kindertrauma

Name That Trauma:: Reader Andrew D. on a Non-Gigantic Daimajin

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Hello again! I have been trying to think of the name of this film for quite some time (years), but I just never can. It was a late 80's or early 90's horror film involving a group of teenagers getting lost in an evil dojo or something similar. Maybe there was a part involving an asian restaurant. My longing to find out which movie this is was sparked today by seeing something referring to DAIMAJIN. Even though those movies were from the 60's, there is a particular scene in the film I am trying to remember that involves a statue that is slightly larger than a normal person that resembles a Daimajin (except it is not gigantic) coming to life and grabbing a member of the group as they are walking around the creepy dojo (or whatever it is) and pulling them off into the shadows. That is all I really remember, but the movie totally scared me when I was younger! I was wondering if you or anyone else can help me find this film or experienced the film when they were younger. Thanks so much!

Name That Trauma:: Reader Allison B. on a Brain-Flavored Ice Cream Eating Elevator Ghost

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Hi Kindertrauma!

I'm looking for something that would have been on TV sometime between 1990 and probably 1998, although I'm not sure if it was originally a theatrical release or (more likely) a made-for-TV feature (I do know that it was a longer format than the 30-minute Are You Afraid of the Dark? series, for instance)… Anyhow, a girl moves into an old house or hotel with family members and gets to know a boy who hangs around. He seems to always be eating strawberry ice cream in a fancy-pants sort of dish with a long spoon. One of the big reveals is near the end of the film, when the boy turns out to have died there many decades before. He was a rich little brat who lived alone in a hotel room, and one day he fell down the elevator shaft and dashed his brains out at the bottom. As I recall, it turns out it was always vanilla ice cream, but when they found him his brains and blood had mixed with the ice cream to make it all pink and lumpy. Et voila: strawberry ice cream, which I've never been able to eat since.

I get the impression there were other ghosts that had seemed like guests, but the boy always stuck out because of that corny but effective ice cream gimmick. I've looked at Disney's Tower of Terror (1997), and while it looks like a similar premise I really can't find a rich boy with brain-flavored ice cream in the skimming I've done so far. Any ideas?

Best,

Allison B.

The Conjuring (2013)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

ALAN MOORE once said " Art is, like magic, the science of manipulating symbols, words or images to achieve changes in consciousness." I couldn't agree more and have I got a spell for you. THE CONJURING is a scary, endearingly romanticized, elaboration of a some-say ‘true" haunting. I' m not going to get wrapped up in the authenticity of the story because any tale, true or not, that inspires a movie as swell as this is all right by me. If things are grandly exaggerated, that's fine. That's what urban legends are fueled by, that's what tall tales stand up on and that's what fills every history book in every elementary school in America. Hyperbole is what storytelling is all about and we're all guilty of tweaking the truth to make it shine a little brighter. If we can force ourselves to believe that Thanksgiving isn't a shameful travesty then surely we can humor a harmless ghost story every once in a while too. Wow. Even in the heart of summer I hate on Thanksgiving!

JAMES WAN is a wonderful director. There I said it! I said the director of SAW is wonderful! He beat me down folks! I tried to resist but it's over. INSIDIOUS was a left hook and THE CONJURING is a right hook and then some. I give up already! It's not a fair fight when he has PATRICK WILSON on his side and I just have bitter, misplaced feelings of exclusion on mine. Anyway, our tale is about a nice family (The Perrons) who moves into a haunted-looking house and discover that it is indeed infested with invisible forces that yank them out of bed and according to at least one source, smell like farts. Who ya gonna call? Why notorious married supernatural specialists ED & LORRAINE WARREN (WILSON & VERA FARMIGA) of course! Now, I know there are some people who are not fans of the real life Warrens (Ed has passed away) and think of them as cons. I never met them so I can't say. I just know they were really nice to the Smurl family in that excellent TV movie that scared the crap out me called THE HAUNTED (1991) so I'm going by that. Plus if WAN was of the mind to aggrandize the couple ,he sure casted well. On a side note, JAMES WAN, can you cover the Smurl haunting in the sequel pretty please? And can you release the movie on the same day as SMURFS 3 so that Box office Mojo is forced to write the headline SMURLS SMASH SMURFS!? Do it!

