kindertrauma

Name That Trauma :: Reader Erin L. on Sunny Day Sabotage

Posted on By aunt john

I've been trying to figure out what the name of this movie was. I think it was a short film that showed between features on HBO or Cinemax in the very early ‘80s. It was about a kid who moved from Earth to another planet where it rained all the time. I can't remember the gender of the Earthling, but he or she was always drawing pictures of the sun. Anyway, the kids on the rain planet didn't believe the protagonist's stories about sunshine, and they taunted him or her, chased them and locked them in a closet.

Wouldn't you know it, right then it stopped raining and the sun came out and all those jerks were running and playing having forgotten about the kid they'd locked up. I know I didn't dream this but I haven't found anyone else who saw it.

Maybe one of your readers remembers it?

AUNT JOHN SEZ: Actually, this is one I remember! It ran on HBO in the early/ mid-'80s and it was based on the RAY BRADBURY short story "All Summer in a Day" and, from what I recall, it always was shown in tandem with the other BRADBURY inspired short "The Electric Grandmother."

Dig out your sunglasses Erin, 'cause here it is in its entirety:

Traumafessions :: Reader Lauren O. on an Aussie T.V. Ad

Posted on By aunt john

One of my childhood trauma inducing characters (along with STEPHEN KING's IT – God, that movie made going to the toilet/taking a bath/cleaning your teeth/walking past drains terrifying for years!) was from an Australian T.V. advertisement in the late ‘80s. Most likely between '86 and '89 when I was at my most impressionable.

I saw the ad broadcast on a 6pm nightly news program, as at the time it was considered quite controversial. I remember the newsreader forebodingly saying, "If you have young children you may want to ask them to leave the room now." I looked sidelong at my Mum and she didn't respond, which I was quite happy about. I don't remember specifics but I believe it was in black and white and set during a funeral at a graveyard. There were sobbing relatives and the camera was following the coffin being carried by two men into the back of a hearse. I remember thinking at this point that it was totally lame and not scary at all and that I was obviously pretty awesome for not being affected, but then it happened! The driver of the hearse turned around and he was some kind of horrifying werewolf-esque monster!! This shocked me more than pretty much anything, ever. I think it was a warning ad of some kind, maybe smoking, AIDS, cancer? I've tried searching the web with what I know and turned up nothing.

Obviously, I pretended that I didn't care so my Mum wouldn't think I was a wuss bag and went to bed as normal not long after. For that night and many, many after I would lie awake in a state of absolute terror seeing the werewolf hearse driver and IT standing in my bedroom doorway, casting long ominous shadows into my room from the hall light, waiting for me to fall asleep so they could come and get me.

I've never really lived down this fear although now it's been replaced by more grown-up fears like demonic possession (thanks to an UNEXPLAINED MYSTERIES style documentary when I was 11), RINGU-esque Japanese yokai stalkers and this bloody image that I know is probably faked but still scares the crap out of me if I start thinking about it in the dark. (See the freaky escaped-mental-patient looking ghost child in the background.)

Thanks for all the great movie recommendations – you guys have horror movie viewing persistence to be admired! xxoo

Kindertrauma Jukebox:: Aliens Rap

Posted on By unkle lancifer

UNK SEZ:: O.K. kids, you may have seen this lil' slice of genius elsewhere today but I've got to post it anyway. Nobody deserves to miss this and it's a great way to start the weekend. (Plus, the "Get away from her you bitch!" portion is borderline orgasmic.)

Name That Trauma :: Stexe of FutureChimp on a Pale-Skinned Pest

Posted on By aunt john

Hey, thanks for all the retro-trauma, and thanks for linking my blog in your sidebar.

I've just spent some time looking back at every "Name That Trauma" post from your most excellent site, and was unable to find any reference to my film in question. I saw it at the theater in 1975 or 1976 as a five or six-year-old, and I'm assuming it was first-run. It was a matinee, but not a kiddie film, as I recall some PG-level sexual content. The most traumatizing bit was a woman with white hair and white skin who was out in the woods and threatening some people in a cabin. She had no lines, but just snarled at the camera. More specifically, there was a Native American Shaman-guy who had some magical powers. At one point, he dumps some powder out of a small leather bag on his belt to create a line across a road. A car drives up and smashes into it, as if it were an invisible wall. That's about all I remember.

