kindertrauma

Traumafessions :: Reader Elizabeth G. on The Cat From Hell

Posted on By unkle lancifer

I remember when I was little in the early 90's my dad and older siblings were watching something on T.V., I believe it was called THE CAT FROM HELL. The only thing about it I remember is at the end the cat kills this person by crawling in their mouth and down their throat. I think it eats the person's heart, but that might have just been what I was told. I can remember you could see the cat moving around inside the person and it really freaked me out.

UNK SEZ: Thanks Elizabeth! THE CAT FROM HELL is actually the second story in the anthology horror movie TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE: THE MOVIE. That film began life as CREEPSHOW 3 but its title was changed by producers to take advantage of the notoriety of the television series TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE. That particular segment was directed by genre legend GEORGE ROMERO and adapted from a short story by none other then the master himself STEPHEN KING!

NOTE: This bottom image was borrowed from DEADLANTERN.COM, they have a great list over there called KITTIES OF HORROR check it out HERE.

Name That Trauma :: Reader Gary on a Ghostly Girl Roadblock

Posted on By unkle lancifer

First of all, I love your blog!

OK, now please see if you can help me get closure on something that freaked the crap outta me as a kid.

I was about 7 or 8, which would mean this horrifying incident took place around 1973 or so. I saw a movie or T.V. show that had a scene in which a man visits a cemetery. We see the man approach a grave and put flowers on it. I think he says a short prayer. You get the idea. Somehow it is relayed to the viewer that he is visiting the grave of his young daughter. I'm pretty sure her name was Mary. Or maybe not. OK, so far I can handle that without freaking out. Next scene…

The man is driving home from the cemetery on a lonely country road. It is now dark. Suddenly he hears a creepy little girl voice. The following exchange takes place:

Creepy Little Girl Voice: Daaaaddddddyyyyyy….oh Daaaaaddddddddyyyyyyyy.
Man: Mary? Is that you?
Creepy Little Girl Voice: Yes, daddy, it's me.
Man: Where are you Mary? I can't see you.
Creepy Little Girl Voice: I'm right in front of you, daddy – look!

The man looks ahead on the road and his headlights catch a glowing, transparent little girl ghost right in front of his car on the road! He swerves and runs off the road. I pee my pants and turn the T.V. off.

I'm not ashamed to admit it – I screamed and cried like a little girl. Even today, this freaks me out just thinking about the incident. I slept in my parents' bed that night (I was way too old to sleep with them, but they finally gave in after listening to my shrieks of terror). To this day, nothing has ever messed me up as bad as this.

I'm not sure if it was a movie or T.V. show. I'm a little fuzzy on the girl's name. Some of the details have faded over time, but the heart of this terror will be forever scorched into my brain. I've tried everything I know to ID this. You're my final hope. Thanks!

UNK SEZ: Well Gary, that certainly sounds like a memorable scene and one that would be hard to shake for anyone of any age. I personally don't recall that one so let's send it out to our readers. Does this creepy ghost girl appearing in the road ring any bells for any of you guys? Leave a comment or send us an email if it does!

UPDATE: Name That Trauma solved! It's called DAUGHTER OF THE MIND, please check out the comments for more details. Special thanks to commenters algee for solving it, and PhantomWerewolf for finding the clip.

Kinder-Art :: M. Mararian's Inky Dreadfuls

Posted on By unkle lancifer

"March of the Cuckoos"

"Little Consumer"

"Danielle's Lament"

"Arctophobia (Fear of Bears)"

"Pupaphobia (Fear of Puppets)"

"Carnophobia (Fear of Meat)"

UNK SEZ: Hey, Check out M. MARARIAN'S INKY DREADFULS! The top three represent his current show at the McCaig Welles gallery in Brooklyn New York (learn more about that HERE) and the bottom three are part of a series he did last summer on phobias. Are they not awesome AND so very Kindertraumatic? For more of M. MARIAN'S INKY DREADFULS simply hop on over to his fantastic and expansive WEBSITE!

Name That Trauma :: Reader Katherine on a Vampire at the Window

Posted on By aunt john

This scene has haunted me for many restless nights. There was a vampire movie that came out on T.V. back in the late ‘80s or early ‘90s that had this particular scene where this teenager was lying in bed, looking out the window. When all of a sudden this boy, with a pale white face comes floating, horizontally up to his/her window, and beckons him/her to open it. The teenager slowly gets up and opens the window. Just thinking about it gives me the creeps.

UNK SEZ: Katherine, that's an easy one! That has got to be one of the greatest moments in Kindertrauma history! It's from TOBE HOOPER's television adaptation of STEPHEN KING's SALEM'S LOT. That child vampire scratching at the window scene has been the cause of countless sleepless nights and I'm sure many a wet bed. As a child, watching that scene and then having to retire to your bedroom to sleep is almost like returning to the scene of the crime. No wonder it's had such a lasting effect!

The Boogey Man (1980)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

One of the very first horror movies that I ever caught on VHS was 1980's THE BOOGEY MAN directed by ULLI LOMMEL. It's box art and title had me assuming I would be viewing something along the same lines as HALLOWEEN. Boy, was I in for a surprise. Sure the opening scenes visually crib from JOHN CARPENTER's classic and the title is an obvious cash-in, but that's where the similarities end. If you're looking for subtle nuance or even a vague feigning of good taste just let THE BOOGEY MAN, as Dionne Warwick sang, "Walk on by." This movie though, as rough around the edges, derivative and generic as it sometimes is, just can't help being strangely disturbing in it's own way. The opening kill alone should be in the kindertrauma hall of fame.

