kindertrauma

Traumafessions :: Reader NiNi on "They Thirst" Book Cover

Posted on By aunt john

Hey, this is cheaper than therapy! While I'm thinking about traumas from the ‘80s, here's another horror that shaped my youthful psyche: the first-edition cover of ROBERT R. McCAMMON's THEY THIRST. Horror novels were even more common than horror movies in our household, and this book lay on the coffee table for quite some time to scar my kindergarten-era mind.

The book itself? Not especially scary. But the cover was the stuff of ‘80s airbrushed nightmares! The dead black pits of the eyes in the skull-like face… the tiny LATOYA JACKSON nose… and worst of all, the bloody red lips and needle teeth of that over-sized mouth. Every time I saw that damned book, I would discreetly flip it over so I wouldn't have to see it.

Nowadays, the illustration kind of reminds me of an anglerfish in drag, or the misbegotten lovechild of JAWS and THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW. But the 5-year-old inside me remembers the fear of stumbling across this image in the darkened living room on my way to that nighttime glass of water…

Name That Trauma :: Reader Molly T. on NOT Salem's Lot & Maybe NOT Mr. Boogedy

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Great site! I grew up being fascinated by horror flicks – when my parents would take me to the movie rental store, rather than heading for the "kiddie" movies, I'd head right for the STEPHEN KING and gore. With all those years of scaring myself to tears, it's a wonder I cannot figure out where this particular scene came from:

There is a vampire of some sort, floating in a cloud-like mist, next to a boy's bedroom. Now before you say this is SALEM'S LOT, I can assure you that this boy did NOT open the window to let the vampire in. Rather, he broke a cross off of a (Lego) set that was near the window and used it to try to ward off the vampire.

Where in the world did this come from?

I have another scene in my head, which I thought was from the movie MR. BOOGEDY, but maybe it's not. I thought it was from that movie because I seem to remember a sort of "Boogie man" (who maybe had a hole in the side of his head?), standing in a family's living room, shooting some sort of powers out of his hands and making things go berserk – one thing in particular was, he made a vacuum cleaner "blow up" like a balloon and float to the ceiling, with the little boy holding onto it, not being able to get down.

Any ideas on this one?

UNK SEZ: A Lego crucifix you say? I don't recall seeing that in a movie, but it's a great tip none the less. Maybe one of readers can recall such a thing. As for the second film you mentioned, I think you actually ARE thinking of MR. BOOGEDY, there is a vacuum present in that movie's last scene (MR. B. ends up sucked inside it) and a kid does float to the ceiling at one point and has to be yanked down. It doesn't look to me that it is the vacuum cleaner that begins to levitate, but check out the climax of MR. BOOGEDY below and see if it looks at all familiar:

If anyone knows the answer to the first one, please leave a comment or shoot us an e-mail.

Official Traumatizer :: Jason Voorhees

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Hey look at the date, it's Friday the 13th!!! What a great day to make Jason Voorhees, Camp Crystal Lake's resident bad boy an Official Traumatizer! There is not much I can say about Jason that hasn't been said elsewhere, but what I can do is tell you about my own first experience with the film FRIDAY THE 13TH and my original introduction to the little mongoloid boy named Jason Voorhees.

Little Unkle Lancifer was too young to go see the first FRIDAY THE 13th in the movie theater, but thanks to FAMOUS MONSTERS magazine I was well aware of its existence. (Although to be accurate, I was at least partially confusing it with another film, 1979's THE ORPHAN). My eldest brother, who I imagined at the time had the most fulfilling existence imaginable, WAS old enough to check out this intriguing and mysterious movie which he did as far as I recall, as soon humanly possible.

Now, unlike myself, my older brother is not a light touch when it comes to horror. In fact, it was a badge of honor for him to return from a film and declare himself unfazed and unimpressed by what he had seen on the screen. His attraction to the genre appeared to me to be more as if he were accepting some unsaid dare. He was out to prove that he could withstand anything presented to him and I was sure at the end of the day he would much rather be watching BRUCE LEE.