I'm sure this movie actually happened. I'd love to see it again to check if that white-skinned woman is as horrifying as I remember, or just laughable in retrospect. Won't someone help?


UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Special thanks to Reader BaronExu for knowing it was SHADOW OF THE HAWK from 1976 with JAN-MICHAEL VINCENT.

Traumafessions :: Reader Clint on the Sounds of Silence

Posted on By aunt john

When I was 4-ish (1978), the big thing for me to watch was public television. WETA Channel 26. MR. ROGERS, SESAME STREET, and THE ELECTRIC COMPANY.

I don't think we got cable until 1981 (when I was 7) or so… Back when A&E and Nick were the same channel, there were 5 movie channels (everyone knows about HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, and even The Movie Channel, but few people remember the Home Theatre Network), and HBO wasn't descrambled but was set at the tap for your house. (Meaning I could get it in my room via a cable split without a cable box, unlike the descrambled channels.)

You know what the most memorable moment of all that programming was for me? Not a specific show, but the period of silence between SESAME STREET and THE ELECTRIC COMPANY; the period of time where the screen is completely black for an unpredictable amount of time (TV programming was not necessarily run by computers back then, and WETA 26 was, after all, a local public station), followed by someone insanely screaming "HEEEYY YOOOOUUU GUYYYYYYYSSSSS!" and THE ELECTRIC COMPANY logo.

Anyway… The silence between the two shows scared the shit out of me. I wasn't scared of the "Hey You Guys!" scream as much as the anticipation of waiting for it to happen. It filled my adrenal gland and my soul with a sense of dread. The same sense of dread I feel today if I wake up and notice that the music has inexplicably stopped playing. Is the power out? Did my computer fry? Will I be able to sleep without anything to entertain me enough to keep my thoughts from madly racing?

I've never been a fan of silence. I listen to music 24/7/365. I don't sit in silence. Period. Ever. Even if I'm sitting outside in the middle of the woods, alone, I'm going to be projecting my hearing as far as possible, trying to hear as many different sounds as possible. It took me awhile to realize that my dislike of silence goes all the way back to the 1970s. At least I'm consistent.

— Clint

Name That Trauma :: Reader J.R. on Public Access Programming

Posted on By aunt john

I recall that when I was in high school, there were a variety of educational, "after school special" kind of shows that would air on one of the local public access channels. They were all pretty old (from the ‘70s and ‘80s, and they dealt with the subjects that one would come to expect from such programming (alcoholism, dating, illness, friendships, etc.)

When I was 18, in the spring of 2000, (maybe a little too old to be scared by a public access show??), I was home early from school after exams. I happened to flip to the public access channel, which was airing a show about a young mother living with HIV. She had two young children, and I believe she had moved in with her sister so her sister could help care for her and her kids. This all sounds fairly innocuous, and at first it was. However, during the last 10 minutes or so, things began to change. First, there was a scene where the kids and their mother were playing a board game (maybe Monopoly?) because they were stuck inside due to the rain. The scene cuts to the kitchen, and all of a sudden one of the kids runs into the room and yells, "Aunt so-and-so, mommy cut her hand in the living room and there's blood everywhere!!" Then you see the mother with her bloody hand wrapped in a towel or something.

Things became even more unsettling in the next scene (after the bleeding had stopped). It's the middle of the night, and the mother is sitting alone in her bedroom with the lights on, and she's staring into a mirror, covered in sweat, and sobbing. The camera then zoomed in on her face, all sweaty and teary, and lingered there for about ten seconds before her sister came in and consoled her. That scene really freaked the shit out of me. What added to the creepiness of this show was the face of the woman who played the mother; she had a really nasty, curly brown rats' nest of hair, and her features were very harsh and angular. I recall that her lips were very thin and almost pursed as well.

The last thing I remember is that the show ended with the woman and her sister saying the rosary on the porch, and during the credits, the name of some Catholic production company came up. I don't know if anyone out there has seen this, but it really disturbed me at the time I saw it. I really love the site, and I hope someone out there has seen this show and was also disturbed by it. Thanks!

