To save space in your in-box, I have documented my Kindertrauma through the eternal medium of YouTube video. To wit: in the early 1980s there was a series of dolls called the HuggaBunch. They had huge heads and eerie glassy eyes, and they were introduced to the world via an hour-long made-for-T.V. movie. The scene in the video below has not left my head for twenty-four years.
AUNT JOHN SEZ: To see more musings by quizzicalsphinx, check out her blog HERE.
I, like many other people, like to think that I have always had a high tolerance for horror. "Not so," says the Truth. And lo, the Truth hath spoken, but I'm being totally honest when I say there are very few things that have actually managed to frighten me to the point of H.P. LOVECRAFT-inspired insanity.
Case in point: THE PHANTOM OF THE MOTHERFUCKIN' OPERA. Naturally, the B&W version.
I must've been about four years old—arguably the quintessential age for trauma. The mums and I were down in the basement watching TV, making a mother-daughter connection that only good TV watching can produce when…she turned the channel. And Sweet Allah eating breadsticks, there was LON CHANEY with his sunken eyes, sunken face, and absolutely FUCKED-UP nose. Forget the de-masking, the monster had already been revealed, and all I could do was sit there, scrunched up between my mom and an end-table, scared stiff. My mom didn't notice anything—shoot, I didn't notice anything: I couldn't even shake from the fear. What made it even more terrifying? Sitting there, even when I remember there was no tangible reason for my having to stay there while my mom smoked her Benson & Hedges, reading the dialogue all calmly and quietly. I could've left; I could've taken my beloved Play-Doh with me and gone somewhere else. But no, I chose Hell.
I don't remember how, but afterwards I put two-and-two together and associated the movie with the musical (that's an especially scary thought, considering, y'know, ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER). Two years later, I heard the theme on the car radio while riding with my dad and I became nearly paralyzed with dread. After we got out of the car, it kind of tapered off into a sort-of dull, morose feeling. It felt like it settled into my shoulder blades and would never leave. My dad and I played Frisbee for a while, and I remember feeling so distressed because I consciously tried to get that feeling to go away and it wouldn't. The song was stuck. The image was stuck. I was stuck. Frisbee couldn't save me.
The worst part, for me anyway, was just how popular and recognizable THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA was in its many incarnations. There was an NBA half-time show that featured the infamous duet between the Phantom and Christine. I couldn't fucking believe it. All I could do was bury my little head in the sofa cushions and pretend to take a nap for what felt like HOURS before I thought it was safe. It was in THE MUPPET BABIES for Christ's sake! Gonzo opens a door and BOOM, LON "THAT FACE" CHANEY. I gazed up at the ceiling long after it was over wondering who in the hell thought that was a great idea to broadcast on daytime T.V. It was one thing to be initially exposed to it, but to have it appear in the most unlikely of places? How much trauma can a kid take?
Over the following year, my fear of anything to do with THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA tapered off dramatically. My friend actually burned the soundtrack for me a couple years ago, and I listened to it until I developed a low-tolerance for Broadway musicals. Now I see "THAT FACE" and have the inexplicable urge to get some piano wire and tie it around my face so I can look terrifying. I have been thinking about changing my vocation…maybe I should get into the movie biz? Be the next harbinger of nightmares and kindertraumas? "B.A. in Fucking Scary Shit" sounds better on a resume than "B.A. in Psychology."
Kindertrauma…what a site! Surely the only thing better than poring through confessions would be to submit one of my own…but someone's already purged themselves of HERBIE HANCOCK'S ‘Rockit', and my other trauma may be a little too obscure. I do have a Name That Trauma, but it's not a film. It's a game. A board game, of all things. Is that allowed? I'll press on anyway…
Late 1980's U.K. – I was 9-ish and enjoying the last day of term before summer holidays. It was tradition for us kidlets to bring toys and games on the last day, and one boy had brought in an odd board game. The first unnerving thing was that no one seemed to want to play it. He eventually scrounged a few victims, me included, and we huddled in a corner away from all the Guess Who's and Mouse Traps.
Now I loved my Horror Top Trumps. Indeed, I was one of those designated odd-kids who love anything creepy or monsterish or plain weird. But this? This was different.
I remember the actual board being quite large, the players looking down through an invisible ceiling of a many-roomed castle. Each room had a different and nightmarish feature. One showed a wall weeping from a pair of drooping eyes. Another was The Bloody Room, the walls splashed with gore.
