Dear Mr. Gacy
There's an excess of under the radar, reality-based serial killer movies out there. Separating the wheat from the wack is a challenge hard-won. Some are fascinating or can at least boast interesting performances (JEREMY RENNER in DAHMER, CARRIE SNODGRESS in ED GEIN) and some are lamentably directed by ULLI LOMMEL. (Don't cry ULLI, you and I will always have THE BOOGEYMAN). I tend to dive into the true crime zone as sporadically as possible because I know regardless of the film's success, I'm signing up for a bummer of a time. In fact, the better the film is the more likely I am to feel dismal afterward. I always end up empathizing too much with the victims and sometimes even the killers themselves. People can romanticize murderers as much as they like but the truth remains that they are sick miserable people whose homes no doubt smell really bad.
DEAR MR. GACY leans toward the way less sucky side of the true crime spectrum and it's deep and dark enough without resorting to excessive violence to leave you wishing you could dunk your brain in Purell. It's based on the book THE LAST VICTIM by Jason Moss which details the author's correspondence with several serial killers; the staunchest of which was with John Wayne Gacy while he was on death row.
Jason Moss (portrayed in the film by JESSE MOSS, no relation) comes off as nearly as complicated and twisted as the source of his obsession allowing the film few respites as it careens towards a moral abyss. Hiding under the excuse of research, Moss endangers his family and throws his own well-being off a cliff as he attempts to outsmart, exploit and even seduce a known psychopath. Sometimes the player gets played and some masks are easier to put on than yank off. He is left stained with the knowledge that his desire to have the upper hand, his fixations on power and control and his shruggy ambivelance towards the suffering of others are all simpatico with the demons that drive Gacy. In other words, when you lie down with dogs that dress up like clowns and bury a multitude of corpses under their floorboards, fleas are the least of your worries.
Speaking of dogs, WILLIAM FORSYTHE whilst portraying Gacy, morphs from prancing poodle to pulverizing pitbull in a way that's remarkably chilling. I'm not familiar enough with the real life maniac to say how well he captures his personality but I do know that he snags the general essence of seriously loco like a pro. After lulling us into an odd sense of comfort with Gacy the film abruptly revisits the harrowing experiences of one of his victims who somehow narrowly escaped and it's like a sobering glass of water splashed in the face; Moss is Mr. Magoo taking a bath with a shark. Due to this being a small film concerning unpleasant subject matter it's doubtful FORSYTHE will recieve the apprasial that he deserves but he's really very good in this.
Horror fantasy and horror reality are two distinct camps in my book no matter how much they influence and smudge into each other. In truth, the cinematic villains horror fans are accustomed to stand so far removed from the depths of depravity known by their real-life inspirations that they might as well be Shirley Temple doing Black Sabbath karaoke. There's probably much going on in DEAR MR. GACY that could have been orchestrated better but there's no question in my mind that it achieves exactly what it sets out to do. It's not Gacy's crimes but the allure of darkness to Moss that is really under this microscope. Moss may have correctly assumed that he was brighter or quicker than Gacy but he underestimated the trumping toxic power of evil itself. This is a clash of titan egos where one oponent ends up executed (Gacy) and the other eventually kills himself (Moss took his own life on 6/6/6). I'm going to call it a draw.
Traumafessions :: Drew B. on Flight of the Navigator
Hello Kindertrauma,
Just found your website recently. I've been scouring it daily reliving past horrors. I gave myself nightmares last night after reading about 10 pages of Traumafessions! It's nice to know I can still do that…
As is the case with several other of the Kindertraumatized, my trauma comes from a family film not intended to send the mind recoiling in horror for decades.
In the Disney film FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR, a young boy (David) is abducted by a spaceship commanded by a giant Black And Decker Snake Lite voiced by PAUL "PEE-WEE HERMAN" RUEBENS. After zooming through space with his new pal (even introducing the robot to American rock'n'roll music), the boy is returned to his planet only to discover he's been "missing" for 6 years and presumed dead. His parents have a little more gray in their hair. His younger brother now appears older than HE is. Technology has progressed since he's been "gone" and he barely recognizes anything. He is sent to some military/science facility to be monitored and researched.
Horrifying.
This idea was completely chills me to my core. Always did.