THE CONJURING is getting enthusiastic reviews, which is nice as most horror movies are pummeled for simply existing. I notice though that many critics feel the need to temper their kudos by saying it's well done but a "typical" haunted house tale. Personally, I think it has a lot of merit outside of just being a well-oiled scare dispenser. The frights aren't random jolts, they're tethered to something solid and concrete. They're not simply about being in dangerous situations with the unknowable they uniformly concern the worst fear of all, that harm might come to someone you care about and worse still, it may be your fault. Ed fears that Lorraine looses part of herself each time they involve themselves in such things, Lorraine frets that their daughter Judy is swinging between being neglected and endangered. The Father of the haunted family (RON LIVINGSTON) is anguished over putting his family in peril and the mother (LILI TAYLOR at her best) ends up personifying everybody's worst fears by melding with a spirit who has killed her own offspring and has supernaturally strong-armed others to unthinkingly do the same.

I can totally relate. Let me tell you, for full horror pleasure it's all about the empathy. People who don't have it are missing a world of flavor! Sorry, I'm going to talk about myself again. But isn't that the nice thing about blogs? You get that personal touch. Do you know what you get from magazines? Paper cuts! So as I was saying, we too recently moved into a haunted-looking house. When we got here I realized that the previous owners took all the screens from the windows. This freaked me out because we have five cats and I didn't want them running away. They were all scared out of their minds and oh, God, what have I done to them? I started imaging the worst. The cats slipping between doors, getting hit by cars, freezing in the streets, lost. It got worse, I'd be hammering a nail and think, what if I dropped the hammer and it landed on a cat's head? It got ridiculous. What if one crawled into the dryer? It got nuts. What if the cat choked on a discarded pistachio shell? My dreams were filled with drowning cats; cats on fire, cats crushed under poorly installed air conditioners. It was exhausting and I could not make it stop. The resolution of THE CONJURING that involves something as simple as recalling a moment of pure connection with those you care about resonated with me. Maybe focusing on that thought alone IS enough to expel the witch in my head.

Oh, I get it! I'm mentally ill! You know how folks with screws loose think the T.V. is talking to them? They see signs and coincidences everywhere and they get messages, lots and lots of messages? Well, that's how I interact with movies. It's been that way ever since I was a kid, the movies, especially the good ones, they tell me things! This one really went out of its way to whisper in my ear. The new house, the five kids, my favorite episode of THE BRADY BUNCH playing on the T.V., a ghost with the same name as my cat, a clown music box (mine plays "Send in the Clowns"), a porcelain lamb, a rooster painting, an embroidered owl, landscape T.V. trays folded against the wall- how is this not my home?

I found this movie frightening enough (WAN is gifted at sneaky distraction and leaving enough blank canvas for the viewer to paint themselves) but that really wasn't the most important thing for me. For as much as THE CONJURING embellishes the dark it is depicting, it puts forth equal effort accentuating the light. Maybe that won't please those who follow horror as an endurance sport but who cares about tourists? As corny as it may be, I love that this movie has a strong conscience. Remarkably it doesn't stop at giving you distinct characters; it makes a point of concerning itself with the relationships between those characters. (Seriously, the sparkage between WILSON and FARMIGA is so dynamic somebody oughta shove them in a THE THIN MAN remake.) In real life, things did not end on such happy, tied in a bow terms. The Warrens were asked to leave the case and the house remained (and is said to still be) haunted. That's the "true" story and who the hell needs it? I like this much better! Reality, take a lesson from fiction, ya lazy bore! I've never been one for happy endings in horror flicks but this one suited me just fine. I say sequel time! Send in the Smurls! Don't bother…they're here!

