Traumafessions :: Writer/Director/Composer Kristian Day on An Americal Tail & Sesame Street
As a child growing up in the late '80s and early '90s in the Midwest, I was normally entertained by video tapes and television shows. I can't really remember a time where I wasn't watching a cartoon or kids program. We didn't have a lot of money so I watched a lot of things over and over again. This is the time where the young mind is very fragile and can be shaped easily for the long journey that lies ahead. None of these tales that I am telling you have anything to do with horror or anything around it. It's amazing what parents think is good and healthy for their children to watch. Oh how little do they understand a child's mind.
I don't remember the first time I watched AN AMERICAN TAIL, but it was never a movie that I could just sit through. There are three occasions where I was always forced to run to my VCR (no remote) and fast forward. The first time is at the beginning of the film when the Russian cats appear on top of the snowy hill growling and snarling. The sound of their lips smacking as they smiled used to crawl under my skin and get my heart beating quickly.
The second time is right when the mice sing the song "There Are No Cats in America" and the thunder and lighting strike which leads into the severe storm and tidal wave monster. It was so huge and swallowed up the boat over and over again. I grew up along the Mississippi River and was warned constantly not to swim without a life jacket or I might get swallowed up under the current. Fievel just kept getting hit and hit by the waves. The face inside the water would open up its huge black mouth and my own eyes would grow big. It kept me away from the river during bad storms.
The third time is, of course, "The Giant Mouse of Minsk." This stuck with me for so long. The film builds up to this perfectly. I never understood that it was made by the mice, I swore that it was alive. The sounds that it made when it first breaks open the boarded up door made my spine tingle. The roar, I feel, is way too much for the target age group. It was so powerful. Plus, the giant mouse was extremely ugly with its huge white eyes, jagged teeth and insect-like body. To this day I have a huge problem with rodents, dead or alive.
PBS was also big in my house. I watched a lot of SESAME STREET. Now don't get me wrong, I loved the show and I always had a great time watching it but a large percentage of my nightmares as a child resulted from watching the show. Characters from the weird animations showed up in my dreams over and over again. I remember dreaming I was at the top of the stairs that lead down into my basement. It was dark and I could only see the light reflection from the linoleum floor, I remember seeing little clay animation creatures like "Teeny Little Super Guy," spider creatures, and animals that didn't seem to have mouths…ever. There was even a horse like creature that had the skin and texture of the Pillsbury Dough Boy except it didn't have a mouth. It moved like a horse, however the head would turn and react to things like a cat or dog.
There were always crazy psychedelic shorts that were full of color and creativity but I never thought it would have caused me to sleep so badly. I always had to play the trick when I wanted to wake up from a dream I would close my eyes really hard until I woke up. However, sometimes I would open them and what ever animal or mutant there was had gotten right in front of me. I was trying to escape but the monster won…
UNK SEZ: Thanks Kristian for that traumatic traumafession! Kids you can check out Kristian's recent short film "Bird Seed" over HERE and check out his experimental short "Drawings by Billy and His Friends" below!
Traumafessions :: Reader Laura T.J. on Smokey the Bear
I am still traumatized by the 1973 "Prevent Forest Fires" PSA starring JOANNA CASSIDY. Do you remember the one? The one where she RIPS HER OWN FACE OFF to reveal that she is actually Smokey the Bear in disguise?
You can watch it on YouTube.
You can…I can't.
Just the thought of it, even now, makes me want to hide behind the couch.
Name That Trauma :: Reader Kahotep on Laurel & Hardy in Knots
Hi again guys, still loving your site, keep up the good work!
I was wondering if you could help me identify what sounds like a classic Kindertrauma scene, not on my behalf but my girlfriend's, who was traumatised by this scene she said she saw in a LAUREL AND HARDY comedy short. It was one of those comedy of errors that they always did, getting themselves into trouble with one of the stock villains.
At the end of this one, however, STAN and OLLIE ended up literally tied into knots, a visual gag I'm sure many found hilarious but which mentally scarred my honeybunny at an early age. I'd love to find it, just to satisfy my own curiosity. Anyone have an idea about it?
Many thanks,
Kahotep
UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Thanks to Reader Viktoria for the email assist with LAUREL & HARDY's GOING BYE-BYE!
Name That Trauma :: Reader Jeffery M. on an Old Lady, Dolls & Some Dude
I must have been between three and five years old when this movie scared me. That would have been sometime between 1966 and 1968, and since the movie was on T.V. then it's probably even older. I can't remember much. There was an old woman, a room filled with dolls and (near what seems to have been the end) a distressed man locked in some sort of room or closet or cell or attic or something. 'Sorry there's so little to work with.
