Stir of Echoes
Underrated and unpretentious KEVIN BACON plays underrated and unpretentious working stiff Tom Witzkey in STIR OF ECHOES. Tom, an ordinary guy who resents his ordinariness inadvertently becomes extraordinary when he allows himself to be hypnotized by his sister-in-law Lisa (habitual scene stealer ILLEANA DOUGLAS). Quirky Lisa has a long history of clashing with Tom's grounded, prosaic view of the universe so after rummaging around in his head a bit she leaves a suggestion that he keep it all kinds of wide open in the future. Soon the once level headed and under stimulated Tom is exposing emotions previously kept under wraps and experiencing psychic phenomenon that he can't control or understand. See what happens when you let down your guard for one second Tom? The ghosts, they come a knocking!
STIR OF ECHOES is an unassuming, straight shooting supernatural thriller that got elbowed out of the limelight by flashy juggernaut THE SIXTH SENSE way back in the olden days of 1999. STIR covers similar ground as SENSE involving a crime that must be exposed in order for its victim to cross over to the other side and it even has a kid (Tom's son Jake ZACHARY DAVID COPE) who sees dead people. With its focus on character development and aversion to spectacle perhaps STIR, based on a novel by RICHARD MATHESON, would have been better suited for the small screen in the first place. Its strongest scenes rely on slightly tweaking everyday occurrences and its weakest involve needless C.G.I. and clumsily staged shock cuts.
On the other hand, STIR OF ECHOES the movie may suffer from the same complex as its main character; sometimes its commitment to efficiency blocks it from being truly spectacular. You can't help feeling obliged to give it props for its earnest, responsible approach, but one wonders (particularly during a simple scene involving a ghost high jacking an episode of LIDSVILLE on T.V.) just how much more trippy and mind screwy it could have been if it just loosened up its blue collar and went nuts.
One of STIR's undeniable feats is creating a neighborhood setting that actually comes across as real and inhabiting it with the type of humans that you might come across on any given day. I'm not sure throwing a pair of horned rim glasses on a lovely starlet (JENNIFER MORRISON) convinces me that she is a mentally challenged loner, but the intention is appreciated and that particular misstep happens late in the game. There are a few pointless pit stops and our ghost's methods of getting her message across seem needlessly roundabout but the story is never less than intriguing and even if you see its final revelation coming from a mile away, you'll want to stick around to watch how it effects the likable characters.
NOTE: Speaking of letting your freak flag fly, the potential expressive power of art and the film career of ILLEANA DOUGLAS, let's take a moment to watch the short film MIRROR, FATHER, MIRROR by artist Roberta Allsworth. Not only does it reveal what it's like to inhabit its creator's specific skin, it's got kindertrauma written all over it!
Traumafessions :: Reader Kahotep on Creepy Movie Trailers
Loving the site, folks, though I wish I had proper access during the day to answer some of the questions first…
You got me thinking about some more of the work which scared me as a tot, and something which definitely remains fixed in my mind were some of the T.V. commercials for horror movies in the mid-to-late '70s. Four stick in my mind especially:
DAWN OF THE DEAD: That rolling scroll warning that no one under seventeen will be permitted into the theatre – with the zombies bursting into the elevator! Could never ride an elevator the same way after that, I always stood at the side of the doors, presumably so they couldn't get me.
PROPHECY: This image of a deformed bear fetus coming closer into view while an announcer says something about it being "15 feet tall and a gazillion tons in weight" or something – and then some attack scene where a kid in a sleeping bag gets mauled and feathers from the sleeping bag fly everywhere. Or something.
PHANTASM: Random clips of the Silver Sphere flying around, and the Tall Man pulling the kid in through a mirror…
And probably most profoundly, SUSPIRIA: It opens with a view of the back of the head of a woman brushing her blonde hair (and puts a flower into her hair too?), while a little girl sings "Roses are red/Violets are blue/This little flower… will be the end of you!" And the "woman" turns around to reveal a…
Okay, it's a skeleton in a blonde wig. I know that now. I know it was a cheap little advertisement for a rotten little film.
Damned if it still doesn't give me a bit of a chill…
Anyway, thought I'd share that and find out if anyone else underwent similar traumas. Keep up the good work!
Regards,
Kahotep
AUNT JOHN SEZ: Actually Kahotep, you are not alone! Readers Bilgin & FatherOfTears have gone on record about the skeleton from the SUSPIRIA trailer and David has discussed the infamous baby bear in PROPHECY.