My usually too cool for school older brother returned from FRIDAY THE 13th in a state in which I had never seen him. He was flushed, he was amped and he was absolutely beside himself. It was if he had just witnessed a train crash and was still working through the adrenaline that was coursing through his body. He was literally stunned and therefore I was too, stunned that there was something so scary that it could leave my roughneck, ninja-star throwing sibling in such a state.

Eventually I grew up to be the kind of film spaz that will go ballistic if a movie is ruined for me even slightly. I'm the jerk that won't enter a theater if I think I've missed 30 seconds of the opening and I am known to drive normal people insane with my excessive use of "pause" and "rewind" at home. At this young age though, for all I knew, my only chance to experience FRIDAY THE 13th would be vicariously through my brother so I demanded he tell me everything he could remember of what he had witnessed.

Uncharacteristically, my brother fulfilled my request and regaled every detail from the opening jeep murder to the closing credits. I was mesmerized from start to finish as images both titillating and horrifying passed through my young head. Some might describe FRIDAY's plot as slight or even non-existent but, due to my own verbal introduction to the happenings of Crystal Lake, to me it will always skew closer to one of the greatest campfire stories/legends ever told. At this point in my life (and maybe it's due to the fact that I was ruefully born with only one foot in reality) I took the events told to me as gospel. When he eventually described little Jason's final exodus from the murky bottom of the lake my jaw hit the shag carpet.

Not very much later a VCR appeared in our living room. Our family was one of the first in our neighborhood to be graced with one (don't feel too bad for those other kids on the block, they all had that amazing invention called "cable" which we could only dream of). Wow. The idea of watching a WHOLE movie in your home whenever you wanted… what a luxury! Not surprisingly, one of the first tapes I had to get my grubby hands on was FRIDAY THE 13TH; now I could finally see what all of the hubbub was about and watch the vaporous story in my head transform into something permanent and concrete on the television screen.

I am happy to say that I was not even remotely disappointed. I could not believe I was getting a chance to eavesdrop and spy on this incredible universe full of denim cut-offs, strip Monopoly and bloody decapitations. If this was what being older was going to be like, sign me up I thought. I'm sure actually being systematically butchered by an unseen presence probably bites the big one in real life, but to me, at the time, it seemed like a great way to spend a Friday night. As LYNN REDGRAVE used to say, "This is Living!"

Having already heard the entire story from my brother you would think that I would be completely prepared for the film's shocker ending, but poor dense me was still taken off guard. I knew Jason was at some point going to rise from the lake, but I had foolishly thought that there would be some kind of build up to such a thing. As Alice (ADRIENNE KING) put her hand into the reflecting water of Crystal Lake, I was pretty sure young Jason was a few scenes away and I instinctively assumed that a JAWS like score would warn me of that danger approaching. No such luck, as Jason jumped out of the lake I jumped out off the couch. I simply had no defense in regards to FRIDAY THE 13TH and I loved the freefall feeling it injected me with, like being on a sled and knowing the ride wasn't over until the sled said it was over.

No matter how securely the original FRIDAY embeds itself within our culture (Let's face it folks, it's here to stay), for some reason, it has always been able to squirm its way out of receiving all the respect that it rightfully deserves. The critical among us can fault the direction, but the reality is that FRIDAY accomplishes everything it sets out to do and then some. One could fault it for being derivative or slap-shot, but dozens of films have tried to duplicate its sense of place and atmosphere and failed miserably. You can even gripe that there is little in the way of characterization, but personally I don't need to know that much about a person to assume that they don't deserve (or appreciate) an axe splitting their skull in two. You can pile up all the knee jerk dismissals you like, but there is a reason why so many return to this movie again and again throughout their lives.

Jason works and Jason has always worked. Those of us who were introduced to him in our youth eventually do master some control over our fear of him, but we're still his bitches all the same. Like many slasher films, FRIDAY is, at its heart, a campfire story and campfire stories not only do not require the fundamental elements that create great literature to work, but actually are hobbled by such useless chaff. It is meant to scare you, to leave you feeling unsafe, to make you think twice about that twig that just snapped. It's meant to cast a spell over you that alters your perception to the point that the world around you suddenly seems unfamiliar and fraught with potential danger. It's meant to be fun, a giddy first dance with death; a way to take the anxieties associated with the approaching seductive freedoms of adulthood and milk them for all they are worth. I'm glad that my first FRIDAY THE 13TH movie actually took place in my own head thanks to my older brother's surprisingly good storytelling skills, but let's face it, my brother had some excellent material to work with; Jason Voorhees is a potent legend and a born Traumatizer.