Then there were the game cards. I think they represented monsters the player had to encounter upon entering certain rooms. I only remember two clearly; the Spider Woman was one, her arachnid body capped with freakish human face. The second was a demure looking woman in profile. On the back of her head, nudging through her hair, gaped a pair of inhuman, fleshy lips. Oh God.
But the rotten cherry on top is this; the centre of the board held a grey plastic mound with three or so holes. Each player had a small plastic sword. At the crux of the game players would push the sword into a hole to hear one of three sound effects; a fanfarish sound that meant you had won the duel against the invisible opponent, a metal clash signifying a draw, or, worst of all, a sinister chuckle.
Even now I shiver when I remember that chuckle, or my brain throws up the memory of Skull-Mouth Lady.
Everyone I mention it to thinks it's Atmosfear (it's not), or that game where a glow-in-the dark skull falls down plastic stairs (nope again).
Please, Kindertrauma, help me learn what this bloody evil game was!
UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Special thanks to reader senski for knowing that the game in question is called HORROR HOUSE.
*For those looking for an even freakier take, and we do mean this literally, pop on over to the incredible Popped Culture and check out the second clip. Special thanks to Popped Culture's Jeremy for bringing this to our attention.
Dear Kindertrauma,
I have the vague memory of a film that has left me wary of gifts received on Valentine's Day (especially ones that are wrapped and stuffed into boxes) ever since watching bits of it one Saturday afternoon as a six year-old child. I really need help identifying the title so I can feel more at ease, and hopefully be able to find out more about the film so I can at least chuckle about how ridiculous I've been over it throughout the past years.
The film's setting revolves around Valentine's Day, and many events had happened prior to the scene, which fascinated, yet frightened me. I do not care to explain what took place, due to time restrictions and the fact that I really don't want you to waste your time editing my submission.
Anywho, in this scene we are now at the house of a snobby girl in her late teenage years who carelessly wrecked her car days before, killing her baby. She is relaxing by the pool on a white lawn chair, supposedly trying to get a tan (which looked more like a sunburn to me at the time), when suddenly, the phone in the kitchen rings. She gets up out of the chair to go answer it, moaning and groaning all the while about how she 'cannot get any relaxation without people bothering her.'
"Hello?!" she answers in the most sarcastic-sounding voice that any human being could ever muster, but all she gets in return is an annoying dial-tone. The girl grumbles again, turns around to go continue to burn herself to a crisp in the sun, but then she stops. On the counter, right in front of her, is a beautiful white gift box adorned with an adorable red ribbon. She excitedly picks up the box and heads back out onto the patio to open it.
Back on the patio, the girl is already making little "ooh" and "aww" noises as she sits back down in the lawn chair and begins unwrapping her gift.
Now, here is the scene that has forever embedded itself into my mind, although I don't really count it as a trauma since it failed to actually frighten me to up the point of wetting myself.
As the girl unwraps the unexpected gift, her excited expression quickly turns to one of horror as she discovers what is actually inside of the box; a more gruesome, mutilated version of the infant that was killed in the car accident.
The region of i's skull that was smashed in from the impact is now replaced by a gaping hole, and the monstrosity moves its limbs in a robotic-like (it was an animatronic model) fashion as it lets loose horrible screeching noises that could easily be mistaken for a sharp object being grated across a chalkboard. The bawling horror then emits another screech, leaps out of the box, and latches itself onto the panicked girl's face and begins to viciously tear at it.
You are the last source I know of that I can turn to.
And if you happen to find the film's title, I would be forever grateful!
— Matterly
Ten more traumatots, ten more movies to identify. How many do you know?
Greetings from Mexico City:
First of all I have to say, that your website is one of the best I've ever found on the web.
Keep up the good work, because it seems I´m getting addicted to small bits of forgotten horrors… hehe.
Well, here is my little contribution. It may not be one of the best horror films but back in the day I watched it and it gave me some paranoiac feeling about my schoolmates… haha.
This is an ‘80s Mexican movie that features a small evil girl that will do everything she likes until she gets what she desires.
Its name is VENENO PARA LAS HADAS (POISON FOR THE FAIRIES), even though it's not a typical horror film, I think it slides in the small cracks of our minds.
I found this small but complete synopsis about the film.
Now I will talk about my kindertrauma and just watching that disturbing scene looking for more info to send to you made me uneasy.
When I was a small child, there were T.V. spots from one of the Mexican Government Culture Ministries. They were common stuff during the ‘80s, most of them were about European or art movies. In one of these T.V. spots I got the biggest kindertrauma I can remember.
It was one cloudy afternoon before a thunderstorm (great cliché ) and I was playing with my toy soliders and stuff when I got the glimpse of a weird movie being advertised on T.V.