Traumafessions :: Reader Danny R. on Evil Ed's Demise in Fright Night
This scene has haunted me for a while. I was going through a vampire phase during the 6th grade, and had fallen in love with THE LOST BOYS. I loved the bloody effects and the dark humor. Well, since I liked it so much, my father got me one of those "two-for-one" packs, vampire themed, with a DVD copy of THE LOST BOYS. The other DVD was FRIGHT NIGHT, which my cousin Derrick told my parents was perfectly okay for me to watch, and no worse than lost boys. And, for the most part, it wasn't. In fact, the blood throughout the first half of the movie was nothing compared to the constant slashing in THE LOST BOYS. I liked it a lot, and it would have been my new favorite if it weren't for one terrible scene: The death of Evil Ed.
I think what made it so brutal was the fact that, unlike the guys in THE LOST BOYS (who, to me, all looked like full-grown adults), Evil Ed was just a kid. He was probably my favorite character in the movie. Now, I would have been more than okay if he had simply been staked and died as a werewolf. But he didn't. After screaming his brains out for a good forty seconds as a hellish dog-beast, he turns back into a 14-year-old kid. And then he continues to squirm in agony, making possibly the most gut-wrenching noises ever recorded on film.
But I would have been okay if it weren't for a single shot. Just the two second shot of the young boy, covered in blood and throwing his head back, eyes full of unimaginable pain, still has the ability to chill me. He doesn't die in a comic way, or a "gross" way. He dies in the exact way that you would expect a 14-year-old with a table leg through his chest to die, screaming in agony. For such a light movie, it's an incredibly intense and heavy scene that STILL makes me feel more ill than anything in a SAW/HOSTEL movie. Needless to say, I ran from the room and didn't watch it again until last year when I turned fifteen. But every time I watch it, those screams stick with me for days after.
Name That Trauma :: Reader Em E. on a Deadly Doll
Firstly great site!
Secondly, I have a kindertrauma that's been haunting me FOREVER!!
It was either part of an anthology or a movie or part of a series but it starts with these group of men who go to a summer house (I'm pretty sure it was set in the '30s or '40s and all the men are on a break from college and are all wearing wicker hats and those stripey blazers. Anyway, they end up coming across this doll (a porcelain doll I think) and one by one the doll kills them all. In one of the death scenes one of the men is in bed and the bedroom door is closed with light shining through under the bottom, then you see two small feet (the doll's) appear as shadows.
Cut to the ending and I'm pretty sure the last remaining bloke is left to dispose of the doll, they stuff it in a picnic hamper and he loads it into the back of his car and just as you think everything's alright and he'll get out of it, the camera pans out from the car driving away and it begins to veer off into the side of the road indicating that the doll got him…
I know it's a long shot but this petrified me for years and still to this day I cannot remember what it was, but I'd love to see it again.
Thanks,
Em
UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Special thanks to Reader DavidFullam for recognizing it as STEPHEN WEEKS' GHOST STORY (a.k.a ASYLUM).
Name That Trauma :: Hayden of The Hmmm on Prematurely Gray, Mute Boy
Okay…so usually I'm pretty good at figuring out the…"what the hell was that thing I saw on T.V. as a kid…" game.
However…there is one (well 3 actually…) that have been bugging me for years!
Okay…so unfortunately I only remember 2 scenes from this movie.
It was on television around 1985 or so because I don't think I could have been older than 4 or 5.
The first scene I remember is a brother and sister with a group of their friends. There is an old abandoned house and perhaps they're on the roof? Anyway…they all keep daring each other to go inside and finally the brother creeps in through a window.
He sees something inside that terrifies him and when it shows him again he has hair turned white.
The following scene is the next morning…the brother and sister are sitting at the breakfast table with their father. We now learn the boy has also turned mute.
Aaaaand that's all I've retained =P
Anyway…have an awesome day and keep up the great work on your blog!
It helps my day go by so much faster <3
AUNT JOHN SEZ: Hmmm Hayden (see what I did there?), I honestly have no idea what this movie is. The original PROM NIGHT initially came to mind, with its horseplay gone awry in an abandoned setting, but nobody turned gray or mute in that one, just homicidal on the dance floor.
What I do know is that I straight up adore the cavalcade of Kindertraumatic masks prominently featured in Hayden's (& Jacob's) video for Bioluminescense:
To hear more from The Hmmm, check 'em out HERE, and if anyone knows the name of Hayden's trauma, you know what to do:
Traumafessions :: Reader Michel Z. on Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction; ep. "The Mirror of Truth"
3 a.m. and I couldn't sleep, I was alone in my bedroom. I turned on my T.V. and I find this show called BEYOND BELIEF: FACT OR FICTION, where five weird tales are depicted, and in the end, the host tells whether they were true stories or not.
I handled the first four stories quite well, although they were pretty scary. And by the end I was getting sleepy; my mind already half asleep.
