kindertrauma

Name That Trauma :: Reader Terek P. on a Space Suicide & Spiders (Book)

Posted on By aunt john

Kindertrauma crew,

I need help identifying a horror short story collection I read in the late 1970s.

The most memorable story was about a crew stationed on another planet (Mars, I think) that becomes infected and turned into murderous zombie-like beings.

The story features someone being killed with a scalpel in a medical lab. At the end of the story, the lone, uninfected crew member escapes onto the planet's surface in a moon buggy-type vehicle.

The vehicle crashes. As his now inhuman pursuers close in, the uninfected crew member opts to kill himself by removing his helmet.

I found this grim story very disturbing at the time.

The only other story I recall any details about featured someone investigating a neighbor's house and finding the occupant to be some kind of spider creature.

The book had several black & white illustrations in it, one of which was for this story, featuring a victim bound in spider webs.

This is a very tough one, I know. Anything you or your readers can come up with would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks very much,

— Terek P.

UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Special thanks to longtime lurker & first time poster shargraves who knew this was Sydney J. Bounds' short story "The Animators."

Name That Trauma :: Reader David B. on Subterranean, Senior Serial Killer

Posted on By aunt john

I have a Name That Trauma for you… I hope I can provide enough details for you or a reader to recognize it. I must have been about 5 or 6, which would make it roughly 1970-71.

I was up late one night watching television, it would probably have been BBC1 or BBC2, when a film from the silent era came on. The abiding memory I have is of an old hag-like woman who lived underground, perhaps in the subway system, who would climb out from the manhole covers in the street and drag her victims below to her cavernous lair.

I have a suspicion it may have been a French movie, but I could be wrong. All I know is it frightened the life out of me, and I had nightmares about it for a long time after. I know this is very little to go on, but I do hope someone out there can help identify my personal trauma.

Thank you.

Traumafessions :: Reader Jen on the Eyes of Winnie the Pooh & Patrick Stewart

Posted on By aunt john

Let me preface this by saying that I was probably the most easily frightened little girl on the face of the Earth.

It sounds so stupid now, but back when I was four and still in love with the NEW ADVENTURES OF WINNIE THE POOH, the song about Heffalumps and Woozles scared me shitless. I'm not sure if it was the bad-LSD-trip imagery, the unsettling music, or merely the idea that such creatures could exist in a realm as happy and friendly as Pooh's, but either way, I HATED that song and would cry and hide and beg my mother to fast-forward that section of the tape. Twenty years later, I still can't watch the whole thing.

I dug up an example on YouTube to share the pain:

Another thing that really bent me was one particular scene in an episode of STAR TREK–the series that had PATRICK STEWART in it. He'd been taken captive by some kind of enemies and they were going to turn him into some kind of cyborg thing. To do so it was apparently needful to drill through his eye. The spinning drill bit stopped just short of plunging into/piercing his cornea, before the scene cut away, but that image horrified me on some subconscious level. I to this day have an intense phobia of anything being near my eyes. ANYTHING, even soft things make me squirm, and metallic/sharp objects are right out.

Adding on to the eye thing, there's another Pooh episode that involved Rabbit being lost in some foggy forest, tormented by shadows and the croaking of frogs and crickets. It's implied that this is wearing on his sanity, as at one point his pupils spin and he screams and goes running blindly. Those fucking spinning eyes, combined with the raw terror in that scream, it frightened me to tears. I still haven't the nerve to look it up on YouTube and finally face it. Just remembering it makes me cold.

Also as another poster mentioned, that goddamned Judge from WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT. I was SO not expecting the freaky face, the screams or the melting. Nightmare city.

Anyhow, I love the site and keep up the great work!

— Jen

The Night Child (1975)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

THE NIGHT CHILD, 1975's possession/cursed medallion flick, can't fill THE EXORCIST's shoes but hey, at least it's not as boring as AUDREY ROSE. The story is a bit flimsy, Michael Williams' (RICHARD JOHNSON) daughter has been acting super spooky since her mom threw herself out a window while engulfed in flames and it appears that the necklace the girl inherited from the aforementioned deceased has something to do with it. Underage smoking simply can't provide the same horrific highs as levitation and head spinning, but little Emily's onslaught of persecution hallucinations have their own disturbing, albeit quiet strength. The film's concentration on the medallion in question tends to frustrate as a cursed GOYA-looking painting is also involved and is a far more compelling point of interest. Ultimately though, the film does come together nicely enough; it's final Freudian revelations have a butterfly effect which makes all that came before it gel into something more substantial.