The image that still give me bumps and nausea is the one where a guy sharpens his razor at his balcony door and tests the razor on his thumb. He then opens the door, and idly fingers the razor while gazing at the moon, about to be engulfed by a thin cloud, from his balcony. There is a cut to a close-up of a younger woman, being held by this guy as she watches in the camera direction. Another cut occurs to the moon being overcome by the cloud as the man slits the girls´ eye with the razor.
I was horrified at what I just watched, and when another of those T.V. spots threatened to appear any time of the day I will switch the channel as fast as I could. At least I knew that those spots only lasted a couple of weeks, so I dared to watch the first seconds of the T.V. spot to see if it has already changed.
Later I made a little research and found out that this movie is one of the greatest surrealistic movies ever made, even SALVADOR DALÃ had something to do with it.
The movie is UN CHIEN ANDALU (AN ANDULUSIAN DOG) from LUIS BUÑUEL and here is the creepiest and scariest scene I´ve ever seen:
UNK SEZ: Dear Alex V., thanks for the kind words and your wonderful traumafession. Before we started this website, I thought I had seen just about every scary movie but thanks to readers like you I realize that there are many more to see and learn about. Tracking down VENENO PARA LAS HADAS is now on the top of my list of things to do. It sounds amazing!
As for UN CHIEN ANDALU, you are not alone in being effected by that little stunner. In fact it even inspired one of my favorite PIXIES tunes! "Got me a movie, ha ha ha hoa, slicing up eyeballs, ha ha ha hoa!"…
I've thrown this one out to the Internet hordes before, with no luck. Help me, Obi-wan K'trauma! You're my only hope.
I saw this movie on late-night T.V. around 1976, give or take a few years. It was probably on SAMMY TERRY on Channel Four in Indianapolis. (If you don't know SAMMY TERRY, he's worth a look. Check out the link — it's even got Nixon!)
Anyway, I remember this movie in black-and-white, but we had a B&W T.V., so it may have been in color, no thanks to my cheapskate Dad.
The opening scene involves some unscrupulous capitalists dropping nuclear waste on an old shipwreck. Through the magic of double-exposure, we see the nuclear waste transform the dead pirates into gill-men.
The next scene I remember is the gill-men coming up on land and menacing some bathing beauties. The image that is seared into my pre-'tween memory is of a gill-man disemboweling a bathing beauty by gently stroking his claws along her abdomen, releasing a torrent of Hershey's Syrup. It was the most gore I'd seen at that point in my life. And it looked really fake.
The movie I'm thinking of is most definitely not THE HORROR OF PARTY BEACH, which is an awesome film that I recommend to everyone. Nor is it the Italian-made, ROGER CORMAN-produced THE ISLAND OF THE FISHMEN. I have seen these, and ruled them out.
Instead of writing what scared me before, I will write about what scares me now, which is still Kindertrauma since I am only twelve. Marilyn Manson's video for his song Sweet Dreams, which is a cover of the Eurythmics classic, never fails to scare the crap out of me. It is of the king of creepy, Marilyn Manson being creepy in a creepy cathedral while his creepy band mates play the creepy song. As you see, this adds up to ultimate creepiness. I have seen lots of creepy things, but this has to top my list.
My father's computer has a screensaver that shows the album art of all the albums on his iTunes. One of his favorite singers was a folksy singer named Cat Power. She was way cool, but she had one album called What Would the Community Think that had an album cover showing a face with two black bars on the sides that went over left and right side of the face, leaving only the middle colored, except for both eyes, which remained normally colored. At night, whenever I would get up for the restroom, this cover would never fail to be on the computer in my dad's office. The way the eyes stood out made my freak, and I would close my eyes whenever I walked past the computer at night. I would always imagine the eyes in my room staring at me when I got back to the bed. Now that I see the album art again, I don't know why the eyes scared me so much. I guess to a little kid like me, anything was scary.
UNK SEZ: Maxon, I feel your pain. Those MARILYN MANSONS are creeping me out. Just be ever thankful that, unlike myself, you were not raised listening to the voluptuous horror of HELEN REDDY….
Was it really a whole year ago that we here at Kindertrauma declared that the day after Mother's Day will forever hence forth be known as Arbogast Day? Check your calendars kids because yesterday was indeed Mother's Day and that means you know what today is… Arbogast Day!
Arbogast Day celebrates all that is fellow blogger Arborgast of the stellar blog ARBOGAST ON FILM. We are not the type to let a restraining order or two cramp our style either. How does one celebrate such a day you may be asking yourself? One way is to spend a moment or two reflecting upon what Arbogast may be doing at this very minute. Is he writing? Is he painting a portrait? Could he be taking a bubble bath or is he more of the shower type?
