kindertrauma

Traumafessions :: Reader thetrace360 on R.L. Stine's "Night of the Living Dummy"

Posted on By aunt john

As a young child, from the time I was around 8 well into about 13, I was completely obsessed with the author R.L. STINE. I owned and read just about all of his books both GOOSEBUMPS and the FEAR STREET Series. One summer day, around 1998, my mom brought home one of his books for me to read. The title was NIGHT OF THE LIVING DUMMY. This wasn't an ordinary copy of the book mind you. It contained all three NIGHT OF THE LIVING DUMMY books and the front cover was oh-so-much creepier; it had red eyes that lit up when you pressed a secret button hidden in his mouth.

Just looking at the fiendish ventriloquist dummy on the cover had me excited to start reading. I began right away, reading well into the night. The book so far had no effect on me to speak of, until I laid down to go to sleep that night. I placed the book on the side table and went to sleep. That night I had the most frightening of nightmares of the fiendish dummy chasing after me trying to kill me! He chased me and chased me for what seemed like hours to me, until we reached the edge of a huge cliff. The dummy had me and he knew it.

Slowly backing away from him, I was cautious even though I knew being cautious would do no good to me now as I reached the very edge. There was no escaping him now. Just as this thought entered my brain, he lunged at me, causing me to fall off this cliff in my dream and plummet to my death.

Just as I was reaching the ground in my dream, I fell off my bunk bed, even though we had the guard rails on! As I hit the ground in a sitting position, I screamed as loud as my little lungs could manage. I never again picked up that book and I ended up selling it at a garage sale for a lot less than my mother bought it for about a year later.

I'm not sure why, but that dummy had me terrified and shaking in my platform tennis shoes.

Traumafessions :: Reader Michael On Homicidal

Posted on By unkle lancifer

I don't know what possessed my father to take me and my brother to the movies to see William Castle's 1961 HOMICIDAL when we were age 5 and 7. But take us he did and there is one scene near the end of the movie I will never forget. There was an old, creepy, invalid mute lady who lived in a mansion. She used one of those lift chairs that was connected to the wall of the stairway to get up and down the stairs. Towards the end of the movie the camera focused on her sitting in the lift chair in the darkened house as it lurched slowly step by step to the ground floor. When it finally reached the bottom of the stairs, the chair jerked to a stop and………. her head rolled off her body!

Talk about nightmare fuel! I didn't sleep for days and I had nightmares about this for many a year. I saw the movie a few years ago and it is not really that scary (and the special effects were laughable). But the 5 year old me got the shock of his life. Thanks alot Dad!

NOTE: Careful folks, this clip brings new meaning to the term "spoiler"!

The Halloween That Almost Wasn't

Posted on By unkle lancifer


Did you know that back in the year 1979 Halloween was almost canceled? It's true. That means no costumes and no trick or treating…nothing. It's almost too painful to contemplate. I know I went out trick or treating on that very night, blissfully unaware of the events that made my monster-in-drag candy hustling excursion possible. Why the government has buried this information is beyond me, but thanks to the brave 30 minute reenactment of these events known as THE HALLOWEEN THAT ALMOST WASN'T the truth can now finally be told.

Most films based around Halloween regurgitate the same information over and over again. You know all that Samhain and All Hallows Eve history type junk. Here the mechanisms of how the holiday works in the modern era are revealed, including numerous facts that many of us are either confused by or completely ignorant of. Did you know that Halloween can only begin when a certain witch flies over the moon? Well it's important to know because in 1979, that fact was used to said witch's advantage in a power play between herself and Count Dracula that began with mild violence and assorted zingers and ended (thank God!) in a disco extravaganza that proved the greatest gifts are rewarded through compromise and subtle blackmail.

At the time of the events, Winnie the Witch found herself struggling with the vast difference between her known internal self and her external public persona. She was tired of being feared and thought of as an uggo. In addition, she was also feeling taken for granted, for even though she worked as hard as Dracula, she got zero credit for her endeavors. (Even in the monster world there is a glass ceiling). At the end of her rope, she decides that the only way to have her voice heard is to go on strike subsequently putting a halt on Halloween altogether.