WANT MORE JASON?

Traumafessions :: Reader Mickelodeon on Fembots, Sleestaks, Sesame Street And Doctor Who

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Even today, I can barely bring myself to utter more than the names of these things that terrified me as a child, lest I begin screaming and crying for my teddy bear:

There's no way I can quantify these and put them in order of terrifying-ness, because they all scared the shit out of me.

But one -another one from SESAME STREET, no less- needs explanation: it was an animated bit, where a rock-like "IF" fell to the earth, with some truly terrifying music playing in the background. I think the music is from 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, but I'm not 100% sure of that. I've looked for this on youtube and have had no luck tracking it down to see if it still scares me the way it did. Talk about terrifying; I'm still not a huge fan of the musical piece.

And thank God I didn't know about JON PERTWEE's DOCTOR WHO and his autons back when I was but a wee girl, or they would have won hands down as most terrifying…Christ almighty.

UNK SEZ: Mickelodeon, that 2001 animated bit freaked the hell out of me too! In fact, after a traumafession from our pal AMANDA BY NIGHT on that crazy bouncing "Rover" ball from THE PRISONER, yours truly left this comment:

Rover does freak me out. It's so otherworldly and surreal. They used to have an ongoing bit on THE ELECTRIC COMPANY that gave me the same feeling. It was a take off on 2001 but having not seen that film at the time I had no idea. It was just a cartoon of a monolith that broke apart revealing different words. The one that haunted me was "ALL". It hurt my little brain to think of "ALL"

I can't find that one but here is the one for "ME" which is equally unsettling and hurts my slightly larger brain…

I don't know why a shape would give me the willies, but it's so out of place and unusual (Rover is the same way) that it just feels like there is some larger force at work that you can't get your head around. Sort of like a house pet's response to a vacuum cleaner.

As it turns out these animated monolith bits were shown on both SESAME STREET and THE ELECTRIC COMPANY! SESAME STREET aired two different shorts and THE ELECTRIC COMPANY had nine. All that means is that as a kid back in the seventies, there was virtually no escape from Monolith horror!

To read more by Mickelodeon, be sure to check out her site Strange Cousin Susan.

Traumafessions :: PhantomofPulp on "The Astral Traveler" from Lost in Space (Season 2, Episode 13)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

As much as I loved the idea of monsters when I was six years old, I wasn't prepared to meet "Angus".

LOST IN SPACE screened on Sunday afternoons in Australia in 1968, and I was hooked on the show. I don't think I caught every episode when it was first showing, but when I did, I loved it.

In "The Astral Traveler", Will Robinson is trapped in a cave and whisked back in time to a Scottish castle on Earth. Lost and panicked, he stumbles into an area of the castle that houses a dark, stinking lagoon. Something is sloshing around beneath the surface of the lagoon, but we don't know what. The apprehension I felt waiting for that "something" to emerge from the water was beyond the limit of my six-year-old brain. When a shambling, whaling, disgusting THING dragged itself up from the depths emerged and began to chase Will, I experienced my first dose of unadulterated terror. Later in the episode, a Scotsman named Hamish, who was much less scary than the monster, explained that the monster's name was "Angus."

The monster had a name?

How could a monster have a name?

On top of the fact that Angus looked hideous, his wailing, which had a scary echo added to it, resonated in my virgin eardrums for years. I'd never heard anything so horrible. Even today, few sounds are the equal of that wail.

Back then, I WAS Will Robinson while watching LOST IN SPACE, so getting chased by Angus was totally personal. There was no concept of Angus being a guy in a suit to ease my extreme anxiety. During the episode, I ran and hid behind the sofa several times. I'd half cover my eyes and peer back out at the little black and white T.V. in the corner. The monster repelled me, but he also called my name. I was an eye patch wearing, card-carrying member of the juvenile Ugly Brigade back then, so there was something about Angus that elicited my sympathy, and made me feel that we shared common ground.