THE NIGHT CHILD's story may lack the type of demonic punch horror fans crave but its visuals are stunning and then some. It's so damn gorgeous that you may, like myself, happily forgive the film its wishy-washy ways. Putting aside some severely out of date blue screen falling effects, director MASSIMO DALLAMANO (WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO SOLANGE?) delivers an autumnal smorgasbord of non-stop eye candy that must be seen to be believed. No image I can share with you can do the film justice because so much of what DALLAMANO delivers here has to do with movement and brilliantly orchestrated timing.

Two visual themes collide to great effect, there's a muddy cavernous feel to much of the film's night scenes and the daytime scenes bring flashing sun blasts and stark seventies flavored rusts and orange hues. It's all very crisp and exquisitely staged and it's all so classy and artsy you kind of forget that you might rather be on the edge of your seat for different reasons. The soundtrack composed by STELVIO CIPRIANI (TENTACLES(!), BAY OF BLOOD) compliments without overpowering.

Another great selling point for the film is its cast. In addition to ZOMBIE and BEYOND THE DOOR's JOHNSON, DEMONS and DEEP RED's pixie pale NICOLETTA ELMI makes a superb supernaturally tormented child and she really knows how to wail and appear haunted. Even more exciting for me is the fact that THE NIGHT CHILD has bragging rights to an early performance by the queen of everything, JOANNA CASSIDY (BLADE RUNNER, GHOSTS OF MARS, SIX FEET UNDER, et al.) Big haired and stunning, CASSIDY is hard to take your eyes off of and I swear she delivers the same sly, sexy expression seen in her infamous Kindertraumatic SMOKEY THE BEAR commercial; who can't appreciate that?

I suppose EXORCIST comparisons really are unfair and unnecessary, obviously something else was intended here from the get go. In the end, THE NIGHT CHILD offers something more akin to a stroll through a graveyard on a brisk, bright day than a peek through a keyhole into hell. If you have a sweet tooth for seventies cinema and particularly seventies Italian cinema, do your peepers a solid and allow them to picnic on this. The plot might leave you hungry for more but on a visual level, you'll be stuffed.

NOTE: I saw the subtitled version all cleaned up and sparkly in widescreen. This trailer is dubbed and obviously damaged beyond belief. Don't think I'm insane, the version I saw really was a visual stunner even though this trailer seems to suggest otherwise…

Traumafessions :: Reader bdwilcox on Ring of Bright Water

Posted on By aunt john

When the guy kills the poor little otter with a shovel in RING OF BRIGHT WATER. I was about 3 when I saw this and never got over it. I suppressed the memory and one day picked the movie up from RedBox not knowing the emotional hand grenade I was holding. As the movie unfolded, something was gnawing at the back of my mind and a dreadful familiarity started to settle in. The deja vu was tangible and I knew I had been there before but couldn't, for the life of me, remember when. It was like being in a cemetery where you suddenly recognize all the tombstones but can't find the exit. As soon as I saw the guy raise the shovel my heart dropped and decades of suppressed horror screamed out from that dark corner of my mind where murky childhood memories lurk. Even thinking about it now I'm traumatized, sad and, most of all, angry that they would put something like that in a children's movie. It's like putting a razor in a cupcake.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! -sniff- -sniff- -snorfle-

—bdwilcox

Name That Trauma :: Reader Elizabeth on a Bully-Busted Bauble

Posted on By aunt john

The movie would have been before 1985. It was RANKIN & BASS-esque puppetry or claymation. A little boy lives with his grandma (I think) and he buys her a Christmas gift (could have been an ornament?)

On his way home some bullies beat him up and he falls on it and breaks it.

Any ideas from anyone? Or do I have a really fertile imagination?

—Elizabeth

Andrea Martin... I love you!

Name That Trauma :: Reader Ab-Normal on Disciplined Dolls (Book)

Posted on By aunt john

Hi,

I'm registered on the site as Ab-Normal and was wondering if I could submit a Name That Trauma?

It's technically for my girlfriend although she doesn't know about it as I am looking for the book in question as a Christmas gift for her.

It's a book with an old lady in it who treats dolls like babies and, I believe, is desperate to have one of her own and eventually steals one; I think the couple she stole it from were quite important in the book as well.

The scene that frightened my girlfriend was one where the woman thinks one of the dolls has been misbehaving, or just bad, and melts the doll's face over the gas ring of the oven.

I have no clue as to how the book ended or anything other than that I'm afraid. I've tried Googling various word combinations but nothing has shown up!

UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Special thanks to readers Hexjumper & Riverstone22 for closing the book on this one with "Mine" by Robert McCammon.

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