Particularly upsetting is the scene where the space alien introduces David to his other abductees – aliens from other planets. The scene where he gets a little too close to a creature who lurches from his cage and snatches the boy's baseball cap off and eats it. A moment later, David puts his face up to a tank and a giant eyeball reveals itself and screams at him.
Words can not describe the horror I feel as an adult, reverting back to a childhood state of panic when watching this from my work computer.
Man, Disney really were the masters of the unsettling family film.
— Drew B.
Traumafessions :: Reader Josh K. on Freddy's Nightmares Ep. "Judy Miller, Come On Down!"
First off, your site is so completely awesome and words can't express the amount of pleasure I've had over the years scanning through all of your articles saying, "Oh wow… I remember that!" For this… I thank you.
For my first trauma confession ever, I present to you an episode of the late '80s show FREDDY'S NIGHTMARES. This was an anthology show where Freddy Krueger introduced horror tales of the terrible things that happened in the cursed town of Springwood. Sometimes, he even appeared in the tales.
I was very young (maybe 8 or 9 I think), and was over my Grandparent's house in their basement at the time. My Grandfather was flipping through the channels, when all of a sudden, he stops on this one particular program that looks like a game show. The host keeps looking at this timer and telling this totally frightened woman that she doesn't have much time left on the clock. She is being asked questions, and the camera switches to her husband who is tied up with a blade above him that keeps swinging closer and closer to him. The host (with an unsettlingly happy grin) keeps asking her questions. The woman then says out loud to herself something like, "If I win, HE DIES!" or maybe it's the other way around (I'm at work as I type this and can't check on YouTube unfortunately).
Anywho, the blade finally starts piercing his flesh and you see some blood. The gagged man starts to scream. My grandmother happens to come into the room and she says "Lee, turn that off!". My grandfather just sits there laughing. "Lee, turn that off now!" she says again. My grandfather finally turns the channel.
Of course by then, the damage had already been done.
My poor little brain was now trying to erase those images for the rest of that trip I'm sure. Later on in life, I became an absolute horror fanatic and received a bootleg set of the entire series of FREDDY'S NIGHTMARES in great quality. Imagine my surprise when I watched the episode "Judy Miller, Come On Down". It was the infamous scarring episode!!! It had, through the hands of fate arrived back to me after years of searching for it, wondering if it was but a dream! Not only that, but I could now see all of the "wonderful" ways Judy was tormented on that sick gameshow including her relatives being covered in man-eating ants!
It's up on YouTube now I believe, so you fellow kindertraumers can go see it in all of its sick glory. '80s nighttime T.V. was never so good! Hehe.
Name That Trauma :: Reader 442 on a Creeping, Colorless Clown
This has been bugging me forever and I hope you guys can help me solve the mystery. So when I was around 5 or 6 my brothers and I came in from playing outside on a gloomy day. The gloom is just so strong in the memory I don't know why. Anyway I turned on the T.V. and saw the creepiest clip ever. It was a black and white film. There was a little short clown who was tip-toeing across the living room floor, I think. It was the way he was moving that creeped me out the most. He would start walking then stop really quickly and look at the camera. Then he'd start walking again.
Anyway, it moves to another scene where a little girl is asleep in her bed. She wakes up only to find that the creepy clown is on top of her toybox staring at her. Oh yeah, he has this, slightly too happy, smile on his face. So anyway the girl runs to her parents bedroom and is freaking out and the parents tell her it's nothing, and to go back to sleep. That was when I turned off the T.V. and freaked out until just now 13 years later. I really want to confront this fear and nagging memory. What was the name of the movie??
Please help!
— Reader 442
Burning Bright
I was all set to purchase a Bengal tiger and now BURNING BRIGHT has turned me off of the idea completely. BRIANA EVIGAN (GREG EVIGAN's daughter who you might remember from SORORITY ROW) portrays Kelly Taylor, a gal set to go off to college. Trouble is, her mother's recent suicide and her stepfather's general flakiness have left her feeling personally responsible for the well being of her autistic younger brother. Her sense of being trapped becomes all too literal when she wakes up in her home to find it boarded up in anticipation of a hurricane. I should also mention that somebody has also barricaded the front and back doors, and only after setting her stepfather's recently acquired bloodthirsty tiger within the house. Not only does Kelly have to survive but she also must keep her sibling who doesn't register the danger alive too. It's safe to say that this is an unlikely situation but the matter of fact way it's handled is convincing and the resulting intensity is impossible to deny. At one point I'm pretty sure I yelped.
