kindertrauma

The Possessed

Posted on By unkle lancifer

With all the countless hours I spent watching the boob tube in my youth, how is it even possible that I have never come across the 1977 made-for-television EXORCIST wannabe entitled THE POSSESSED? Jeez, the darn thing takes place in an all girls school and stars DEAD AND BURIED's JAMES FARENTINO for Pete's sake. FARENTINO plays an ex-priest who, during a near death experience, is told to get his ass back to Earth and start stomping evil. That premise alone would have placed it high on my must obsess about list but egad, the entire cast is like a who's who of soon to be stalked by me stars.

Just imagine that future Wookie pal, whip virtuoso and debatable Replicant HARRISON FORD shows up to play a smoldering, in more way than one, biology teacher; and his hot to trot students include ANN DUSENBERRY (JAWS 2), DIANA SCARWID (PSYCHO 3), DINAH MANOFF (CHILD'S PLAY) and wholly Toledo P.J., "I always forget my chemistry book and my math book, and my English book, and my, let's see, my French book, and… well who needs books anyway, I don't need books, I always forget all my books, I mean, it doesn't really matter if you have your books or not" SOLES of you know, HALLOWEEN (and of course, CARRIE).

O.K. it's not exactly scary by today's standards, and it is of course stifled a bit in its need to keep notice of prime time censors, but I feel pretty confident that if I had caught this back in my youth it would have freaked me out in a serious way. FARENTINO begins investigating a number of increasingly dangerous fires that seem to be igniting on their own or perhaps are sparked by one of the school girl's unwanted affiliation with the occult. Before you know it some characters are exiting stage right engulfed by flames and eventually the culprit is revealed to be someone rather low on the suspect list. The final poolside showdown between priest and possessed may lack spinning heads and levitation, but it almost makes up for that with it's one of a kind nail spitting sequence.

Truth be told, Aunt John (an unrepentant devotee of nonsensical made-for-T.V. cinema) was more than a little miffed that zero was given as far as any explanation for what we had just witnessed, and he does have a point. Who knows what the hell was going on at this crazy school where kids ride their bikes in the hall and HARRISON FORD is treated like a garden variety himbo? Frankly, I'm not sure I want to know. I just wish this baby was made into a series. Plus c'mon, I'm not the type to look a gift P.J. SOLES in the mouth, especially if that mouth has the potential to spit nails!

Name That Trauma :: Reader Grokenstein on a Final Girl Finale

Posted on By aunt john

Hi!

I've got a movie in the back of my skull that I hope the Traumateers can identify, but it's a bit of a spoiler as it's just the end of the movie; in fact it's just the end credit sequence! There's no music score as the credits roll, but rather, voice-over dialog and assorted scenery shots. As the credits end, the movie abruptly "resumes" for its real ending. Here's the details:

Final Girl has escaped death at the hands of some crazy family/cult/group, some of whom she has killed. Apparently, she was supposed to be "sacrificed" before midnight. As the credits roll and the visuals switch to actor-free scenery, she returns with the local sheriff and deputies, only to find that all traces of her nightmare have been cleaned up. The skeptical sheriff arrests Final Girl after a deputy "finds" marijuana in her car, which she of course denies. As the credits end, Final Girl is put in a jail cell and left alone. She's distraught until she sees the clock on the far wall; it's almost midnight, and she says she's safe now.

At this moment, her "cellmate," an old woman hiding in the shadows in the corner, announces that there's still plenty of time, and lunges at Final Girl as she turns to the camera and screams. Freeze frame as her scream reverberates. Fade out.

…That's it. I have no other details to add, but I need to find out what movie this is so I can see the rest of the damned thing!

Help meeeeeeee!

Thanks,

Grokenstein

UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Special thanks to Father Merrin for realizing it was WARLOCK MOON!

Traumafessions :: Richard of Doomed Moviethon on Alligator

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Shortly after I had discovered the horror of JAWS and the irrational fear of even the shallowest of waters, my parents introduced my sister and I to the 1980 film ALLIGATOR. The scene that shook me to the core of my being was the birthday party scene when some bratty kids blindfold an unlucky youngster and took him to walk the plank. The plank, of course, is the diving board of their pool and as luck would have it, the titular beast is waiting hungrily at the bottom. This takes place at night so the kids don't know of the danger until somebody's parent turns on the pool lights revealing 36-feet of alligator badness.

You know how things slow down when you're scared? This scene seemed hours long to my kid-brain. The way I perceived this moment was that the kids KNEW the alligator was in that pool and were trying to kill their friend ON PURPOSE. So what is really just a great scare in a horror movie turned into this long, protracted and sadistic murder scene. Was this a nihilistic comment on the state of children in the 1980s? Probably not, but on the following Monday morning, I viewed the other kids at my grade school in a different and much more suspicious light.

