kindertrauma

Traumafessions :: Reader "Anonymous" on Puff the Magic Dragon and the Incredible Mr. Nobody

Posted on By aunt john

I love your site. I found it after reading Kris Straub's masterful creepypasta "Candle Cove" and finding your interview with him about it.

When I was little, I saw an animated TV movie, PUFF THE MAGIC DRAGON AND THE INCREDIBLE MR. NOBODY. It's about a boy named Terry who has an imaginary friend, an anthropomorphic duck named Nobody. Terry's active imagination is met with scorn from parents, teachers, and kids. He makes some art for class using spaghetti, but it's so well done that the teacher doesn't believe that he made it himself, so eventually he starts attributing his art and talent to Nobody. I think I must have been too little (probably five or younger) to cope with the many surreal sequences in the movie. It also traumatized me because I also was very creative as a kid, and adults and kids treated me like that all the time!

There is a crack under Terry's window and he says he sees a path in it. Everyone thinks he's totally weird. The scene where the crack transforms into a path leading to a trippy sunset was really disturbing to me as a kid. It's probably the thing about the movie that traumatized me the most. I realize that it was supposed to be this kid's happy fantasy, but it just seemed awful to me that you could disappear into a wall and walk along a path that seemed to stretch on forever. That image haunted me, and I even remember being scared of an actual crack on the wall of my house.

Then when Terry gets fed up with being misunderstood, he tries to run away, but Puff the Magic Dragon transforms the crack in the wall into an actual path, and the two of them go to a surreal fantasy world together. All sorts of bizarre things happen. One of the most disturbing was when Puff shows Terry some kids who are being very mean and evil. They also look at a large version of Terry's pasta art that really creeped me out, especially the spider-like trees. And the surreal sequence of musical instruments floating through the sky scared me as well. They made me feel threatened, like they were swarms of monsters or something. These images were so embedded in my subconscious that they still seem creepy to me now, even though other people seem to think it's a cute, heartwarming movie.

Name That Trauma:: Reader Brian C. on a Shower Threat

Posted on By unkle lancifer

I have a vague memory of a movie I saw as a child that has stuck with me all my life. Someone was taking a shower when the water suddenly turned red. This person jumped out of the shower, unscrewed the shower head and found a note inside. The note stated something like, "This is dye, next time it will be acid."

That's literally all I remember and I can't be sure how accurate my recollection is. I saw many films as a child that I was probably too young to see, I think my parents preferred to sneak me into the drive-in rather than pay a babysitter. If this was a film I saw during that time period it would have been somewhere in the mid to late '70s. This has been bugging me for years, so any help would be appreciated. Love the site.

Don't Go In The House (1980)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

ONCE
I wasn't sure I wanted to catch DON'T GO IN THE HOUSE. When I was around 13, my best friend was taken to see it by his father and the tale he returned with rattled me. I was immersed in horror films at the time but DON'T, at least as my friend described it, sounded like it was on the deeper end of the pool than I was familiar with. It was about a guy who lived in a house (that you'd better not go into), who captured women, tied them up in a metal room and then burned them alive with a flamethrower. What?! Why would anyone want to do that?! Listening to my pal's war story was thrilling but worrisome. He talked as if he was lucky to make it out of the theater alive himself. The movie he made in my head was close enough. DON'T didn't sound like much fun and being tied up and burned alive sounded way crueler than a nice quick axe to the head. I wasn't ready to go into this particular house. I wasn't even all that tempted…yet.

THEN
A bunch of years passed and I (wrongly) believed I had exhausted every 1980s horror flick I could. Obviously it was high time I took the plunge and went inside that darned house my friend had told me about. Even if the film did not live up to my nervous expectations, I'd have a decent time visiting the dark shadow it once cast in my head. I ended up appreciating the movie a lot more than I expected. I found the depravity I bargained for and the lead actor was sympathetic enough to carry me through. I suppose there is a misogynistic element skulking about but such is the price you pay for free range horror. I missed DON'T in its heyday and I missed it in its awkward years too. By this point it captured a specific valued bubble of time. Friendly disco music and a weirdly effective undercurrent of melancholy balanced out whatever sleazy behavior it indulged in. The house itself is my favorite type of authentic location you only seem to find in low budget films. The awesome icing on the cake is DGITH's awkward dubbing. The original soundtrack was unusable so everything had to be re-dubbed later which adds something as off-putting as it is endearing. Background characters jabber hilariously and incidental dialogue jumps to the forefront. It's wrong but I love it.

