O.K., it is November 1978. I am about 18 months removed from seeing the infamous SUSPIRIA T.V. trailer and it's still VERY fresh in my 11-year-old mind. I'm thinking I can "recover" as that was over a year ago. WRONG!!!! Why? Because another scary trailer is released! This is from a pre-Hannibal Lecter, ANTHONY— excuse me —SIR ANTHONY HOPKINS movie called MAGIC.

Basically it was about a ventriloquist, HOPKINS, who kept a killer evil dummy called "Fats." The trailer is a shot of Fats sitting in front of a black background and scary orchestral strings play in the background. The camera slowly zooms in on Fats as he says a poem in a high pitched voice:

Abracadabra, I sit on his knee.
Presto, change-o, and now he is me!
Hocus Pocus, we take her to bed,
Magic is fun…we're dead.

The camera keeps zooming in on his face as he speaks and when he says that last line "…………we're dead," he delivers it in an evil tone. He closes his eyes and the narrator comes on to tell who's in it and who "presents it" all in a serious tone. As this goes on the white movie credits with title come on while Fats opens his eyes. They look around suspiciously and evil looking! His face looks to have a fiendish smile on it!

VERY UNNERVING!!!!!

O.K., it didn't have the same "heart leap into throat" scare like that SUSPIRIA ad, but it was scary nevertheless! After seeing that I could never look at a ventriloquist dummy again without thinking it was alive and evil!

Great!

Back to back T.V. traumas! Looking back, I now wonder if those two trailers were done by the same company! Same black background! Anyway, the next year went by without an incident. However, in the spring of 1980 I had to deal with those "Grady Twins"!

GILLIGAN'S ISLAND was one of my favourite T.V. shows as a youth. However, there were some absolutely horrifying aspects to it:

• The giant spider Gilligan faced down
• Gilligan's many "dream sequences," especially the ones with him as a vampire and Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde (I couldn't watch those!)
• All the references to HEADHUNTERS

Actually, death figured prominently in much of this "family comedy." Bites by supposedly fatal bugs, Gilligan being fake-burnt atop a funeral pyre, quicksand…

At least there was Mary Ann in the halter-top and denim paint pants to look at!

UNK SEZ: Randy, I too loved GILLIGAN'S ISLAND as a kid! I will never forget that giant spider episode as long as I live. (You can read a little more about that spider HERE). Do you remember the one where they actually got off the island for a spell only to wind up in a castle with a mad scientist who switched their brains around? That's the one that freaked me out. The scientist's giant lab assistant Igor even ends up with Ginger's personality! Thank god Ginger was returned to her usual beautiful self. I can't imagine her in Igor form fitting into her "Honey Bees" wardrobe!

When I was a kid, 2 music videos made me wish I still wore diapers: "Land of Confusion" by GENESIS and "Rockit" by HERBIE HANCOCK. The former freaked me out – giant ugly Republican puppets flailing about, doing evil nasty things…and the T.V. show featuring them didn't help either. It got so bad I couldn't even hear the song without shuddering until I was in my teens.

"Rockit"…self explanatory. Empty house, freaky beat, robots….I still won't watch that thing.

My mother re-married and my new step father decided that POLTERGEIST II was a fine film to go and enjoy. I had seen the first one and while grossed out and a little creeped out by a few scenes… I was far from traumatized by it. Now I will utter a four word phrase that frankly starts a lot of stories that end badly…

Then…he… drank… tequila.

The sight of CRAIG T. NELSON gagging and puking up that horrible worm, then its morphing into that disgusting man-thing and slithering off down the hardwood… I am in my 30's and even to this day I cannot drink the bottom out of a bottle of soda, or the last third from any vessel I cannot see through, unless I use a straw that I bite hard so nothing more than the barest slip of liquid can get through.

AUNT JOHN SEZ: Kids, let this be a lesson to everyone planning on imbibing New Year's Eve libations tonight… stick to beer, stay in the clear, and for the love of CRAIG T. NELSON… just say NO to Cuervo!

This SESAME STREET sketch used to scare the bejeezus out of me.

I used to make sure my feet were covered up and not hanging over the edge of the bed lest they be munched on.

Also THE WATCHER IN THE WOODS, the Disney "horror" movie. It had stuff in it about spelling things backwards, mirrors, and girls with blindfolds. Am I even thinking of the right movie? Anyway, it's still lovingly remembered as my first taste of scary movies/the occult.

Also, DAVID BOWIE's crotch in LABYRINTH both scared and fascinated me.

UNK SEZ: Dear Laura, it behooves me to report that while searching for a proper image of Mr. BOWIE's crotch to illustrate your traumafession I stumbled across something that may traumatize you even further. "A scientific look at DAVID BOWIE's package" can be found HERE!

OK, WAY back in the early ‘70s I was a little kid who, of course, grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons and "Wonderama" on Sunday morning (I'm in my early 40's and I live in the NY, NJ, Conn Tri-State area). After school on weekdays it was, after homework of course, BUGS BUNNY, THE LITTLE RASCALS, FELIX THE CAT, and various PBS kids programs. I was allowed to watch some prime time T.V. ‘till it was bed time (around 8 PM). Here in the late afternoon/early evening I caught various programs.

My favorite prime time show was EMERGENCY (see, I'm an old geezer!) and also at the time, I got to see syndicated re-runs of THE AVENGERS. Good times! However, also at that time in the early ‘70s there were various public service advertisements that aired. Some were the classic "Cross at the green, not in between," an anti-smoking add that had a dolphin jump out of a tank to pluck a lit cigarette out of a man's mouth, the famous crying Indian in an anti-pollution ad, plus there was another one that was about, if I remember correctly, racism that showed a chain that was unwound and stretched till it began to crack.

Very effective.

There was another one that was out that freaked me out and it came out in 1972. It was a P.S.A. for the U.N.C.F.. There were several out and they always ended with the tag line "A mind is a terrible thing to waste." Well, this one featured a man, who may, or may not be either BILLY D. WILLIAMS or CARL WEATHERS (he does resemble them), sitting in a chair in an empty room staring out into space. We hear the sounds of a city in the background, a baby crying, a radio being tuned and a clock's chimes going off. After that we just hear the sound of water dripping out of the tap. A narrator then comes on and he gives a speech about the importance of education and how one can do world changing things like fighting injustice, becoming an artist, making peace and curing diseases. He then goes on to say that this cannot be possible if one does not get an education.

This is good BUT something is happening as the man talks: The guy in the chair is LOOSING HIS HEAD!!!! It's slowly vanishing!

YIKES!!!

Now this is doing a good job of proving that point especially as it ends with the classic "A mind is a terrible thing to waste" but as a then 5-year old, I found this VERY UNNERVING!!!! The guy's head disappears!!! That quiet part with him staring and looking worried with the water drip helped set that mood and then his head slowly vanished! VERY disturbing indeed! That image would stay in my mind for many years! That image would be replaced in the summer of 1977 by even something worse but that has been covered already!