Sunday Streaming:: Something Evil (1972)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

It's time again for Sunday Streaming! This past weekend has put me in the mood for SOMETHING EVIL! This made for television movie from 1972 stars our dear departed friends SANDY DENNIS and DARREN McGAVIN and features JOHNNY WHITAKER of A TALKING CAT? fame! It was directed by that guy who did DUEL! You can read more about it in THIS post from 2007 but maybe you shouldn't because look how I used to write in big giant mounds of indecipherable goobledegook that today, even I can't decipher! What the hell?! Best to just to enjoy the fine movie below!

Name That Trauma:: Reader Dee Emm Elms on a One Word Demon Destiny

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Here's hoping you can assist me with a Kindertrauma by proxy –

A friend of mine tells me of a movie she saw when she was younger, which would place it around mid-80s or perhaps a little later.

Details are vague, but here's what she knows:

There's a girl who keeps having visions of a demon surrounded by fire. She goes somewhere – an island? a cave? – because it's her "destiny" to confront this demon.

My friend thinks that the title is one of those totally generic 80s one-word horror movie names like DESTRUCTIONATOR or KILLMONSTRINATOR or DEVILATOR or something to that effect.

Hope you all can help!

The Conjuring Funhouse!

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Can you conjure up the 10 differences in these two THE CONJURING posters?

Oh yes! Today is the day! THE CONJURING is THE movie I've been dying to see! I know it's not very professional (haha!) or kosher to judge up a movie before you've even seen it but let me tell you, a movie that has VERA frickin' FARMIGA and PATRICK hells yeah WILSON portraying ghost hunters ED & LORRAINE WARREN would have to be pretty God awful for me not to love it like a hurricane. By existing alone, this movie has already won half of my heart. If the trailer is any indication, what with its nightmarish take on THE CLAPPER, the other half of my heart will soon follow. Wow, they even got LILI TAYLOR on board! And it's from the director of INSIDIOUS (and some other stuff!) and there is apparently a creepy doll in it! What else could you ask for? This is true leaving your house and paying too much for a ticket material! Sold.

And man, I really miss VERA! Even though it may have veered in weird directions that it often abandoned, I loved BATES HOTEL to the umpteenth degree based mostly on FARMIGA alone. In fact, it kinda ruined other shows for me. I couldn't even finish HANNIBAL due to its fussy, overbearing nihilism and when I tried to jump back into TRUE BLOOD , it seemed like the line between it and TWILIGHT was less distinct than I remembered. (Although I have to say BATES MOTEL certainly didn't ruin ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK for me, that show is goooood and I'm still all about AMERICAN HORROR STORY.) Am I setting myself up for disappointment? Nah! My trusty spectre detecter is telling me this one's most likely a safe bet!

Name That Trauma:: Alex G. H. on a Girl Trapped in a Closet…with Spiders!

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Hi!

Love your site!

My friend has a traumafession and I told her you could help her out. The details are spotty but here it goes…

Late '90s, early 2000s movie that her parents had rented….there was a little girl locked in a closet, a kidnapping situation. And then spiders got involved!

This is probably a tough one.

Thanks for everything, whether we can solve this or not.

UNK SEZ: This a tough one and I have a wild, wild guess. Could it be possible that the spider mentioned was not in the closet but in the film's title? I'm imagining a kid watching ALONG CAME A SPIDER (2001) which involves a kidnapped girl, who at some point, I believe, is kept in a closet and thinking that at any moment surely a spider was going to make an appearance. I know it's a reach but you never know. Of course, there is probably a movie out there with a little girl in a closet with an actual spider in it too! Do any of our fine readers know of such a movie? Please come into our parlor and let us know!

