was too horrified to see what the now-old couple looked like…I've always wondered, too, and now I wish I could see it. Any idea what it was entitled?
Another movie from that period I've often wondered about dealt with, I think, a rock band that gets into a plane crash, and survives, and they somehow get super-powers that help them solve occult mysteries. I want to say they sang something like, "Don't be afraid of the dark/When it's a Full Moon," because my sister and I used to sing that about that movie all the time — it was British, and I seem to remember someone developing the ability to read minds, and maybe someone else developing telekinesis…not sure…sorry for the rambling, but if anyone could help me out, it would be you good folks!
Traumafession:: Chanter on Sesame Street's Stranger On The Field
Hi again Kindertrauma,
It's been a while since I've sent in a Traumafession, so I figure it's time for another episode of 'Bizarre Snippets That Terrified Tiny Chanter'. Not surprisingly, this one's a Sesame Street short, specifically Stranger On The Field.
Watching this particular clip now, it's painfully clear it was made in the '80's – oh wow, the music! I knew nothing of songs dating themselves when I was a tiny, though. All I knew was that the keys this particular song was played in creeped me out, and that effect hasn't diminished much to this day. Holy cow is it ever ominous! I didn't have the vocabulary to explain it then, but that's precisely the feeling it evokes. That's not the worst of it, though the foreboding reaction is plenty bad on its own.
I can't find the bit that truly terrified me anywhere, and I've tried combing cyberspace for it. No luck. There must be two versions of this sketch out there. I would swear to you that in one, after one boy says 'give him a chance, let's see what he can do', the same, or at least a similar, voice to the one expositing about the stranger being given a look of dooooooom (gah, that's creepy too!) speaks over near-silence. He's calling the game, but in the tones of Dr. Claw of Inspector Gadget infamy. The sound of that monsterish voice snarling 'strike one, strike two'… tiny Chanter was suitably frightened to the soles of her slip-on shoes, I can assure you.
At least the last few lines redeem the song a bit, but there's the eerie key to factor in yet. This always unsettled me as a little girl, and it hasn't stopped doing so to this day. I may have the vocabulary to explain why now, but the fact remains–brrrrrr!
Does anyone else remember the extended sketch, or did I concoct it somehow? Maybe this short really did rattle tiny me so badly that my brain distorted it to worst effect. I don't think so, though.
Sunday Viewing:: Razorback (1984)
Today is so beautiful that it deserves a beautiful movie. How about the criminally underrated heaping pile of gorgeousness known as RAZORBACK? This wonderful slab of cinema cake is directed by RUSSELL MULCAHY which means it looks like a DURAN DURAN video except instead of SIMON LeBON and NICK RHODES you get GREGORY HARRISON and a giant killer pig! Read my full blown review HERE and watch the incredibleness unfold below! Your eyes and ears (what an excellent score!) will thank you!
Traumafession:: Mackenzie B. on Millennium's Ceiling Clown
Hello,
I follow Kindertrauma on a daily basis, this is however the first time I've turned to its majesty for answers.
There was a show in the 90s that Chris Carter created called Millennium that starred Lance Henriksen. Great show, great countdown to doomsday mystery sort of thing. There was one episode in particular that frightened me very much. The scene is of a kid's birthday party, somewhere there is a clown involved. A little girl, probably the birthday girl wanders into the house to look for said clown. She enters the living room and in the far corner the clown is on the ceiling with his makeup altered, either seated or protruding from the wall. I remember him tapping his gloved hands on the ceiling and smiling a diabolical smile. The little girl screams and the show begins.
Does anyone recall this frightening scene? Episode? Online anywhere? Thanks, I'd really like to see this image and know I didn't dream it. I'm not even that frightened of clowns and it stuck with me. Thanks.
