We've always been waiting for you… to spot the 10 differences in these 2 posters!
Name That Trauma :: Reader Gus on a Halloween Time Trip
Hi! I have very, very vague memories of this one movie me and my brothers got from the library once. It didn't necessarily scare me, but I really want to know what it was called, because the plot was pretty interesting.
It centered around a few friends trick-or-treating on Halloween night. I think they were all dressed up as standard, classic monsters,for example one was a witch (the only one I remember), and this creepy mythical old guy comes and takes them through time(?) to show them the history of the monsters they're dressed up as. I know that he takes them to see the Salem witch trials. I also remember weird details like the girl dressed as a witch tapes a broom to her bike as part of her costume in the beginning of the movie. Part of me is wondering if I just imagined it?
PLEASE HELP
UNK SEZ: Thanks Gus! That must be an adaptation of RAY BRADBURY's THE HALLOWEEN TREE! The presence of the witch makes me think it has to be the 1993 animated version! Check out the video below, I spy that broom on a bike you mentioned, and check out an earlier traumafession HERE!
Summer Girl (1983)
For the last five or six years, on a roughly monthly basis, I've been checking YouTube for the appearance of the elusive 1983 TV movie SUMMER GIRL. My sad, faithful diligence has finally paid off! To the best of my memory, I haven't laid eyes on this chestnut since the original night it aired. Not that my powers of recall can be trusted. My strongest recollection of SUMMER GIRL has always been of its startling final image, a dark silhouette standing on a cliff in some kind of ominous victorious pose. It stayed sharp in my mind even while the rest of the flick blurred…
…only I totally got that wrong. That scene happens in the middle of the movie with plenty of stuff still waiting to happen. It's still awesome though! It's not necessary to go into much detail about SUMMER GIRL's plot. You are familiar with this tale in one form or another. It's the same as THE BABYSITTER (1980) which came before it, and the same as any number of HAND THAT ROCKED THE CRADLE-molded films that came after it too. Take a happy family with an insecure wife (in this case our old pal KIM DARBY) and a husband with a roving eye (MEGAFORCE-of nature BARRY BOSTWICK) and then add a seemingly helpful innocent who is in actuality a cunning sociopath and stir. What makes this routine outing momentous is that the one and only DIANE FRANKLIN plays the requisite interloping usurper.
If MOLLY RINGWALD is the peachy pastel face of the eighties we choose to remember, DIANE FRANKLIN is like the darker, deeper, more complicated truth hiding behind that candy coated mask. Not to take anything away from the RINGWALD but while she was constructing happy endings reliant on the acceptance of others (see the classic JOHN HUGHES triptych), FRANKLIN was forging a fickle opportunist heartbreaker (THE LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN), a tragic incestuous victim of demonic sororicide (THE AMITYVILLE HORROR 2: THE POSSESSION), a fish out of water French exchange student in a suicide comedy (BETTER OFF DEAD) and a vapid video vixen who unsuccessfully battles a mutant from space (TERRORVISION). In her made for television efforts she has the rare distinction of playing both the honorable final girl (DEADLY LESSONS) and the evil menace that must be destroyed (SUMMER GIRL).
I can't say SUMMER GIRL's "Cinni" is my favorite FRANKLIN creation (that honor belongs to AMITYVILLE's Patricia Montelli) but the mesmeric psycho with delusions of grandeur surely adds gravitas to FRANKLIN's oeuvre and mystique. As it turns out, I'm not all that happy with my newfound knowledge that Cinni is ultimately foiled by party-pooping nonbelievers so I have decided to revert back to my false recollection and continue to see her as that dark goddess on a cliff looking down at us mere mortals triumphantly.
TRAUMAFESSION: Crankenstein of Theater of Guts on The Frozen Dead
I've been haunted by the memory of a telepathic, wide-eyed, blue decapitated head with wires protruding out of its skull and frighteningly strong arms dangling from a wall that are controlled by brainwaves. I always wondered if this was a dream, or a traumatic memory that I invented. Now I know that it was this film I'm about to discuss and not THE BRAIN THAT WOULD'NT DIE. That film is a trashy classic in its own right, but I must admit, I was mildly disappointed when I first saw it because as demented as it was, I needed some closure in the form of a whispering blue head that controlled people's will and minds.
