Name That Trauma:: Ren in Texas on a Haunted Cowboy Boot
Hey there Folks,
Just stumbled across your great website and thought I would add in my two cents. There's a movie that's been floating around in my head since I was a little tyke…but I can't remember what the heck it is. It may even be a TV show.
All I remember is a room that is on fire (possibly) and a creepy red cowboy boot moving across the floor on it's own. I seem to remember it killed people or something stupid like that. I just can recall a lady in a room on fire, with a red boot passing by her, as if the boot has caused this mayhem. That might sound incredibly stupid, but it has been in my head for years. Think you guys could help me out?
-Ren
Dallas, Texas
Name That Trauma :: Reader Charles N. on a Mud Monster Cabin Attack
Hi folks,
I've been visiting your site for a couple years now and really enjoy it. I was hoping you guys could help me with the name of a movie.
It was a mid-to-late '70s movie with people in a cabin being attacked by a mud monster. During one point in the movie, the front door is opened and the monster is there. They shut the door on its arm and cut if off. It comes toward them and I think one of them throws it against the wall. Plans for "building" the monster are found.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
UNK SEZ: That's a good one Charles! You're thinking of another Kindertrauma favorite, the 1978 TV movie THE WORLD BEYOND, which also aired as simply THE MUD MONSTER! It featured a pre-POLTERGEIST JOBETH WILLIAMS and was a follow up to another TV flick called THE WORLD OF DARKNESS, both were produced in hopes that a series might follow. Oh, how I wish one did! Check it out below!
Traumafession:: Grayson K. on There's a Nightmare In My Closet
Hello again!
For a few years now I would on and off again recall a picture book that really scared me as a child. It was about a pink and purple spotted cartoon creature that was rather silly looking and it lived in a little boys closet. I must have been pretty young when I had this book, probably 5 or under, because I could barely remember any details about it… I do, however, strongly remember it scaring the shit out of me. Just like any thing else that frightened me around that age, it was really interesting to look at the book during the day when my parents were around, but as soon as it was bedtime and I was on my own I would sincerely regret that books publication.
Well, just today while cleaning my bathroom–out of nowhere, it hit me. The name of the book was "There's A Nightmare In My Closet." A nightmare indeed! A quick "Look Inside!" on Amazon.com reveals that this "nightmare" was no silly cartoon creature as I had remembered it. No, what we have here is a monstrous atrocity that could only be described as deformed Maurice Sendak character spawned from a bad acid trip. The purple and pink spots (normally fun and playful on a children's character) only added to the grotesqueness, as if it would not only devour you whole but possibly give you some sort of plague as well. The Edward Gorey style hatch-mark shading added to the ominousness of an otherwise playful boys bedroom turned demon lair. I could completely relate to those paranoid fear-crazed eyes of the young boy under the covers with his pop-gun at the ready… except I had no pop-gun. I was on my own.
PS: Please visit my website for a collection of creepy and strange things from all over! — AnarchistColoringBook.com
Grayson K.
Traumafession:: Eddie Quist on an elusive Monster Squad Music Video
Longtime reader Eddie Quist here. HUGE fan of the site. You guys did me a solid awhile back by identifying the movie-of-the-week FANTASIES for me, and I'm still grateful.
This isn't really so much a Traumafession as a cry for help–some way to confirm that I didn't dream this bizarro memory up. See, like many of your site's regular readers, I'm a massive fan of Fred Dekker's THE MONSTER SQUAD, and, also like many of them, I discovered it in not in theatres but on cable (You guys had HBO but up here in Canada, we had First Choice and The Star Channel. Same diff. But I digress).
Anyway, some time before I saw SQUAD in its entirety, I became aware of its impending release from a segment on Entertainment Tonight. Now, my memories of this are a bit fuzzy, but I would swear that, from what I remember of it, the ET camera crew visited Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, the Wolfman, and the gang while they were shooting a music video to promote the film. It likely would have been for Michael Sembello's awesome end-credits rap, but I don't know for sure. What I DO know is that no trace of any kind of MONSTER SQUAD music video seems to exist, outside of the fan-made variety. It's not on YouTube, it's not a special feature on the DVD or Blu-Ray…any evidence of its existence is as elusive as Abraham Van Helsing's diary
So here's the thing–did I imagine it? Did I remember that segment incorrectly? Does anyone other than me actually remember seeing that ET segment? Has anyone affiliated with Kindertrauma, or any of your readers, ever heard of such a video? I suppose it's possible that they started production on a music video to tie in with the film but cancelled it some time after Mary Hart or John Tesh or whoever visited the set. But I swear on my "Stephen King Rules" t-shirt that I saw the monsters dancing in unison before a camera crew. Am I delusional? Help me, Kindertrauma! You're my only hope!
PS: The stupidest thing about all this is that I actually met Tom Noonan at this past year's Festival Of Fear during Toronto's Fan Expo and I didn't think to ask him about it. As Frankenstein's Monster would say, "BO-GUS!"
Sunday Streaming :: Stake Land (2010)
Hey, remember back in the good old days when every Sunday we'd spotlight films on Netflix Streaming and we called it STREAM WARRIORS? But then it stopped happening because I was half lazy and half hated the name STREAM WARRIORS. Well now here it comes again, except I'm calling it something else and instead of forcing myself to focus on three movies a week, I plan to just do one. One is enough. I'm sorry, I don't know what I'm doing on the Internet. I'm not a chatty person.