UNK SEZ: Here is the clown you are looking for Mackenzie! Sorry it's not a better picture but that guy appears in the first season of MILLENNIUM and I only own seasons 2 and 3 so I couldn't grab a shot myself. The episode in question is entitled "Dead Letters" and it was written by JAMES WONG and GLEN MORGAN. Sadly, I can't find a clip of it anywhere. Oh well, maybe it's better that way! Thanks for reminding us of this exceptional show!
Traumafession:: Senski on Creepy # 24's Shattered Wristwatch
When I look back on the many and varied Traumafessions I have made lo these past few years, I notice two things: 1) I must have been a weird little kid; 2) they are not of your standard issue ghost/monster/haunted house variety. They're often caused by something fairly innocuous, or more accurately, the effect my mind superimposes over something harmless. (I'm reminded of how Stephen King was massively creeped out as a child by mis-hearing the movie line "It feels like living tissue!" as "It feels like tissue paper!") Although this one sure has its spooky roots, my brain ran with something else altogether. But first, some background…
Comic books were my gateway drug, and although I read more than my share of funny animal books, it was the horror titles of the late 1960s that were closest to my heart. Every Wednesday afternoon my dad would drive me over to Dean's Red Owl, the supermarket across the river, that I could pore over the new releases as they sat in a shopping cart, waiting to be placed upon the stand, but only after I got first dibs. The market's owner, Dean Farrier, was a kindly guy who wanted to make his little customer happy, even going as far as to contact his distributors to secure back issues that I may have missed – and in those days, that was not an easy feat. Thank you, Mr. Farrier!
The Red Owl also carried magazines, but since those were a bit more expensive, I would gaze at them lovingly and didn't ask my parents for the additional money until a few years later. Famous Monsters of Filmland was always in stock, and occasionally the store would get the Warren comic mags as well – Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella – but it was not on a consistent basis, and old issues would remain on the rack for months beyond their sale date, waiting for a haphazardly shipped follow-up. Now, if you know the Warren magazines of this time, they were in a notoriously bad stretch (the Frank Frazetta glory days were behind them), scraping by on a mixture of reprints and markedly substandard material.
Which brings us to Creepy #24, the December 1968 issue. The cover art is attributed to Gutenberg Montiero, who did but a few pieces for the company, and shares some elements with the uncredited cover to the Berkley paperback anthology Masters of Horror – also from 1968, but I'm unsure which came first. But Creepy's juxtaposition of two images, presumably in two difference places, was a common design for horror comics of the period; we have a man, profoundly distressed, seemingly driven mad by this resurrecting corpse.
What got to me? The wristwatch.
Why was this guy wearing a shattered wristwatch? What did it have to do with the hand coming out of a grave? And why was he sweating like a farm animal in August? And then I thought – what if he put it on, broken? What if he was so insane as to not care that his timepiece was incapable of telling time? My mind was blown, and the issue seemed to remain on the stand for months thereafter, freaking me out too much to ever purchase it, but having ample time to make its impression.
I still think there is a fantastic story to be told in the intersection of these two images; maybe a Kinderpal shall be inspired!
Traumafession:: Marina M. on a Headless Russian Music Video
It's a song by the Russian band called "Agatha Christie" from the 1990s. First there's nothing creepy neither in the video nor in lyrics (it's about a sailor who gets womens' attention and free drinks wherever he goes), but on 1:10 is that strange telephone call and a female voice saying "nobody loves you, your lover is dead".
Then it's 1:48 and that face. The woman then receives a message which suggests that her loved was actually killed.
2:28 – "Please stop. I know him. I gave him these boots… But where's the head?" – "Do you really want to know?"
As far as I know, the video was banned on some Russian tv channels because of its "negative impact on the viewers", but I saw it frequently on music channels and it scared me shitless every time. Somehow I couldn't switch it, maybe trying to convince myself that it wasn't that horrible – still, I always got the impression that a headless body wasn't the most creepy part of it. There's also a 2004 sequel. It doesn't really explain the events shown in the first video, but at least the HEAD is shown.