Dana Andrews plays Dr. Norberg, a Ronald Reagan or Walt Disney-esque Nazi with an experimental basement lab (similar to the one Grandpa Munster had). It's filled with Maytag-like appliances and giant red and green buttons. He lives in a mansion with a butler that looks like a German Michael Berryman. Dr. Norberg is hiding frozen Nazis in his basement and has a failed reputation in cryogenics. His mannerisms and personality have all the charm of a honey-baked ham. The ghoulish prison like lab is filled with cripples and brain surgery failures. Two hippie girls show up outside, one of them is Norberg's niece Jean and the other will soon be decapitated. His lunkhead, Igor-type assistant must find a brain and the search is on, this will somehow help the Dr. reanimate the Third Reich (not exactly sure how). When Jean's friend Elsa (Kathleen Beck) is strangled by a loose dimwit in the house, the doctor, a supposed Nazi, actually objects to murder! Did he forget he's a former Nazi? Later on he tells his murdering assistant that things in this age are different and Nazis only killed for political reasons!
The eerie blue makeup of the woman's head in the box is a cross between Jambi from PEE WEE'S PLAYHOUSE and Margaret Hamilton. Later on, a burn victim named Mrs. Smith shows up in one of the oddest moments, in an already unhinged ‘60s film, she puts on a leatherface like false face and answers the door. This strange moment is confusing to me and I'm not sure where it ties into the story. As a kid, the blue face gave me the heebie jeebies, especially when she whispers incoherently (I'll leave the final cryptic words up to the ears of the viewer). THE FROZEN DEAD is one of those bizarre British horror films in league with CIRCUS OF HORRORS, but not as heavy and sadistic as PEEPING TOM. It's a fun B-movie that was worth revisiting in order to get some confirmation that it all wasn't some fever childhood nightmare.
UNK SEZ: Make sure you Visit Crankenstein regularly at THEATER OF GUTS!
Name That Trauma:: Reece & DLD on a Possessed Cook serving Up Body Parts
Early nineties, a chef in a small town, he owns a bakery/deli. He gets a package that has a giant statue or totem inside. It possesses the cook and he kills people and serves them. At the end of the movie there is a huge party that he caters and serves the body parts.
Does this sound familiar to you? If so, please let us know what the movie is called?
Sunday Streaming:: Citadel (2012)
CIARON FOY's CITADEL (2012) is a movie about fear, particularly debilitating fear. ANEURIN BARNARD plays Tommy, a man who witnesses a violent and ultimately fatal attack upon his pregnant wife by hooded youths. The unborn baby survives but Tommy's perception of the world does not. Everywhere he looks he sees his wife's attackers and they appear to be multiplying and taking on hideous unnatural forms. He becomes convinced that the suddenly BROOD-esque troll squad want to snatch his baby and he's terrified that he'll fail again at protecting his own. Sympathetic nurse Marie (WUNMI MOSAKU) tries her best to pull the movie back into the realm of reality (where Tommy's suspicions can be attributed to post traumatic stress) but writer/director FOY shoos her away with a lead pipe and we're left trapped in the world built by Tommy's psychosis where the only way out (sorry, shotguns, chainsaws and quippy one-liners) is facing his fear head on.
Now this a horror movie. As frustrating as it may be to some viewers, here is a film that is not afraid to delve into feelings of powerlessness and doesn't let you off the hook with fantasy heroics. It plays out like a nightmare, the kind where you want to move your legs but can't, the kind where you need to protect something other than yourself and fail, the kind where things don't always go your way and your best option could be to simply hide and hope you're not seen. We're not traveling the pandering pay-off strewn path of mainstream cinema, we're being lead by the nose through the trenches of mental distress and raging paranoia where frankly, you're anxiety's bitch. One of the reasons FOY isn't tied to selling the old "we can all lift trucks off of babies when we really need to" theory, may be because he himself was the victim of a brutal attack at the age of 18 and suffered the psychological effects first hand. CITADEL isn't the story of what happened, it's a purging of what it felt like happened and that's what makes it so solid and substantial. Through Tommy and HOY's eyes, buildings come across as giant tombstones, tunnels become crypts, doors resemble glass coffins and dread is omnipresent. I'd put this one up on the shelf next to JACOB'S LADDER and POLANSKI's REPULSION and I thank HOY for sharing something that horror fans too often cower from, the true fallout of fear.