UNK SEZ: Great traumafession Richard! Just what one would expect from the brilliant mind behind DOOMED MOVIETHON and the equally awesome DOOMED MOVIEBLOG!

Name That Trauma :: Reader Mickelodeon on Dry Looking Domestics

Posted on By aunt john

You guys are *so* good – and your reading audience too, that I turn to you again for Name that Trauma!

It was a Saturday afternoon, perhaps 1980 or 1981; all my friends were outside playing in the pool while I was glued to the television in the family room, trying to convince myself there were no monsters in the laundry room. Fast forward to the only things I remember about this film, which are not many.

Firstly, it was British. Secondly, the single scene I recall is of two women standing in front of a rather large piece of furniture, talking. One was older and one was younger, and both looked to be from 'below the stairs.' with their funny little hats and aprons. Here's the kicker: the older woman (standing on the right) had a green bottle she continually shook as she and the younger woman spoke. And in the bottle was BLOOD!

I don't know how I managed to surmise the contents of the bottle were blood, since I remember precious little else about the movie, but I've never forgotten that scene, or at least how it was stamped on my mind. On a side note, this was not on any type of cable channel. It was a regular, over-the-air broadcast, shown on WABC New York. (Yeah, I know. It's rather freakish that I can remember *that* and not what the damn movie was really about!)

Oh, another thing and forgive my very technical description of what the picture looked like. It looked dry. Some movies (and T.V. shows) look wet, like MY THREE SONS. I LOVE LUCY looks dry. I know there are real-world terms I should know, since I majored in communications, but wet and dry seem to do the trick.

Any light you could shed on this would help solve one of the mysteries of my childhood!

Traumafessions :: Reader Ravyn on 1970s P.S.A.s

Posted on By aunt john

When I was five, The American Heart Society (Or maybe it was the Cancer Society?) used to run these creepy animated commercials about taking care of your lungs and heart. One was about not smoking cigarettes while shoveling snow (the little cartoon man had over 9000 crammed in his mouth to illustrate, and I think he died) and another listed a bunch of orders about staying healthy: "Don't smoke! Eat right! Keep in shape!" sung in this scary deep voice. Then in the same ad was a silhouette of a human figure, then a bright red heart appeared in its chest, and the figure keels over dead! That used to terrify the crap out of me! Mostly because even at that age, I knew my dad had a stressful job and worked hard and he smoked a lot, too, and I was so afraid I'd lose him…just like the commercials said!

I've searched for these old ads on Youtube but to no avail. I want to see if they still freak me out almost forty years later. Could someone else find them?

UNK SEZ: Ravyn, I didn't have any better luck than you did trying to track down those anti-smoking commercials you mentioned! I did however stumble across this one that stars the late YUL BRYNNER which used to haunt the hell out of me. I bet a lot of smokers put out their butts when this ad aired!

Coraline

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Hello, I wish to tell you about 2009's childhood horror: CORALINE. This movie is messed up! It looks cute, it's in stopmotion for crying out loud! BUT…it's one scary movie! It had scenes in it where two ladies are twisted together and where a man becomes a melty monster! And guess what? It's in 3-D too! In one scene, it is shown that Ms. Forcible and Ms. Spink STUFF thier Scottie dogs when they die. and that's not even the part where the other mother turns into a spider witch. Finally…the hand. it gets cut off and still follows Coraline around! PLEASE PUT THIS ON YOUR SITE!

— Squirt00

UNK SEZ: Thanks Squirt00 for giving us the heads up on the sure to be future traumatizer CORALINE! We've heard from several sources (including our pal Rat Saw God) that this flick is primo Kindertrauma material. I did get a chance to see it recently (in 3-D no less!) and although I'm a little late on commenting about it, I agree with you entirely. I'm sure CORALINE will give kids plenty of stuff to worry about before they go to bed for many years to come!

CORALINE was, of course, directed by HENRY SELICK who was also responsible for the creeped out classics THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS and JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH. It's based on a book by NEIL GAIMAN that tells the tale of a young girl who finds a secret passageway to an alternative universe. At first things seem pretty perfect in the mirror world until she discovers the price of perfection involves sewing buttons on to her peepers! It's all very spooky and weird in the best way possible and, as per usual with SENNICK's work with stop motion animation, the artistry on display is without question. CORALINE's evil alternative "Other Mom" (voiced by TERI HATCHER) is a truly kindertraumatizing sight to behold once she shows her true colors.

My personal favorite aspect of CORALINE though is the fact that super cool JOHN CARPENTER alum KEITH DAVID (Childs from THE THING, Frank from THEY LIVE) lends his voice to an all knowing slinky black cat. If that fact doesn't get folks renting this baby as soon as it hits DVD than I don't know what will!