I gotta say that although they don't get as much attention as some other sub genres of horror, the good ol' "man vs. fill in the blank beast" movie has been discreetly advancing in quality and effectiveness over recent years (BLACK WATER & THE REEF come to mind). BURNING BRIGHT is the latest example of such a film to wisely focus on and utilize the actual animal in question, producing an authentic primal response in the viewer. (It looks like some CGI is used in BB but only around the edges to position a genuine tiger in specific places). The tiger (or really tigers, as more than one is credited) in question is a magnificent natural effect and don't be surprised if something way down in the pit of your DNA well flashes red when it's on screen. The action is all the more impressive that the lion's share (har) takes place in a limited space. Director CARLOS BROOKS even had me thinking back to HALLOWEEN with the way he transforms a recognizable everyday home into a cavernous battlefield and the last segment of TRILOGY OF TERROR with his dedication to relentlessness.
As tight as the director's craftsmanship is, a movie this intimate and concentrated could easily collapse if occupied by a feeble cast. I was impressed by every one present. GARRET DILLAHUNT (LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT) is always interesting, EVIGAN could be the king of the scream queens if she had a mind to and CHARLIE TAHAN as Kelly's autistic brother gives a temperate, modest spin on a role that many an actor (of any age) would have demolished with hammy ostentation. His approach fits right in with the film's general manner of getting the job done succinctly and without tiresome ornamental bombast. Truth told, I did end up yearning for a little more fleshing out of Kelly's relationship with her shady stepfather but the movie is so lean, compact and uncluttered maybe it's best that boat wasn't rocked. It's probably better to be left hungry for a little more than overstuffed and I don't mind filling in some of the blank spots myself. The bottom line is that this movie really worked for me as a precision suspense dispenser and I don't need anything more than that.
Traumafessions :: Grimpressions on Heavy Metal Hating Aliens
I was wondering if you could help me find a commercial that I haven't seen since the '90s. I think it was an advertisement for a car stereo system. In the beginning of the ad you see the inside of an alien spaceship with a couple of aliens looking down on Earth. One of them says something like, "This is Earth which is home to humans, a friendly race."
Next we're on Earth on a country road and a guy pops a CD into his stereo. He cranks up the volume of a death metal song that has a guy screaming, "DESTROY! DESTROY!! DESTROY YOU!!!" The song is so loud that the aliens can hear it from space. They are offended and now sense that humans are a hostile species instead. They lock a target on Earth and blast it away. I'm not sure if it actually showed the planet exploding or it just showed the logo of the product being advertised.
It greatly impacted me because it introduced me to the idea that music could be used to offend and anger others as well as have a cathartic effect on the listener. I went on to order a bunch of GWAR and Slayer albums from my Mom's Columbia House ordering catalog. I eventually started listening to death metal, black metal, or any kind of aggressive, loud, or fast music I could find.
My Wife, Step-son, and I were looking up funny commercials on YouTube one night when I told her to try to find it. We had no luck. All we found was the black and white Pioneer car stereo commercial where it shows the guy listening to his metal so loud that it's shacking the entire bridge that his car is sitting on.
Also, I'm in the midst of making a documentary about painting and I was hoping you post this preview of it….
Thanks,
Phil Mertz of Grimpressions
Streaming:: Trollhunter, Hobo, Red State & Vanishing
UNK SEZ: I wanted to do a "Best of the Year" list sort of thing but how could I possibly when I'm so hopelessly out of the loop? Part of it's my fault because I'm trapped in the past but part of it I blame on the fact that many movies never hit my neck of the woods. During the Christmas break I realized that the least I could do was catch up with the recent flicks available on Netflix. This little four-car pileup represents only a fraction of my intake but hopefully we'll get to some of those other flicks soon too.
TROLLHUNTER
To tell you the truth, knowing that TROLLHUNTER was a found footage flick didn't make me run to it with open arms. Nothing against the concept, I just wasn't in the mood for the usual song and dance. I threw all my trepidations in the garbage disposal though as soon as the first troll showed up. He was glorious. If this movie doesn't convince you that CGI is not necessarily the devil's plaything then nothing will. Fun, imaginative and crowned with a great character in troll hunter Hans (OTTO JESPERSEN), this movie easily leaped over my expectations and turned out to be quite the horror adventure.
HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN
I probably found this movie only about half as funny as I think I was meant to. I was not too comfortable seeing RUTGER HAUER my hero, being treated poorly by Tromaville rejects. It reminded me of the awful day my dog followed me to school and all the other kids laughed at her running down the hall. Don't laugh at my dog! Suddenly I understood that HOBO wanted me to feel that way so that I could fully enjoy my blue eyed champion RUTGER killing all the rat faced punks. Sadly that understanding came a little too late for me to get all I could have out of this. In any case, I loved all the nasty neon colors swirling around in this movie, the references to MAD MAX and HALLOWEEN 3 and the blippy soundtrack and excellent STREETS OF FIRE theme song at the end. I just don't enjoy seeing people push RUTGER HAUER around, to me that's like sacrilege or something.
RED STATE
Wait a minute. How is it possible I was so unimpressed with this movie? I like a good KEVIN SMITH rant and it shouldn't be very difficult to get me on board with a movie that skewers religious zealots and features JOHN GOODMAN. I thought RED STATE jumped out of the gate fine but I fell off the back of the truck midway through. Maybe it says something about my lack of mettle that I could not adjust to RED STATE's major shifts in tone of which there are several. There was one point toward the end where I thought perhaps it might redeem itself for me and then instead it went the opposite direction entirely. (Alas, an unfilmed original ending scrapped due to financial restraints sounds more my cup of tea.) As it stands, I felt like the subject matter deserved a far less flippant approach and I was let down by SMITH painting in such broad strokes. I give him much respect for working out of his comfort zone but I felt the wild-eyed caricatures sort of let the garden variety bigot too easily off the hook. I guess this is one of those divisive movies that you either love or hate and I can't be more shocked that here I stand on this side of the fence!
VANISHING ON 7TH STREET
Don't worry RED STATE, you are not my least favorite movie in this grouping! That honor belongs to VANISHING ON 7TH STREET! BRAD ANDERSON is a mega valuable and extraordinary director in my eyes. Not only do I dig his forays into horror, like the excellent SESSION 9, but I also think his HAPPY ACCIDENTS and NEXT STOP WONDERLAND are pretty awesome too. VANISHING has a wonderful plot as far as I'm concerned. It's sort of like WHERE HAVE ALL THE PEOPLE GONE? with darkness itself starring as a malevolent force furiously erasing the world. Unfortunately even though this movie has more going for it than most with ANDERSON's expertise, an involving concept, semi professional (albeit miscast) actors and I'm sure a reasonable budget of some sort it fails to gel into anything solid enough to cast a shadow itself. It's just like a big glob of formless putty. It even has the nerve to have an annoying kid character in it and I was of the understanding that we as of a culture had a silent agreement to leave that pesky stock character to disaster movies from the seventies. I'm not telling you not to check this one out; in fact, do and tell me it's just my imagination that it is as intolerable as I think it is. I don't mind being wrong. I want to be wrong.
Name That Trauma :: Reader M. Nelson on a Fake Newscast That Ends With a Bang
I want to preface this with it is not THE DAY AFTER.
Only aired once as far as I know in the early to mid '80s. Two hour special by one of the networks in the same vein as ORSON WELLES' "War of The Worlds" about a terrorist group taking hostages on a Navy vessel. Looked just like a newscast with reporters on-site and going back to the anchor for updates and experts throwing in their opinions. Whole thing ended with the terrorists detonating a nuclear warhead and then the credits rolled. Like I said, this was 30 years ago so my memory is sketchy but I do remember the disclaimers were before and after every commercial break which seemed odd because I don't remember every seeing that level of precaution every before on a "faux-newscast" type program.
I know this existed and just want to remember a name. Thank you in advance.
— M.Nelson
Evansville, IN
UNK SEZ:: I think I got it! We once got a NTT about another faux TV news broadcast (HERE) and a movie called SPECIAL BULLETIN was brought up by reader Nathan Wade as a possibility. It wasn't the right answer that day but I think it's the right answer today (Thanks Nathan!) I found SPECIAL BULLETIN available in it's entirety on Google video so check it out below and tell us if it's what you're seeking!
P.S. For a full review of SPECIAL BULLETIN look no further than our buddy JOHN KENNETH MUIR's joint HERE!