Shadows of the Mind (1980)
Hey, I just figured out that I can watch YouTube videos on my big TV thanks to my friendly best buddy PS3! This opens up so many wonderful opportunities for yours truly! Lately, due to events completely out of my control, I have caught some pretty decent movies. Enough is enough. I need something terrible! Luckily, every request my mind ever makes is always promptly fulfilled by the universe! That is how SHADOWS OF THE MIND (1980) waltzed into my life! This movie nearly knocked CATHY'S CURSE off its perch as my number one most-beloved, maddening atrocity! Of course SHADOWS has no evil doll in it so there was never any real threat of that happening but still, that previously unthinkable thought did cross my mind! Will a normal human be able to watch this movie for five minutes without shutting it off? Who knows and who cares! I wish I knew how to properly describe this awkward oddity. It's sort of like being stuck on a bus for hours sitting next to a rambling nutcase and it's sort of like if ANDREA MARTIN starred in a movie based on the comic strip ZIGGY except somebody gets stabbed in the eye with a corkscrew. This is one of those movies that is often hilarious in its ineptness and yet is so persistently peculiar that it ends up being creepier than you'd expect.
SHADOWS is the story of slack-jawed, sad sack Elise (MARION JOYCE) who is set free from the funny farm after spending the last 12 years learning to say goodbye to the trauma of witnessing her father's tragic boating death and hello to a seriously unhealthy attachment to her psychiatrist. With the best of intentions she moves back to her stately family home, only to be tormented by her snarky stepbrother and stalked by a shifty groundskeeper. Soon folks are being murdered and we're lead to wonder if Elise is being framed or if she's lost her marbles again. It's kind of like PSYCHO 2 without the burden of quality. The most fascinating thing here is the fact that the screenplay was written by lead actress JOYCE. This adds a weirdly personal, almost confessional vibe and it compounds the discomfort when other characters must duly remark how vibrant and beautiful the (sorry) borderline hunchback Elise is. Director ROGER WATKINS (who is also responsible for the more notorious THE LAST HOUSE ON DEAD STREET) has a way of making 80 minutes seem like 180 but the film's campy, parlor room hysterics and through the roof nutso payoff are easily worth the sluggish haul, at least, to me. Make no mistake this movie is not good in the traditional sense but I loved it in ways I could never love a good movie. It certainly didn't successfully convince me of everything it set out to but in the case of its depiction of mental illness I stand absolutely sold.
Name That Trauma :: Reader Jordan on a Pumpkin Covered Book
I absolutely love KINDERTRAUMA! Not only is it intelligent, a feast for the eyes and a nostalgic's dream – it is also oodles of fun! Your Sunday Streaming and review archives always turn me on to new flicks that I love! I've never followed one of your recommendations and been disappointed – thank you for that!
I'm hoping there is something else I can be thanking you for – helping me track down a trauma! I've noticed that you've helped some people locate books that left impressions on them in the past and perhaps you could do the same for me? I don't really remember what the tale I'm looking for was about, except for it involving a creepy older neighbor man who lives alone and who carves a lot of pumpkins and the story's heroine becomes convinced is the serial killer terrorizing her town (although in the end, I believe, he turned out to be quite the opposite and saved her life from the actual murderer).
It has been years and the details of the book are a little hazy so some of that may be off. But it was the book's cover that really freaked me out. This would have been in the early '90s and the artist did a bang up job for sure. It featured a dark haired girl glimpsed through a window (I think a bedroom window, she may have been peering into it) with a look of shock on her face – maybe because of what she is seeing in the bedroom or maybe because on the porch surrounding her are tons of spooky, glowing pumpkins. This one was probably meant for pre-teens and middleschoolers.
I'm still not sure why it freaked me out so much, as I love all things Halloween – perhaps some of the pumpkins had sinister faces – but I know that it gave me nightmares and I was terrified after waking from them that I'd look at my bedroom window and see an evil glowing Jack o' Lantern or a diabolical hairy handed killer looking right back at me!
Thanks for taking the time to read this, and for any help you can provide! I certainly do appreciate it!
— Jordan
Name That Trauma :: Reader Hugh on an Disembodied, Motivational Mouth
Hi,
I have faith that, if anyone can answer this question for me, it would be someone from your website:
There is a TV movie I recall from my childhood that I always found to be a bit eerie. It would have to be from either the '70s or '80s and was something along the lines of an "After School Special," but I'm pretty sure it was not a part of that actual series. All I remember is that it featured a school aged kid and there was a giant, pretty crudely animated, disembodied mouth that spoke to him and was basically encouraging him to believe in himself and all that stuff. The movie ends with the young protagonist catching the winning fly ball in a baseball game. Does this ring a bell for anyone?
Thanks for any info!
