Name That Trauma:: Evan N. on a Sinister Snow Globe
There was a Hewlett Packard printer commercial that I saw at Christmastime when I was three or four if I recall, where an old man tries to cheer a baby up by shoving dolls and pictures in his face. I don't remember it fully, but I really, really hated it.
Another strange thing happened to me around Christmastime when I was three of four. I remember walking downstairs in the middle of the night and seeing an advertisement on the TV, which my dad was watching. In the ad, It showed a snow globe full of figures of happy children standing next to a snowman holding an umbrella. As I recall, the kids then flipped over into the snow, letting out a loud "Oof!", and the snowman's umbrella popped open. It then panned to show a creepy old man staring into the snow globe and smiling.
Perhaps I may never see these ads again, but they still reside in my brain. If anyone has pictures or videos, please put them up.
Name That Trauma:: Reader Pixel Pixie on a Window Smashing Vampire, Salty Zombies and a Teen Witch
Since I have discovered this site last week, I've become completely addicted! Thanks for bringing up so many memories of my childhood and alerting me to movies I should have already seen.
But moving on, I have three traumas to submit. I'm afraid I don't have a lot on any of them, but you and your readers have mad skillz, and answering any of these would be wonderful. Presenting them in the order in which they occurred:
1) Mid-to-late 80s: a trailer for a vampire movie that aired repeatedly on TV. The only thing I remember is what traumatized me: a female vampire jumps through a window (perhaps in slo-mo), completely unscathed by the flying shards of glass around her. I think she was wearing a nightdown-ish dress in a pastel color, and might have been non-Caucasian. I have watched a bunch of trailers from that era and have yet to come across it.
2) Late-80s: I checked out a book from the elementary school library. It was an anthology of folklore horror stories from around the world. It was illustrated, but definitely wasn't any of the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books. The story that traumatized me took place somewhere in Asia (sorry, don't remember which country specifically). There was a female ghost with long fingernails or claws and she was chasing a male. He stood in front of a tree and she charged at him. He lunged at the last second to get away. Her claws were embedded in the tree and he took off. Another story took place in Italy or France and involved a guy murdering someone (maybe his wife?) and making her into sausages, which he sold. This didn't bother me at all; apparently cannibalism doesn't traumatize me, but ghosts do. Those two stories were definitely in the anthology, but another jostles my memory that may or may not have been included. It had voodoo zombies that were controlled by salt or sugar (or maybe both?). One had been given whichever substance makes them work and, in a golem-like twist, works mindlessly on stuff around the farm.
The book wasn't new when I read it and might have been as old as the 60s.
3) Early 90s: Another book I read, this one checked out from the public library. I think it might have been intended for teenagers, or even adults, because I never saw it in the children's section again (or maybe enough parents complained). This one featured a girl, perhaps in her early teens, who started dabbling in black magic. She needed baby fat for a spell and wanted to sacrifice her little brother. I think she might have had a sister as well. I think her father was somehow not in the picture, and that might have been the driving force behind getting into magic. I checked out the book in paperback, and I think the cover was purple and had a pentacle or some other sort of magical symbol on it. Whatever it was, my mother saw the cover and told me I wasn't allowed to read stuff like that. I had to return it to the library that day.
Many thanks to anyone who can help with any of these!
Traumafession:: Eshbaal of Horrible Horror on Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids
Greetings, Unk and Aunt. It has been a while since I last wrote to you with a Traumafession. But sometimes, it simply takes a while before you suddenly remember just how creepy something was, or that it existed at all.
When I was a child, there used to be a little show on TV called "Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids" – a very crudely animated children's horror anthology show. The concept was really quite simple: it was an anthology show, akin to Tales from the Crypt, with self-contained stories introduced by a host, in this case "Uncle Grizzly," a stop-motion (although the rest of the show was 2D animation), hunchbacked theatre owner who would show film reels detailing stories of bratty children getting their comeuppance for their bad behaviors – such as being liars, talking back, being lazy and what have you. Apparently, this show was adapted from a series of British children's books. Like I said, the animation was very crude, the art style rather childish, and every voice was essentially just the narrator doing bad impressions. By all accounts, this sounds like a fairly innocent little Aesop-filled show, right?
Wrong.
This show was completely batshit crazy, and I only just truly realized that a few weeks ago when I happened upon a few episodes of it on YouTube and gleefully went "Aaaw, I remember this!" and started to watch. While I did remember the show having some unnerving atmosphere surrounding it, I must have repressed the rest in some dark corner of my mind somehow, because I was in no way prepared for the carnage I was about to witness.
Either the British really hate children, or British children are considered insanely tough, because things would get just as grizzly and gruesome as the title promises. These children, while definitely bratty and annoying, would be punished in ways that go way beyond simply telling them off for being snot-nosed little bastards: they'd get killed in the most insane ways, such as the boy who refused to eat his dinner being ground into spaghetti by a shadowy "spaghetti monster", or the "Bunny Boy" who refused to eat his salad (opting to feed it to a bunny in the fields instead) and got run over by a combine harvester in the field and got sewed together with said bunny.
Did I mention said harvester scene features blood splatter and limbs flying at the screen? And these are just two out of a ton of examples. From being forever caught as a golden statue to being burned alive to eaten by trolls or to being pressed into cider, there was no gruesome death that the children in these episodes didn't suffer – and if they survived, they usually weren't much better off, with one particularly lazy girl turned into a giant worm because she refused to leave her sleeping bag during a camping trip.
Whatever went through the creators' heads, I do not know. But it definitely makes me want to eat my veggies, talk nicely to people and never go apple-picking – when I re-watched it in my mid-twenties.
-Bjarke "Eshbaal" Johansen of Horrible Horror.