The Children (2008)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Effective killer kid movies are hard to come by. Their shock value has diminished severely since the days of THE BAD SEED and truth be told, few movies are willing to take the sub-genre to the extremes needed to be successful. One false move by the director and you're looking at a campy joke. One false line reading by a kid actor and you've permanently lost your audience. 2008's THE CHILDREN (not to be confused with the unintentionally hilarious shocker from 1980) is a film by director TOM SHANKLAND that routinely impresses by not shying away from the disturbing nature of its subject matter.

Taking place over a snowy Christmas holiday two families meet for seasonal festivities. Tension is patiently doled out as we slowly find that the children of these families are beginning to act more and more feral due to an unnamed virus. The madness that blankets the children is of the cold and icy variety and the film highlights this visually with its grey bleakness. As we progress the general static atmosphere becomes more and more frequently punctured by migraine inducing blasts of vivid imagery, harsh primary colors and shrill sound. In some instances these frenzied collisions of tone are annoying as hell, but they also provide a pitch perfect arena that could believably incubate domestic insanity.

There is a balancing act evident throughout the film's running time of which director SHANKLAND is dutifully aware. Most of us would like to believe if we were confronted by a homicidal child we could more than hold our own, but in THE CHILDREN confusion and chaos reign supreme. The adult victims are slow to the realization that their beloved offspring have gone batty and even upon realization, struggle to accept that they will have to use violence themselves in order to survive. A great deal of the film's success in building a believable groundwork for its action that is derived by keeping both the audience and the film's characters partially in the dark. As things escalate the parents' natural instinct to scapegoat rather than implicate their own children muddy the waters even further. Refreshingly, we are also presented with a teenage character who seems to be the sole heir to clarity when the dominoes begin to fall.

There is something about killer kid movies that will always strike the funny bone. Watching perfect little angels behaving badly is innately amusing. THE CHILDREN is smart enough to follow the lead of WHO CAN KILL A CHILD? by demanding that the audience think hard about when violence is necessary and allowing them to appreciate the parents' dilemma rather than dwell on heroics. The end result may not scare the crap out of you, but be prepared for plenty of creeps due to some severely haunting images and a couple of flinches thanks to some convincing gore. If nothing else, if you have ever wondered what it would be like if somebody made a killer kid flick and not only took its subject matter seriously, but didn't back down in fear of stepping on sensitive toes, you now have your answer.

Traumafessions :: Reader Apocalypsejunkie on The Cellar (Book)

Posted on By aunt john

When I was about 11 or 12 (which would've been in the early ‘80s) I got my hands on one of the nastiest pieces of horror fiction my eyes have ever been scorched with, The Cellar. It looked like just another "potboiler" horror paperback you could pick up at any drug store or used book store, and Satan knows I had already plowed through plenty of those in my misspent youth.

But oh no, this was different.

This book was brimming with graphic scenes of violent assault, violent rape, kidnapping, bestiality and sicko perversions. The pièce de résistance however, was toward the end, when the housekeeper of the 'beast house' was getting gang banged….willingly, by a pack of the snarling beasties. Not only that, she was, uh, shall we say… enjoying herself immensely.

My brief synopsis doesn't really do this piece of eye-frigging justice, but it scarred me if not for life, at least for puberty (I still watch and read horror, go figure).

Imagine my horror when I'm cruising the Fantastic Fiction website and run up upon this very book. And not only that, it was a whole series of books. Of course I'm going to read every single one I can get my hands on and probably anything else that sick little twist RICHARD LAYMON has written. If you've never partaken in the "Beast House" series, be warned it's not for the faint of heart, fragile of mind or weak of stomach. Urp.

Traumafessions :: Reader Shannon on The Vampire Tapes (Book)

Posted on By aunt john

AUNT JOHN SEZ: Initially, Shannon submitted this entry as a Name That Trauma!:

I've been looking for a book entitled 'Vampire Types' or 'The Vampire Type' but for the life of me can't remember the author's name, and I was hoping maybe you or one of your readers might know it. The book was published around the same time as 'The Vampire Tapestry', and the cover truly gave me horrible dreams when I was a little girl. It had a blue background and a very pale, cadaverous, black haired woman on the cover with a single, very large drop of blood running from one corner of her mouth. My mom borrowed the book from my uncle, and all the way home I was in terror because the book was in a paper grocery bag next to my leg.

Internet searches haven't even been helpful. I'd really appreciate it if anyone can tell me the name of the author.

P.S. – I love your site – it brings back so many memories!

AUNT JOHN SEZ: Thanks to the power of our procrastination, Shannon rolled up her own sleeves and was able to track down not only the name of the book, but also a picture to share with the rest of the class:

After I contacted you last night my son found the book. I had the title wrong – it's 'The Vampire Tapes' (I thought it was 'Types'). We located a copy online. Oddly, it's a bit different from the image I remember but I figure that's because I was so young and terrified of it.