Thanks, btw, for such a great website! A wonderful idea remarkably executed.
-Jeffery M.
UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Props to faullguy for getting it with KILL BABY KILL!
Traumafessions :: Kinderpal FilmFather on Escape from the Planet of the Apes
As a child of the'70s, I was immersed in the popularity of the PLANET OF THE APES film series. I had the coloring book, I watched the animated TV show, I played with the action figures…
But amongst all that ape-lovin', a Traumafession of mine was born: the ending of 1971's ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE APES.
In this third installment, Cornelius and Zira land on present-day Earth from the future, and they're soon treated like celebrities: police escorts, shopping sprees, new threads, swank parties, speaking at the United Nations…it's all very lighthearted and fun.
But when Zira has a baby, an evil doctor named Hasslein fears that intelligent ape procreating will lead to the apes taking over, and he decides the baby must be killed.
Cornelius and Zira switch their baby with a baby chimp from the local circus, and flee to an abandoned oil tanker for the film's finale…which is where the movie gets real dark, real fast.
Hasslein shoots Zira, then — in extreme close-up — puts about 4 or 5 rounds into the swaddled baby. (Yes, it's a baby chimp, and you can't see it, but the idea of shooting a baby was still shocking for my childhood eyes to take in.)
After shooting Hasslein, Cornelius is then shot by the military, and lets out a sick gurgling growl before plummeting from the top of the tanker to the deck below.
THEN, Zira dumps the baby's body overboard (which I still don't understand, but is still a harrowing display), crawls to Cornelius, lies across his body, and they both die. The end.
The best part? Despite this violent and bleak ending, ESCAPE is RATED G!
You can see video of the above carnage here (starting at the 5:30 mark), but it's interrupted by the guy reviewing the film and it loses some of its impact:
Thx guys,
Eric aka FilmFather
The Slayer (1982)
If I've learned anything doing time on planet kindertrauma, it's that there's no way to predict what's going to disturb you. More than anything, fear is an emotional response and your rational mind can blow the whistle all it likes, fear is going to keep doing its crazy jig if it wants to anyway. Now, I can't say that 1982's THE SLAYER actually scares me but I will admit that it never fails to creep me out.
I caught THE SLAYER back in the day on VHS and I remember my first thought as the film began was, "Oh crap, it's one of those cheapie backyard homebrews and poor me is in for a world of boredom." Little did I know that by the movie's end I'd be left with a strange feeling, a feeling of being genuinely unnerved. That the movie was able to leave a stain on the shag carpet in my brain is even more startling when you take its not very good acting, chalk board scratch dialogue, and MS. WIGGINS pacing into account.
I wish I could say J.S. CARDONE's THE SLAYER was some expertly built mind fuck machine or something but it's just not. There are some nicely done suspense scenes, a few better kills than you should reasonably expect and an interesting pre-ELM STREET death by dream mechanism but none of that is really enough to explain why it creeps me out. Maybe I'm just hanging on to the effect it had on me in my youth but a recent watch did nothing to change my opinion that THE SLAYER has the goods, even if I can't explain it on a technical level. It's like an abstract painting more or less, the feeling you're left with is more than the sum of its parts.
Maybe it's a victory of ambiance and milieu. THE SLAYER takes you to a crusty remote island, shoves you into an authentically dilapidated theater and milks a raging thunderstorm for all it's worth. There are scavenger crabs dancing on a dead woman's face, folks getting trapped in nets, and death by oar and fishhook. It all feels very natural and lived in so much so that no wooden acting can deter the coastal climate from leaving its mark. Feel free to throw this one into a spooky sea shanty marathon with TOWER OF EVIL, DEAD AND BURIED and THE FOG. I may even be able to use THE SLAYER as an other example alongside SESSION 9 and the original CHAINSAW that nothing beats real on location shooting. No art director in the world can counterfeit the power of an environment with genuine history.
I also have to give plaudits to the main character here, Kay (SARAH KENDALL) she's somewhat unconvincing, certainly annoyingly repetitive, and unapologetically, narcissistically neurotic. She'd never fly in the modern post RIPLEY age but her ghoulish face and cornered, feeble disposition adds an extra depressive coat onto the rack. I miss this type of almost Victorian female horror protagonist whose main contribution is to be the seer or the voice of dread. That may mean heavy fretting and zero kick-ass but in a supernatural, psychological tale it quite simply works. Feminists may cringe, but I think it adds to the bleakness of the situation if the main character is dwarfed and quivering in awe of the phantasmagorical. In other words Kay's not a hero, she's not even likable and that's what the story (yes there's more than one kind of story!) needs.