Let's face it, HALLOWEEN's Judith Myers had a pretty good life up until her brother snuffed it out. Not so with THE BOOGEY MAN's young brother and sister team Lacey and Willy (NATASHA SCHIANO and JAY WRIGHT) who, when we open the picture, live in the kind of f-ed up environment that wouldn't befall Judith Myers until ROB ZOMBIE got a hold of her years later. When we first meet these wide-eyed siblings they are spying on their drunken wreck of a mother as she seduces a butch bruiser in the family living room. We never see the guy's face clearly because soon mom's kinky pantyhose fetish comes to light and he is wearing said hose on his face.

I'm not sure why but this pantyhose disguise routine was popular on crime shows back in the day and I don't mind telling you that it always creeped the hell out of me. I mean, props to mom for getting her groove on but this ain't the type you want hanging around your kids! That obvious fact is made even clearer when the kids are caught spying and, under the approving eye of drunk mommy, the little boy is tied up and gagged to a bed and then slapped for good measure. Luckily sis in her candy cane stripped pajamas knows exactly where the family keeps the butcher knife so she cuts loose her bro. Once free lil' Willy, as boys will often do, decides it's high time to stab pantyhose face in the spine as he bumps ugglies with trashy ma in that oddest of make-out joints the bedroom.

What else do you need to know about this movie? 20 years later the kids are grown (and f-d) up and played by real life brother sister team SUZANNA and NICHOLAS LOVE (Suzanne was LUMMEL's BARBEAU at the time.) They are desperately trying to get over their serious DR. PHIL baggage but Willy is so damn shell shocked he's gone mute. Sis Lacey makes the brilliant decision to revisit her past in order to heal (don't try this at home folks!) but ends up freeing the dead dude from a mirror he's been hanging out in so that he can brutally demolish everybody she comes into contact with.

THE BOOGEY MAN is a cheap, synth scored, runaway train but there are so many ideas (both original AND stolen) bouncing around that you kind of just have to sit back in awe. There are plenty of amazing deaths (the kissing double murder by a knife through two open mouths is inspired) but if gore ain't your bag you'll be happy to know that people are routinely speaking in demonic voices, shooting light beams out of their eyeballs and hovering above the ground too. I'm telling you, this supernatural slash-a-thon knows no bounds! In fact, the creepy windows from THE AMITYVILLE HORROR even stop by for a spell (pretty amazing when you consider those windows totally snubbed THE AMITYVILLE CURSE!) THE BOOGEY MAN is strewn with some choppy editing and technical problems galore but its willingness to be as deranged as it wants to be (scary pantyhose face included) leaves a lasting impression.

P.S. O.K I admit it, I did rewind over and over again the part where the brat gets a window (the non-AMITYVILLE type) smashed down on his head. Does that make me a bad person? Aw, who asked ya!

Traumafessions :: Reader Brayden H. on The Gruesome Twosome

Posted on By aunt john

Okay, the story goes, I have a lot of films that scared me in my childhood. THE GRUESOME TWOSOME, was another one that scared me out of my socks. Later, I had a dream that Rodney was chasing me. I swore to myself never to watch that film again.

But when I got older, I saw the DVD of THE GRUESOME TWOSOME. I bought it and now it doesn't scare me anymore. I thinks it's a classic.

Name That Trauma :: Reader Charles W. on Gun-Toting Little Girls

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Hey here's a movie that disturbed me as a child and I have not been able to figure out what movie it was. Not even Joe Bob Briggs could figure this one out, people working in underground movie shops just shrug. The movie was made in the ‘80s and it's about two girls around the age of 8 who live on a beach. One is brunette and the other is blond, I think their mom is single and she hooks up with some guy who is their next-door neighbor. The guy gives the blond girl a camera for her birthday and the two girls go around taking pictures of everything. They sneak in on their neighbor having an affair with another woman and conspire to black mail him writing him threatening letters with photographic evidence. The adults freak out and everything, lots of drama.

But the part that freaked me out was the ending, the blond girl gets a hold of a revolver and shoots the guy to death at the end on the beach! Like I'm talking big bloody squibs, and the really awful part is the girl turns the gun on her brunette haired friend, the movie ends with a crying small girl running into the water with blood squibs bursting on her back! I use to watch every horror movie imaginable when I was young and was never bothered by any of them but this movie always filled me with a feeling of dread. It never occurred to me that kids could die violently before I saw that and I remember being seriously disturbed after the first viewing.

I saw this movie like more than once when I was a child because my sister kept renting it but she can't even remember the title now. This was back in 1988 when I last saw it and I was in kindergarten. I think I eventually end up asking anyone I talk movies with about this movie, no one has seen it, plot summary search on IMDB brings up nothing. Really hard to find any info on it. I think it might have had the word SWEET or BABY or DARLING in the title.

UNK SEZ: Dear Charles, you made my day because I know exactly the movie you are talking about is! It's from 1989, stars JOHN HURT and is entitled LITTLE SWEETHEART. In fact, that movie is actually based on a novel by ARTHUR WISE called NAUGHTY GIRLS which I read In my youth. Strangely enough, that book had such an impact on me that not only did we post the cover in the early days of Kindertrauma HERE but we also use a bastardized verson of its artwork as the kindertrauma Myspace avatar! I've never actually seen the film as I did not even know of its existence until recently but, considering the impression it left upon you, I'll be tracking it down soon! You can check out the trailer HERE.

Traumafessions :: Reader FatherOfTears on Fats

Posted on By aunt john

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"!

Traumafessions :: Reader Randy M. on Gilligan's Island

Posted on By unkle lancifer

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!