Traumafession:: Reader Sergio on Os Amigos do Gaspar
Os Amigos do Gasper is a portuguese puppet show about… some city garden, I don't know. I hated it with all my guts, but I saw it anyway, because anything was better than staring at the walls, I guess.
At 3:20. the most traumatic character, the guard, always getting mad and yelling for every possible reason. Why is he on a kid's show?
PS: Thank you for your site.
Traumafession:: Dustin in Minnesota on Tom Sawyer (1938)
This one was an oldie even when I was growing up in the 1970s and 80s, but I found it terrifying – yet fascinating – nonetheless: The 1938 version of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", starring Tommy Kelly.
I found the movie entertaining, yet was terrifed of Victor Jory's "Injun Joe" character – from his throwing of the tomahawk during Tom's testimony in court, to his discovery of a lost Tom and Becky in the cave. I had nightmares of the scene Tom turning around to see Injun Joe standing there, watching them and grinning. Many a sleepless night was due to that one scene – yet I watched it every time they showed a matinee at our local theater or when it aired on TV.
I must have been somewhat masochistic when it came to fear, as I did the same thing with horror comic books.
Love the site, love "digging up" chilling memories.
Dustin in Minnesota
Sinister (2012)
Home movies are naturally creepy. There is something depressing about folks hamming it up while forever trapped in a grainy, bleached-out world that no longer exists. SINISTER opens with a super-8 flick that brings the medium's innate moroseness to grotesque heights, as it happens to feature a family with sacks on their heads being hung from a tree. Some sort of makeshift execution device has been crafted where, as the tree's branch is sawed off, the weight of the branch dropping raises the squirming family off the ground and to their final Kodak moment. It's a grisly way for a movie to introduce itself and an early indicator that SINISTER aims to live up to its name. What could be more disturbing than witnessing an entire family killed together? Later in the film we'll find out; witnessing an entire family killed together in front of their Chihuahua!
ETHAN HAWKE plays dishonorable dad Ellison Oswalt who moves his unsuspecting family into the house where the murders took place. We're clear on his motivation (Ellison was a once celebrated true crime writer who has fallen out of favor and is looking for his next inspiration) but his reasoning is foggy. The killer of the family was never caught and one child was never found so the house's heinous history is still an open wound. Who would bring their kids into a place like that? Can't Ellis' research be done anywhere considering it mostly consists of pinning string to a map and writing questions on Post-it notes? Ellison knows his family is bound to find out but he lies to them just the same and it's suggested this is not the first time he has put work ahead of them. Hey, I'm down with an unlikable protagonist, I'm just not sure I'm down with his wife being presented as a wet blanket nag when she has every reason to be pissed off. Moving sucks.
Ellison's theory that living in the crime scene might offer him insight pays off in spades when he finds a box full of snuff flicks in the attic made by the killer! What a break! Sure, this is clearly invaluable evidence to the murders of dozens of innocent people but by sharing it with the authorities, he's jeopardizing his book so he keeps it to himself. He's obsessed, not obsessed enough to watch all the movies in one sitting, which by the looks of it he could, but obsessed just the same. The more he watches the more his life crumbles and the more he has to deal with scorpions, snakes, invisible dancing children with circles under their eyes, stay-at-home actor VINCENT D'ONOFRIO and his daughter painting on walls other than those she has been given permission to paint on.
SINISTER contains brief moments that are sublimely scary. When we first catch a glimpse of what's breeding the horror, it's a vague, bone chilling image. But the more things come into focus the harder I found it to swallow (which is strange because my gullibility is of legend.) HAWKE is great but his earnestness tends to highlight the multitude of shortcuts and contrivances. (How convenient that an ancient deity just happens to resemble a modern metal-head's SAW-friendly wet dream.) The wrestling flavors of deadpan gritty thriller and broad horror fantasy don't so much clash as beg to be better stirred.
Can I get nit-picky? When Ellison's family moves into the house months after a notorious slaughter has taken place, I get that the tree remains in the back yard to inform us of where we are, but why the hell is the branch that was sawed down still hanging off of it? I've learned to let bigger issues than that pass in order to get my scares on but I'd be lying if I said that dead branch didn't get stuck in my craw. It drove me nuts. In fact, I still want to jump into the movie and drag it off myself. Maybe it's me. I have been on organizing tear lately but still…even if a family was not hanged on that tree, human behavior dictates that somebody would do something about that branch! It's dead! I should concentrate on the score. The score is cool.
If you are a fan of supernatural flicks this is worthwhile for the handful of times it hits the nail on the head but honestly I could never completely fall under its spell. For me it was like the devil laughing in my face but with spinach in his teeth.
Traumafession:: Daniel E. on The Hamburgler
The HAMBURGLER, damn it! The old Hamburgler! One of my crazy relatives got a Hamburgler figure when I was like 3 or 4 years old for some reason and it had a pull string to make it talk …. that shit got put in a hole in the woods. Really what were they thinking? Ronald was bad enough but for God's sake, the Hamburgler too?
YouTube Alert:: Reader Ozne on Journey To The Unkown
Hey Uncle Lancifer and Aunt John,
I stumbled on a rare find when cruising through YouTube today. Do you remember a British anthology fantasy/horror series that aired on ABC in the U.S. called "Journey to the Unknown"? Anyway, I found most if not all the episodes under "The 60's horror Realm" page. You'll have to scroll a bit to find the episodes. The quality is very good.
I thought the other members would like to watch them. I figured YouTube is free and some people may not have access to Netflix Streaming.
Enjoy!
UNK SEZ: Thanks for the great tip Ozne! I watched the first episode "The New People" this morning and thought it was excellent! It turns out it was written by CHARLES BEAUMONT the brilliant mind behind so many classic TWILIGHT ZONE episodes!