NOW
Watching the film a second time I find myself even more taken. The psycho killer with mommy issues routine is nothing rare but the unscalable wall of alienation maniac Donny Kohler bangs up against is not limited to his history or home. He's harangued at work, his competency is perpetually up for debate and every time he tries to connect with a lone ally, some snide comment questioning his sexuality is made. Donny's abusive past (his mother tried to burn the sin out of him) would be enough to unhinge anyone but the consistent debasement he receives in the ugly universe he inhabits is just as destructive. (Okay maybe he shouldn't have thrown that lit candle holder at that pushy girl's head at the disco but it's not as if he wasn't perfectly clear about not wanting to dance.) In the end Donny's last victim is not a woman but a priest who has failed him and there's an epilogue that suggests that the evil we've witnessed is not limited to Donny's twisted mind. In the messed up world of DGOTH it seems every kid we encounter from extras on the street to the children of Donny's friend are victims of hostility and the voices that haunted Donny are ready to "help" them ("the weak and the wounded" to borrow from SESSION 9) too. Sure, the "evil finds a new host" epilogue may be cliché but it strikes a truth about the fallout of abuse.

DON'T ends up being my favorite type of movie. It can be seen as crude and humorous on one level but on the other hand there's something hard to shake creepy about it too. The old house, with its bizarre angles and funky furniture and the sudden flashes of Donny's white-haired, blue-skinned, scarecrow of a dead mother give it some timeless gothic flavor while the music, fashion and unrepentant violence speak specifically of its own era. I also really like the performance of the main actor DAN GRIMALDI. I think he's really interesting in this and I'm not surprised he went on to other things including playing twins on THE SOPRANOS. I can't really say this movie ends up being as scary and as effective as the movie that my pal constructed in my head long ago but it does have a better soundtrack and I have a feeling it's only just begun to speak to me.

Name That Trauma:: Reader Adrian H. on a Psycho-esque Trailer

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Hey Kindertrauma,
I remember seeing a trailer in the late 90s, perhaps 1999, or early 2000s, in a Pay-Per-View channel back in the day. It used to play constantly, almost every 5 minutes or so. The trailer showed shots of a house, a woman screaming, perhaps a shot of a knife. All I can remember is that it ended with a house darkening its lights and then the title. Somehow I thought it was the Psycho remake, but it's only because the word "psycho" was somehow engrained into my memory of this trailer. I know it's not much to go on, but it's something that's been bugging me, cause it's one of the only things in my childhood that scared me a bit.

Straight on Till Morning (1972)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

I've got a fondness for movies in which characters build a doomed cocoon against the outside world. I'm thinking THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVES DOWN THE LANE, SECRET CEREMONY, and now STRAIGHT ON TILL MORNING. I know it never ends well but there's inevitably an eye of the hurricane moment of serenity where I want to stay and set up camp. Sometimes these cocoons involve two people connecting and sometimes it's just one person building a shelter against the hurricane of psychosis (PIN, BAD RONALD, and REFLECTION OF FEAR). Either way something about these precariously built nests strikes a nerve. Maybe it's due to my family moving a lot when I was little. I remember wanting to be a beaver or a turtle because they both had homes. While my brothers drew racing cars, I drove the interiors of vans. It's beyond simply having a nice place to hang out in and a roof overhead. The most important thing is that not everyone is invited and different rules apply.

Brenda Thompson (RITA TUSHINGHAM) is a skittish, mousy type who leaves her mother behind to brave an ultra-groovy, early seventies era London. Her head is stuffed with fairy tales of her own invention and she's looking for a prince to share in her delusions. She finds a cool job but doesn't quite fit in and after being overlooked in favor of her prettier roommate, she stalks the streets until she finds an abandoned dog. The dog's owner is Peter (SHANE BRIANT of DEMONS OF THE MIND) and once Brenda gets a gander at him, she kidnaps the dog so she can return it and play hero later. Unlike Brenda, Peter was not born yesterday and instead of being pissed at her deception, he invites her to live with him. Peter is not a prince so much as a gigolo serial killer who regularly slashes up his benefactors. Because he believes he is only valued for his looks, he hates anything beautiful. If you are pretty, he will cut you up with a box cutter and record the whole thing.

Obviously this relationship can never work out and things are going to go south real soon. Be that as it may, for a while there, these two kooky kids almost have it all. Brenda changes her name to Wendy and they hang out in a really excellent apartment sitting on the floor inventing and recording fairy tales. And check out that Peter Pan reference! There's Wendy and Peter and the dog's name is even "Tinker"! All that needs to happen is Wendy must not discover that said dog has been murdered for wearing a nice bow on its head and that Peter screwed and killed her ex-roommate. She also must never go to the room upstairs, always clean up after him and never try to look too pretty because that will drive him completely insane. Unfortunately, one day Wendy decides to get a new hairdo and well, everything unravels.

