Aunt and Unc;

This is why this site continues to amaze me; in that, not only have I seen the common traumas that we seem to have all shared, but now and again, I see the "obscure; this could only be something I would remember" type. It's uncanny, actually.

I never knew the name of the song, Angie Baby. What I remembered was a cartoon video to a song, but it contradicted itself in that music videos didn't come out for at least another 15 years. It was very repetitive, and about a girl who turned down a radio and shrunk some guy, who was never seen again.

And lo and behold, there it is. I knew it from the first five seconds, honestly.

My traumas, and I've written quite a few now, were never the blood and gore related ones, since I don't think we ever gravitated towards that kind of fare. They were always the "uneasiness from within a familiar niche" type, much like this innocuous cartoon, that, even though bound by nature to its friendly kid fodder media, churned out something unsettling.

Nowadays, I would think all bets are off, as far more gruesome and shocking cartoons can be seen any given day.

But since now the gauntlet has been dropped, I'm going to throw out my last challenge if you care to dredge this one up, or see if any others know what I'm talking about. It's probably the silliest one yet, but it's old, and hard to find. And if this one gets a hit, and someone can verify it, I will regard this as the Mecca of all sites, and retire from my submissions thoroughly satisfied, and eternally grateful.

This comes from the TONY ORLANDO AND DAWN days…and is from a variety show of the early ‘70s, probably somewhat musical, and probably comedy. My first choice is the SMOTHERS BROTHERS, although it may be LAUGH-IN or one of those. It was on at night.

There is a skit where someone is singing a ditty about some guy, who at least for part of the song, is in a grocery store. Maybe the guy is henpecked, or feels guilty of something…it was more for adults I would wager. You don't see the singer, just the guy acting out the song. There is a laugh-track, or a studio audience somehow present.

Anyway, he's shopping for groceries, thinking about whatever the song is about, and the singer delivers the line (paraphrased) until he saw his mother's face in the cauliflower…

The camera zooms in a head of cauliflower, and they (in ‘70s style) superimpose two eyes and a set of lips, which sings the rest of the song in a nagging awful voice. The super-imposing isn't good, and wobbles around, and the eyes and lips kind of move around as it sings. I don't think the eyes and mouth were from the same super-imposing…since they didn't line up to each other, making it even worse.

It looked hideous. I'm guessing 1970 on this one. I was no older than 4 or 5.

Bigwig

UNK SEZ: BIgwig, I may be wrong but something tells me that this trauma may be lost in the sands of time forever; but think of it this way, if you were watching a seventies variety program and the most traumatic thing you saw was a talking cabbage, then you my friend got off easy…

Hi there, I just stumbled across your site the other day and I'm loving it! I've got a Name That Trauma that I've been wondering about for the past 30 years. Wow, typing that just made me even more aware of my own mortality. But that's another trauma.

The one in question was a series of animated shorts that came on PBS sometime in the mid-to-late ‘70s. I must have been about 5 and my sister and I were at my aunt and uncle's house and were left with our cousins in a spare bedroom to watch "cartoons". Well, the first one starts off nice and pleasant as a man goes frolicking around in a field catching butterflies in a net for his collection back home. He pins them into his little display box and they look very pretty, besides, bugs don't have feeling, right? Right?

Cut to his next collection session and out of nowhere, a huge, school bus sized butterfly swoops down and snatches him up by the scruff of his neck. As he struggles, the giant, animated Monarch flings him onto a thorn of an incredibly large flower impaling him! As he slides down further onto the huge thorn, we are panned back to see all the other unfortunate human specimens in the butterfly's collection.

There was another one with a guy cutting off the top of his own head and putting his brain in the refrigerator or something, but it was the butterfly one that really got me. Hopefully you can help me figure out just what the hell these demented shorts were!

Thanks and keep up the disturbing work,

Jeff R.

UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! It appears to be a short from the International Festival of Animation.

Hello:

I've been looking for this ‘80s horror movie for a long time.

So, teenager boy moves into a new school and neighborhood. There's an accident and one of the kids dies; so he starts to investigate, suspicious that it was murder. Soon, he discovers that most of the town people are these elastic-flesh monsters – including his dream girl (that is not as mean as the others) and her whole family. These people consume normal humans in rituals where their flesh becomes very elastic (gooey), and they absorb it. In one of the scenes, the father is with the wife and daugther in bed, and he sticks his head out of the daughters butt or something like that (gross); the teen fights the elastic flesh monster "party."

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Carlos

UNK SEZ: I know this one, it has to be the first film from director BRIAN YUZNA, 1989's SOCIETY! What a weird flick! It's a bit clunky in places but the special effects from SCREAMING MAD GEORGE are awe inspiring. I'm pretty prone to loving any film that involves a secret cult, so a flick about a secret cult that is made out of silly putty and devours those less fortunate than themselves is aces in my book!

NOTE: The brave amongst you can watch SOCIETY's climax HERE!