When, at the end of the episode, the creature is soothed by Hamish's bagpipes, I thought that he wasn't such a bad guy after all. However, when the episode would screen again, I'd go back to loathing and fearing him. Ever since this encounter with Angus, I have always felt a little bit apprehensive when meeting someone named Angus. I look at them closely, as if to assure myself that they're not the Scottish lagoon monster in a human suit.

UNK SEZ: PhantomofPulp, thanks for that fantastic traumafession! I don't remember this Angus guy but I can see why this orange beastie rocked your world. He reminds me of that horrible sewer monster from the KOLCHAK episode "The Spanish Moss Murders" combined with the "mud monster" from THE WORLD BEYOND. No wonder you hid behind the sofa!

NOTE: All you kids out there really need to stop by PhantomofPulp's absolutely fascinating site PHANTOM OF THE PULP which itself is like a deep Scottish Lagoon chock full of the most intriguing creatures you can imagine. I discovered the very kindertrauma friendly book covers you see below, but there is even more exciting stuff for you to dig through and peruse as well. I think you can tell by his traumafession that this guy has got a way with words and a slew of interesting ideas banging around his noggin. You can jump over there HERE.

Name That Trauma :: Kinderpal FilmFather on a Troubled Teen Special (Torn Book and Dead Deer)

Posted on By aunt john

This Trauma has been popping up in my head lately, and has been recurring for the last 25 years or more…

  • It's not a movie, but more like some kind of afterschool special or classroom film from the late '70s/early '80s.
  • It features a young teen boy, probably 15 or so, who starts off nice (helping feed a local man's deer, for example) but ends up hanging with the wrong crowd of no-goodniks (a couple of other boys his age, if I remember correctly).
  • One day they're in class, where a snooty teacher shows them his most valued possession: a book signed by his favorite author.
  • Later, the boys walk by the shed where the local man keeps his deer feed, and there is some poison nearby (I forget why, just play along). The two other boys grab a pitchfork and plan to rip open the feed and poison to mix them together, but the main boy stops them…only to grab the pitchfork and do it himself.
  • Following this, the boys break into their vacant classroom and trash the place…with the main boy mimicking the teacher while holding the book, saying, "THIS is how much I love this book." He then rips the book in two down the spine.
  • Hearing someone coming, the two friends flee while our main boy hides behind the door. Their teacher enters the room, sees his precious book ripped apart, holds the pieces to his chest, and drops to his knees, sobbing.
  • Somehow the main boy escapes, and as he's walking home he passes the local man, who's surrounded by dead deer that ate the poisoned feed. Not knowing the boy did it, the man asks him to help remove the deer (cut to a closeup of one of the deer's heads, its eyes glazed over).
  • Instead of helping, the boy runs away from the scene, finally collapsing against a tree and sobbing hysterically. The end.
  • During the credits, a male narrator in voiceover wonders aloud why the boy did such things.

Can anybody out there help me identify (and possibly locate) this special? Like I said at the beginning, it's been nagging at me on and off for decades.

UNK SEZ: That movie is called UNKLE LANCIFER: THE EARLY YEARS. Nah, I'm just kidding, I would never sob against a tree! Jeez, FilmFather I have no idea but it does indeed sound like an after school special of some sort. Anybody out there got any clues?

NOTE: This has little to do with anything and I apologize but does anybody out there remember the afterschool special entitled THE COSMIC AWARENESS OF DUFFY MOON (1976) that stared IKE EISENMANN (ESCAPE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN, LANCIFER KERWIN ( SALEM'S LOT) and coined the inspirational power slogan "You can do it Duffy Moon?" They referenced it on THE VENTURE BROTHERS once and I found my self doing a spit-take of recognition worthy of MARTIN SHORT.

UPDATE: LANCE KERWIN talks "Duffy Moon" at the remarkably addictive retroCRUSH HERE.

I CAN'T SHUT UP: How Kindertraumy is this Indian Safety poster that retroCRUSH spotlights HERE?

UPDATE: Name That Trauma SOLVED! It's an educational film from 1975 called THE BOY WHO LIKED DEER. To learn more about it, feel free to fawn over The Haunted Closet.