Stigmata

Posted on By unkle lancifer

I guess every horror movie dealing with religious themes born after 1973 must get up in the morning, brush its teeth, look in the mirror and say solemnly to itself, "I'm not THE EXORCIST." STIGMATA's morning ritual must be more disheartening than most; "I'm not THE EXORCIST, CHUMBAWUMA plays over my opening credits AND I take place in Pittsburgh." Keep passing those open windows STIGMATA!

Actually, me thinks this flashy fin de siecle spooker merely masquerades as an EXCORCIST wannabe, what it secretly wants to dress up as is THE THORN BIRDS. Seriously, the "will they or won't they?" electricity between wacky hairdresser/inflatable chair connoisseur Frankie Paige (PATRICIA ARQUETTE) and pasty and chastey smolder-boulder Father Andrew Kierman (monolith beaked, black Irish centerfold GABRIEL BYRNE) is of such wattage that I couldn't stop hearing the theme from MOONLIGHTING in my head.

I'd loved to delve into the horrific aspects of STIGMATA, but they are virtually non-existent. My advice is, break out the Häagen-Dazs and sweat pants; this is a sexually repressed girly-girl goth fantasy on par with TWILIGHT. All the supernatural elements on display here seem tailor made to allow Frankie to get all googly eyed and date-rapey over an unavailable man without ever having to worry about loosing face. First her wrists begin to bleed (every cutter knows this is a great way to catch your dreamdate's eye) then she gets possessed (the perfect excuse to say inappropriate things without ever being accountable) and needless to say, ultimately an outdoor café is involved. Hey, I'm not judging, we are talking about GABBY BYRNE here.

Sadly for horror fans Frankie doesn't even bother getting possessed by Satan, instead she is forced to be the spokesperson for a dead priest who's got a super secret message from Jesus that the church would rather you not hear. Yes, the church is EVIL in STIGMATA! Apparently Jesus meant to tell you that you can worship him from home and that you don't even have to bother going to church. Wha-wha-what? Nice going Jesus, while you're at it, why not just tell everybody that McDonald's secret sauce is really just Thousand Island Dressing? Some of us are trying to make a living down here, ya know!

STIGMATA is indisputable trash, hardly horror and very noticeably uninterested in its own subject matter yet it does possess a certain come hither Lifetime movie charm that's difficult to completely renounce. Director RUPERT WAINRIGHT (who would later take a dump in a handbag and call it a remake of THE FOG) goes completely overboard with the visuals, so much so that much of the movie feels like being trapped in a very leaky URBAN OUTFITTERS, but oh, doesn't 1999 look sparkly and adorable in its naiveté? Maybe I'm just a Mr. Softy for MTV flavored tales sprinkled with unrequited love, but I'd slap the hand of anyone who tried to turn this shit off. I kinda always knew I had the heart of a teenage girl but STIGMATA proves that I have the heart of a not very bright teenage girl with buck teeth, glasses and a regrettable perm.

Kinder-Link :: Haunted Closet's Spooky Little Rascals

Posted on By unkle lancifer

When your Unk was a critter way back in the seventies they used to air THE LITTLE RASCALS shorts on television every Sunday morning. My favorite was one where the gang unknowingly gets trapped in a haunted funhouse ride. I remember watching every Sunday just hoping that they would show that one again. Leave it to THE HAUNTED CLOSET to dedicate an entire post to spooky LITTLE RASCALS' episodes including that favorite of mine (turns out it's called HIDE AND SHRIEK). Make sure that you check out this wonderful post HERE.

Name That Trauma :: Reader Tony M. on a Creepy Christmas Flick

Posted on By aunt john

I remember a movie from the late 1960s/early 1970s that was a Christmas anthology (I think.)

The only thing I remember is an image of a toy soldier in a waterfall/river/body of water and that of a little girl.

I vaguely remember the term "Kris Kringle" used in the movie trailer, and that it was shown as a double feature with THE CHRISTMAS THAT ALMOST WASN'T (again, I think.)

I also remember that it was somewhat creepy.

Any ideas? I would love to complete this partial memory…..

Sincerely,

Tony M.