So will everybody love THE SLAYER? I really doubt it. Like I said, the acting is stiff, the dialogue makes you want to light yourself on fire and the music is simultaneously the greatest and most intrusive thing you've ever heard. Still, good kills and mood up the wazoo, you can't beat that! I watched it super late the other night, in probably the best of circumstances (in air conditioning, from my bed) and it still got to me after all these years. Whether it's the winged clipped desperation of creepy Kay or just the singular barnacle busted atmosphere, I'm thinking this captures something unearthly and unique. As far as I'm concerned, pimples and all, it's a dream (or nightmare) come true, a gory slasher movie with a surprisingly convincing air of the uncanny and an eerie "wrongness" I still can't quite put my finger on.
Traumafessions :: Reader Carol McM. on Phantom of the Paradise, Young Frankenstein, & Ghost Story
I've seen PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE mentioned around here in various posts – but I'm surprised no one has done a traumafession about it.
Sometime between 1979 and '81 my mom's boyfriend's daughter (who was a teenager) took my sister and I (who were 10-12ish) to a double feature of PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE and YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (these both came out in '74 – but because of when my mom started dating this guy I'm pretty sure I was about 10 when I saw them.) These movies are both pretty hilarious, but it's kinda funny how horror comedy seems to be totally lost on kids. I've seen both movies many times as an adult, but when I was a kid, after having watched one seemingly traumatic movie on a huge, huge screen, and then half of another seemingly traumatic one – googly eyes ceased to be funny and sitting in the lobby for the last half of the comedy YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN seemed like a total necessity.
PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE is basically PHANTOM OF THE OPERA set in a rock club in the ‘70s. I won't go into the plot – just the parts that scared the hell out of me. The first scene is towards the beginning of the movie – where the songwriter, Winslow, gets his teeth yanked out and replaced by freaky metal teeth. Then he gets his head squashed in a record press, which totally deforms his face – and totally sent me into kiddie shock. Then he skulks around the dark corners of The Paradise in a freakaziod, beaked mask and cape and sings his songs in this horrible metallicy, warped voice.
If all these events aren't scary enough to make a kid run out of the theater, just wait. At the end of the movie, after we see Beef get killed on stage (Beef kinda scared me too), weirdo, creepy, short, devil guy PAUL WILLIAMS (who I just reencountered in THE HARDY BOYS AND NANCY DREW MEET DRACULA – yay!!!) gets his gold mask yanked off to reveal a bloody face. My kinder memory of this event has massive amounts of blood all over his face. In reality, there's not so much blood. Even now -when I see the scene, I am surprised that there isn't more blood or gore – cause seriously, I remember it being more like CARRIE.
And Beef? Silly? Yes. Funny? Yes. Over the top, campy fruitcake? Yes. Scary? Nope.
I actually didn't leave the theater until my sister told me she wanted me to go with her to the bathroom during the second movie, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN. We both wound up on a padded red theater bench in the lobby with her telling me how she couldn't go back in and look at "that guy's" face anymore, and I sat next to her telling her that his movie isn't really as scary as the other movie. But I think the one I was really trying to convince was me – 'cause I couldn't make myself go back into the theater any more than she could.
Oh, and you may be asking who "that guy" is whose face scared my sister so bad.
MARTY FELDMAN.
Another early horror-movie-in-the-theater experience I had was right around that same time – with the same chick – who took us to see GHOST STORY. The popping out of nowhere ghost lady scared the CRAP out of me so bad and forced me to stare at the back of the seat in front of me for most of the movie and I still remember a very distinct trapped feeling – like the darkness and the GIANT gross faces in the movie were all closing in on me.
Now that's scary.
Name That Trauma :: Reader Cate on a Monster Making Milkshake
Dear Kindertrauma,
When I was a little kid in the mid-'70s, I went to a day care that showed movies when it rained. One time we watched a movie that scared the CRAP out of me and I've always wondered what it was. I think it was a DR. JEKYLL & MR. HYDE-type movie.
The part I remember was the guy drank this glass of what looked like milk with red dots in it and turned him into a monster. His lab/office was full of all kinds of stuff and I remember a parrot being there. The milky drink for some reason is the most vivid part for me.
Why the day care people thought showing this to little kids was a good idea I don't know! I know after this scene I spent the rest of the movie with my head under a blanket and an older kid trying to calm me down by telling me it was only a movie.
Anyone out there think this sounds familiar? I'd love to know what the hell kind of movie this was!
Thanks and I love the site!
Cate
UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Thanks to reader EMG for solving it with THE NUTTY PROFESSOR.