STRAIGHT ON TILL MORNING is an unlikely HAMMER film directed by PETER COLLINSON the same guy who did that FRIGHT movie I recently reviewed (although he's best remembered for THE BANK JOB.) It's got a bunch of severe funky edits, some spooky voiceovers and it bounces around in time a great deal. Some will certainly find it as annoying as I found it fascinating. It's also got a cameo and a theme song from ANNIE ROSS of BASKETCASE 2&3 and WITCHERY fame and that's nothing to sneeze at either. Even if you don't care for the story or the frustrating characters, I think I'd have to recommend this one for the time period alone; the London shown here has got to be seen to be believed. It's a shame about what befalls poor head in the clouds Brenda/Wendy but at least she got to learn the lesson (albeit too late) that life is no fairy tale in such killer covet-worthy digs.

Traumafessions :: Kinderpal Senski of Heart in a Jar on Tornado!

Posted on By aunt john

Tornado Awareness Week will soon be upon the state I call home, and since the latest two years have seen historic numbers of twisters, it is a not unimportant thing. Our high-tech Doppler radar can pinpoint storms right down to the street level, but such was not always the case. When I was growing up, a 1977 storm materialized within the space of an hour out of some innocuous showers over the western part of the state, nary a watch posted for our area. It culminated in the local CBS weatherman going live on camera, eyeglasses askew, literally shouting to viewers that a tornado was entering the city about 10 miles away from my tiny town – only to have the station knocked off the air by the twister. Scary as hell. But that's not the subject of my Traumafession.

On summer weekends that same CBS affiliate would frequently have time to kill before the local news came on at 5:30; sporting events could be unpredictable in their length. And so a frequent go-to was the 1967 educational film "Tornado!" with its 15 minute running time. It reinforced how a day which began in azure beauty could swiftly and savagely turn violent, with little one could do save cower and pray. It incorporated real tornado footage, difficult to come by at the time. And because such film was grainy and underexposed, it was as frightening as hell, a dark vision of chaos. The film makes much use of children, pets and toys as being particularly at risk. (I understand the admonition not to open windows in advance of the storm was later added when the film was acquired by The Weather Channel; in dreams I would madly race across my house, throwing open windowpanes, while my dog barked and the twister grew ever closer.) Warnings were issued for entire counties – a deceptively large area – and the tornado could strike anywhere in that zone at any time. It jangled the nerves.

I thought I grew out of that by the time I was in high school, but when that tornado of 1977 materialized out of seeming nowhere, I remembered that old film and felt a genuine chill. I'm grateful for the advancements made in storm prediction, but to this day, I respect an angry wind.

— Senski

UNK SEZ: Thanks for the exemplary traumafession Senski! Kids, make sure you keep up with our favorite pal over at his home base HEART IN A JAR!

Vigilante (1983)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

I was going to kick myself for not watching WILLIAM (MANIAC) LUSTIG's VIGILANTE (1983) sooner but I decided to thank the universe for waiting for the exact perfect circumstances to lift the curtain on this prize instead. Don't sweat the plot- it's about a guy who believes in the law until justice flips him the bird after his life is demolished, who then decides to take matters into his own hands. Things explode and bad, bad people die in ways they really deserve. See, this is why I can't get worked up about remakes and sequels; multiple interpretations of the same potent theme are the lifeblood of genre filmmaking. You know this place even if you haven't been here before.

Two major factors catapult VIGILANTE over its peers. It's got a fantastic cast, ROBERT FORSTER, CAROL LYNLEY, FRED WILLIAMSON, JOE SPINELL and RUTANYA ALDA (she of AMITYVILLE II and no relation to ALAN-drats!) and a super talented sinfully underrated director. LUSTIG may have a habit of delivering semi-unsatisfactory climaxes but the road to that minor disappointment is paved with major brilliance. He certainly knows how to engage the audience with his characters and he excels at keeping you on edge worried about how far he'll go next. What's more, I have to hand it to LUSTIG for his striking and yet never overpowering visual sense. Is it just me? I love his use of color and his penchant for finding strange fluorescent beauty in the blandest of areas. It can't be accidental, amidst jaw-dropping violence there's something about VIGILANTE (and MANIAC) that feels like unearthing stray blazing rubies in piles of grey gravel. I'll throw down some images below but I think that analogy applies to how LUSTIG's films operate as a whole too. The world may be hopeless, grim and falling apart but if you look close there's always something shining in the wreckage.