Traumafession:: Sofia D. on Oakie Doke

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Hi, I'm 14 so I don't know if I really count with the whole 'ruined childhood' thing, but I do have a show that continues to scare the crap out of me. When I was around 3, and my brother was 5, we used to watch a kids show with our mum called OAKIE DOKE. It was about a friendly tree guy who helped his forest friends with their problems. But he still managed to be creepy as hell, despite the innocent pretext. He talked to himself, and had this creepy smile that never changed, even when he was talking, so it looked like he'd snapped years ago and was close to brutally murdering all the forest critters. All the characters looked like dolls with painted features. This probably isn't really the sort of thing you look for, but I wanted to submit it. Thanks!

UNK SEZ: Au contraire, Sofia D! This is exactly the sort of thing we're looking for! There is something clearly not right about this Oakie Doke fellow. He looks like he might be related to my childhood nemesis the dreaded MISS HICKORY!

Name That Trauma:: Reader Armando P. on Junk Yard Killer Robots & an Infected Thumb

Posted on By unkle lancifer

I recently heard about your site through one of Geeknation's podcasts and was hoping to submit, for your approval, a "Name That Trauma."

The trauma– that I can't get out of my head after 20 something years– is a film where a group of people are held up in a junkyard (?), where the survivors are trying to figure out who is human and who is a killer robot, I think. Anyway, my trauma is a scene in the film where each survivor cuts their finger to prove their humanity. One of the survivors cuts his thumb too deep and it gets infected. That scene traumatized me just because the dirty and sweaty feel of it all. If you can help me find out the name of the film I will be eternally grateful. Kindertrauma, you're my only hope.

UNK SEZ: I sadly do NOT know the correct answer for this one! I was hoping it might be MUTANT HUNT (1987) if only to justify my posting a video from MUTANT HUNT. Oh well, we can still watch a scene from MUTANT HUNT as we try to identify the correct answer can't we? Yes, we can! MUTANT HUNT used to be on Netflix Streaming but then it ran away! Come back, little Sheba!

Traumafessions :: Reader GCG on They Made Me a Criminal (1939)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

I owe my love for old film to the public domain. When I was a wee lad, our local PBS affiliate could easily afford to broadcast old movies once a week, as long as they had been overlooked decades earlier for copyright protection by the studios that produced them. The usual suspects would appear over the early years of my obsession: His Girl Friday, Scarlet Street, Sabotage, The Red House, Mr. Robinson Crusoe, and so forth. But one of the first old movies I saw on PBS was They Made Me a Criminal, a 1939 Busby Berkeley boxing picture starring John Garfield and the Dead End Kids.

There was one scene in particular that is the subject of today's Traumafession. Garfield and four of the kids drive to a remote irrigation water tower in the middle of farmland and the wooden tower is full of cool, clean water, and they all decide to climb the exterior ladder and go for an illicit swim. A few minutes later, a farmer opens the valve to the tank, sending water gushing toward the crop furrows. Caught up in their fun, the swimmers don't realize that the water level is dropping until it becomes impossible to reach the top edge of the tower. One of the kids is a weak swimmer who is already struggling to stay afloat. Garfield tells them not to worry -— the water will drop down far enough that they will be able to touch bottom. But then the same farmer shuts the valve. Now the top edge is too high and the bottom too deep to touch. They are becoming exhausted, particularly the one boy who can't swim very well. It was all a horrible accident, but I can imagine a less imaginative Jigsaw devising this terrifyingly simple trap as a sort of dry run for his future mayhem.

I was riveted and aghast. Not least because I have never been a great swimmer and could easily sympathize with the boy who struggled in the water. From the very beginning, his friends mocked him for being reluctant to get in and then, once he was in, for thrashing around in a pathetic dog paddle. Well into their predicament, before the boy begins to sink from exhaustion, his friends even get mad at him briefly for being forced to support him while they try to figure a way out. They're tired, too, and the last thing they need is a weight around their necks. The shame layered upon the terror of the situation was too much for me. Thanks to the public domain — again — there are a kajillion YouTube channels that have this film available to watch. The scene in particular is about 40 minutes into the movie, for those who would like to watch it…