And then, the final story, where a beautiful but vain and shallow lady gets punished by a witch; the lady now has a skin disease and looks horrible. She goes to the doctor covered with a mask. By the end of the story, the girl reveals her face. WOAH. My heart instantly turned at full speed, I jumped from my bed: one of the scariest moments I've ever had.
I couldn't find it on youtube; it's the 32 episode, from the third season, the short is called THE MIRROR OF TRUTH.
Name That Traumatot :: Round 12
Hey gang, it's that time again. Time for NAME THAT TRAUMATOT! Are you excited? O.K., the screen captures are on the sucky side because I'm getting to the bottom of the barrel and some of these are a bit obscure but hey, who cares? It's Friday, and I'm in love…with trauma!
Blood, Candy & Tears
The ending of LUCKYEE MCGEE's MAY is enough to leave one of our dear readers (Gillig) in tears. I totally get that because between you and me and the lamp post, the ending of CANDYMAN has the same effect on me (Oh man, when everyone shows up to VIRGINIA MADSEN's funeral…hold on, I have something in my eye…) What about you guys? Any horror movie make you turn on the waterworks? If not, what movie brought you the closest to loosing it? How about that dog in FLY 2? I know that got some of you! Leave a comment, share, purge, heal..
May
May's got some serious social problems; her desire to connect with others is at such a fever pitch that her needy frequency just ends up scaring folks away. What is it that could make a creative, smart, adorably attractive young lady like May a jittery, mumbling, palm-raping, cat assassinating, Shleprockian outsider with a romantic track record to rival Pepe Lepew? Why, it's just gots to be kindertrauma! You heard that right, kindertrauma; the flavor you savor for life!
At the beginning of LUCKY MCGEE's ode to Frankenstein, laundromats and hobo patches, we learn that as a child, titular character May (a stitching her way into legendary status ANGELA BETTIS) didn't quite fit in with her peers. Before you say "Take a number, sister," let me inform you that poor little mini-May (CHANDLER RILEY HECHT) had to wear a pirate patch on account of her eye being lazier than a Sunday morning hammock ride. Worse yet, her mom was one of those type "A" personalities — care to guess what "A" stands for? — always singing the praises of "perfection," a word that should never be used unless you are talking about a pop-up puzzle game from Milton Bradley.
Mom tells little May "If you can't find a friend, make one," and presents her with a handmade doll on her birthday. This gesture might have been sweet if mom didn't also inform May that the doll must never be touched and must be kept in a glass box forever. Although Suzy the doll does make a grand pal for the most part, May's lifelong frustration with never being able to touch or feel her friend echoes her social discomfort and has a ripple effect that eventually results in a lot of BREEDERS music being played and ANNA FARRIS getting her throat slashed by duel scalpels.
As is often the fates' hilarious sense of humor, the time period before adult May's spiral into the abyss of howling madness and multiple homicides is that of rejuvenation and hope. After May has her eye fixed it seems all her childhood traumas are fixed too. She now has a new lease on life and is excited to share herself with others in a way previously thought impossible. Adam (SIX FEET UNDER's JEREMY SISTO) appears to be the perfect dream date, what with all his curly dark locks and admiration for ARGENTO. As it turns out though, Adam only likes to make movies about people biting each other, he doesn't like to be bitten so much himself, and when May tries to connect with him on what she perceives as his own level, she ends up with egg (and blood) on her face.
Don't fret May! There are other guys out there and besides who cares about dudes when Polly (ANNA FARRIS) is barking up your tree? Polly ain't a poseur, she won't sweat a bite or two, but look out May, she's not a one woman lady either! Broken hearted and scorned from every angle, May makes the only choice anyone ever can in such a situation and decides to chop off the good parts of those that torment her, scrap the crappy parts, sew all that junk together and make a decent person who can give a gal a break; but not before causing a bit of kindertrauma herself…
Sufferers of childhood trauma here's a cure for what ails ya… cause some trauma your own darn self! Sometime before our May has her, "Ah-hah, I'll just kill everybody!" moment (something that would never be approved of by OPRAH) she passes the kindertrauma baton on to a bunch of unsuspecting tykes. Having spied some blind children in her favorite park and feeling an affinity with their reliance on the act of touching in order to see, May volunteers at their school, and decides to introduce them to her BFF Suzy the doll. Only problem is, Suzy is behind glass so the kids can't check her out at all, attempts to do so result in her case smashing on the floor and the children groping around in broken glass with bleeding fingers in an attempt to "see" her. (I gotta hand it to Suzy; for a doll that is not possessed, doesn't carry a weapon and never becomes animated in anyway, she sure causes a ruckus!) Luckily, MAY has a happy ending where death and insanity grab the reigns of reality and yell "Giddy-up!" Poor May's ordeal might be over, but just think of the stories those blind kids will be able to tell!