Hooray STAKE LAND is available on Netflix Streaming! This is a perfect flick to talk about because it's a movie I would never have taken a chance on unless someone told me to. The reason I would have probably stayed away is because who needs another vampire flick and who needs another apocalyptic road movie and who needs to see everybody running around trying to act cool? I don't. I'd usually much rather watch a movie about a talking doll or pissed off animals that have gone crazy. Meanwhile everything I prejudged about STAKE LAND based on its packaging and subject matter was way off. This movie creates an impressive, believable world and occupies it with people that you can't help grow to care about. It's a grounded in a way that movies rarely are anymore and it leaves you feeling like you've actually experienced something. Plus KELLY McGILLIS is in it. Aren't you in the mood to see her today? I'm telling you, it's perfect for a Sunday afternoon so believe me. There, I'm done. That wasn't so bad. See ya next Sunday! Also: Do let us know if you've caught any good fish in the Netflix sea yourself!
Name That Trauma :: Reader Kaina in N.C. on Kindertrauma Ground Zero!
Hello! I only found your site a few days ago, but have already trawled through pages and pages of NTT. I am incredibly impressed with the answers you guys pull from obscurity and tiny clues, and so hope you can help me with a movie that I still remember giving me the utter creeps as a kid.
This would have been sometime in the early '80s on TV, in my memory of the movie it feels like late '70s production/design etc., but this was 30 years ago so I could be wrong on that. It involved a ship/yacht/boat that ended up being lost and having something evil show up, kill people one by one and pretend to be them. It ended with the last survivor(s) escaping, only then we go back to the empty boat and we see the body of one of the people who just escaped (I want to say it was hanging upside-down from the rigging, but that might have been an earlier death–that's the big image that sticks with me though).
For years I thought the name was 'The Devil's Triangle', but that doesn't seem to be a movie that actually exists, and searching for variations on that has proven to be not a fruitful source of inquiry.
Is there any chance you guys can help me? I really enjoyed the spooky movie, it wasn't til later when I tried to go to sleep that the creeps got me, but I'd at least really like to know what the movie was.
Thanks, and keep up the good work!
—Kaina in NC
UNK SEZ: I'm so glad you found us Kaina! The movie you are searching for must be 1975's SATAN'S TRIANGLE! I spent years looking for that one myself. It scared the crap out of me as a kid and the very first thing I did once I had access to the Internet was track that darn thing down! It had such a profound effect on me that I was actually scared to watch it again. In fact, wondering if others had similar experiences is what led to KINDERTRAUMA being born! I'm happy to tell you that currently SATAN'S TRIANGLE is available to watch on YouTube. Be careful though, it's still as creepy as it ever was!
Traumafession:: Dustin in Minnesota on Mr. Yuck
Here is a PSA that used to absolutely terrify me in the 1970s – Mr. Yuk. It got to be a love/hate kind of thing, where I'd wait for this commercial to come on that would scare me and send me out of the room. Though I did think it was pretty cool when our local poison control center came to our school and gave us some awesome Mr. Yuk stickers to place on poisons in our home!
I love reliving my childhood terrors on your site, and discovering others I hadn't known. Cheers.
Dustin in Minnesota
Excision (2012)
Check out this bright idea of mine: I thought I might clobber the post holiday blues by watching one of the year's best reviewed horror flicks, EXCISION! Now, I knew perfectly well that it wasn't a light comedy but I assumed as long as it was well made, it would lift my spirits. That was not the case. There I was skipping down a candy-colored suburbia believing I was safe in some quirky movie zone somewhere between offbeat character studies MAY and WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE, when suddenly I noticed the shadow of a wrecking ball circling around me. Egad! That's not a sweater writer/director RICHARD BATES JR. is knitting me…it's a noose! I should have gotten a clue from all the blood-soaked dream sequences that pepper the film but since they vaguely resembled music videos by THE FLOCK OF SEAGULLS, I was lulled. Instead of rejuvenation, I was served devastation and when the closing credits mercifully showed up to sweep the aisles in my head, I was left choosing between going to bed and going into the backyard to dig a grave with an accompanying high dive platform on the side.
EXCISION is about a young malcontent named Pauline (ANNALYNNE McCORD) who has delusions of becoming a surgeon. She's fascinated by the human body but doesn't comprehend the training and talent required. It's as if she believes she can just dream herself into being the person she wants to be and who can say they weren't guilty of that as a teen (or older)? Pauline is genuinely difficult and wonderfully aggressive and she's a welcome break from the usual demure hair-twirling wallflower/outsider. It's hard not to be compassionate towards her when she overhears her own mother admitting that she finds her "impossible to love" but mom's got a point too, her kid acts like a hallucination from MARTYRS. The one relationship that appears to be Pauline's most likely bridge towards connecting with humanity is the one she shares with her loyal younger sister Grace who has cystic fibrosis. It becomes clearer that Pauline's tortured behavior is strongly connected to her difficulty in processing her sister's illness and the idea that the one person who doesn't scorn her may not be around for long. Her attempt at rectifying the situation is a thing of pure horror.
I'm always going to have a soft spot for challenging protagonists, so this movie worked for me. I wouldn't recommend it though for anyone who was not in the mood for being deeply disturbed. In any case, one thing that's indisputable is the stellar work from the cast. First off, McCORD is fantastic as Pauline. If I were more familiar with her previous roles, I'm sure I'd be in even more awe of her transformation but as it stands I'm seriously impressed. There are wonderful turns too by highly watchable folks like JOHN WATERS, RAY WISE, MARLEE MATLIN, MALCOLM McDOWELL & ROGER BART. Now, see how much space I left? That's because I want plenty of room to gush about TRACI LORDS as mother Phyllis. LORDS is truly outstanding in this movie. I don't mean good for TRACI LORDS, I mean she could stand right next to the very best in her field here. What could have so easily have been the standard ice queen role, LORDS lifts to another realm, displaying a multitude of levels you might not expect. She killed me and I have to say, "Bravo." Now, EXCISION, here is your "Good Job!" sticker, thank you very much, kindly get out of my head!