Another way to celebrate Arborgast Day is to take a cue from the type of post that made him our hero. Arbogast coined the phrase "The one you might have saved," when he waxed philosophic about the horror film victims that maybe should have lived. Of course horror films need their dead folks, but we all have a favorite character or two that we find it painful to say goodbye to. With that in mind both Auntie John and myself have selected our own personal choices of film characters that we wish could have lived. (It is our plan to do this every year on Arbogast Day until such time as we forget to or the world ends.) Check our choices out, tell us what yours are and make sure you stop by and visit good ol' Arbogast HERE!
Aunt John's choice:: THE BAD SEED's RHODA PENMARK
They always say it's a real tragedy when a young life is cut short. Your Aunt John says it's an even greater tragedy when the work of a murderous child is cut short. Had Rhoda Penmark not gone out in a well-lighted blaze of glory at the end of THE BAD SEED, she was to have gone sun bathing on the roof with her frumpy neighbor and pretend Aunt, Monica Breedlove. Based on the final bedtime interaction between Rhoda and her father, the pig-tailed psychopath was set to inherit a lovebird named Sweetsie in the event her Aunt Monica ever died or went away. Rhoda Penmark was a take charge little girl who made things happen, and had she survived that lightening attack on the dock, she would have made that date with Aunt Monica. She would have also facilitated some tragic slip and fall for the bombastic Breedlove and snared herself a lovebird in the process.
It should be noted that Rhoda escapes unscathed in both the novel and play formats of THE BAD SEED; it is her wishy-washy mother that does not survive her suicide attempt. Alas, it appears my poor Rhoda was a victim of the oppressive Motion Picture Production Code (a.k.a. the Hays Code), which forced filmmakers to adhere to the adage "Crime does not pay." I can only reckon that this Victorian approach to film making also dictated the goofy curtain-call tack on in the closing credits in which PATTY McCORMACK politely curtsies for the camera. If you're gonna kill the kid, don't rub salt in my wounds and trot her out like a show pony three minutes later. In killing Rhoda, they also killed off a potentially lucrative franchise. It's a damn shame that we have to live a world where the kid from PROBLEM CHILD can land a two-picture deal, and all McCormack received was a playful spanking from NANCY KELLY. Where is the justice in that?
Unkle Lancifer's choice: BAD DREAM'S LANA
After much thought my "The one you might have saved" ends up being the character of Lana from 1988's BAD DREAMS. I tried real hard to think of a super plucky or noble character from a classic film, but any answer other than E.G. DAILY 's Lana would be a complete lie. Why should I pretend to love Crêpe Suzette when I am always so darn hungry for meatballs? Lana's death is a real shame for many reasons. First off, who wants to see anything bad happen to adorable E.G.? I also gotta admit I love Lana for being such a shivering Chihuahua basket case. I know you are only supposed to like strong willed characters who know exactly what they are doing at all times and always say the right thing, but I've come to terms with the fact that I just don't. Human strength is boring as hell; give me a train wreck any day of the week. Mental patient Lana hides behind her hair and drips pathetic, over sensitivity all over the place like a pelted martyr. That is why I LOVE HER.
Watch what happens when lil' Lana tries to reach out to self obsessed final squirrel JENNIFER RUBIN…
She's Carrie White without the chance of telekinetic redemption, a doormat with a punching bag for a heart. She's also the first victim to kick the bucket. She shows up, whines a bit, has a momentary flash of hope for the future, has said hopes trampled on and then gets drowned by RICHARD LYNCH. Misery, false hope and then death, now there's a character arc I can believe in.
I would have loved to see Lana stick around longer, not to watch her lace up army boots and kick ass but to maybe just be a rock of Gibraltar sidekick with a few hidden talents up her sleeve. I mean, c'mon BAD DREAMS you could have at least had E.G. perform a theme song over the closing credits! Oh Lana, we hardly knew ye and perhaps due to your galactic vulnerability, you actually are BETTER OFF DEAD, but let me tell you, the movie BAD DREAMS would have been better off with a double dose of E.G. and a lil' bit more of that sacrificial Lana.
A video that sports not only E.G DAILY but fellow "One I might have saved." AMITYVILLE 2: THE POSSESSION's DIANE FRANKLIN? How appropriate is that for Arbogast Day?
BY THE BY: Every Arbogast has his day, but the night belongs to Amanda! Check out Kinder-chum Amanda by Night's up to the minute report on made for television remakes HERE!