An obvious influence on the later work of OLIVER STONE, THE HALLOWEEN THAT ALMOST WASN'T looks behind the curtain of what the media would have us believe and reveals, as best as possible, the actual events during this troubled time in history. Assembled to portray the monsters involved in this near tragedy are some of Hollywood's finest. JUDD HIRSCH plays the power hungry, so called leader of the monster group with conviction. He is able to reveal another side of the Count rarely glimpsed before. MARIETTE HARTLEY was nominated for an Emmy for her career-defining role as Winnie, a portrayal that in another actresses' hands could have come off as less sympathetic or at least hen-pecky. Rounding off the assembly line of master thespians is JOHN SCHUCK (Frankenstein's Monster), HENRY GIBSON (Igor) and JACK RILEY(Wolf Man). Two other dudes play a mummy and a zombie priest.

Many of you might want to turn a blind eye to this important film. You may think as long as I get my Halloween why should I care now? That's the type of stinking thinking that causes catastrophe. Make no mistake, this movie is not all preachy and dry, it entertains while it informs. If you don't feel like you personally know Winnie the Witch by film's end then you're just not paying attention. At the risk of revealing the startling conclusion, I recommend that a box of Kleenex be at your disposal when Winnie is confronted with the truth about how others really feel about her. (Be prepared for an appearance by the ultra glamorous HARTLEY you know and love!) Oh, if only all of our nation's disputes could be resolved on a disco dance floor just like they were on that fateful night in 1979. What a wonderful world this would be!

NOTE: In case you have any doubts about the validity of Winnie's claims about being marginalized in favor of Dracula's grandstanding consider this, when released on video the title was changed to the very inaccurate and misleading THE NIGHT DRACULA SAVED THE WORLD. My friends, in reality it was Halloween not the world that was at risk, and it was Winnie herself whose actions saved the day. Yet another example of just what had gotten Winnie's goat in the first place. I ask you is this irony or simply monster world status quo?

Educate yourself HERE, HERE and HERE!

Kinder-News:: Vote On Proposition M.J.

Posted on By unkle lancifer

The other day there was a disturbing development at Kindertrauma headquarters. We discovered that two of our finest and most beloved readers were, in fact, operating under the cover of darkness and hiding an illicit affection for Mary Jane brand candy. Mary Jane candy, which usually is wise enough to stay hidden throughout the year, is well known to resurface just before Halloween in order to sneak its devious way into trick-or-treat bags posing as a confectionery reward. My spidey senses are presently alarming me to the unthinkable conclusion that if there are two of you amongst us, then indeed there must be even more. Although I admire the bravery of the dissidents whose names I will, for the time being, protect, I must say that where I grew up, the love of Mary Jane candy was something that was not to be spoken of out loud in polite society. With an election on the horizon perhaps it is time that we ALL place our cards upon the table and reveal just where are sympathies lie!

So if you support Mary Jane and her theoretical peanut buttery goodness vote YEA! Or if you are like myself and feel she should be discontinued, never to show her face in another trick-or-treat bag for all of eternity vote NAY! The choice is yours my friends and I offer you this, if support for Miss Jane is greater or equal to her detractors come Election day, I will publish a public apology to her in the comments section of this very post! I also would like to state that I have no present beef with the fine people of Necco. In fact, I am a card carrying fan of the Necco Wafer, a pastel colored delight that is not only a sweet treat but, in a pinch, can be utilized as sidewalk chalk.

Traumafessions :: Kinderpal Vicar of VHS on Disney's Pinocchio

Posted on By aunt john

I had to search your site TWICE for this one, so amazed was I that no one had brought it up yet…

There's no shortage of traumatic Disney moments. Everybody's traumatized by the Evil Queen in SNOW WHITE, by DUMBO's separation from his mom, by the Death of Mrs. BAMBI, and by the sheer FACT of PETE'S DRAGON, but one extremely traumatic Disney moment that seems to get short shrift is one that caused no end of nightmares for the Lil' Vicar, the "Pleasure Island" sequence from PINOCCHIO.

You remember the set-up–after being tempted off the straight-and-narrow by that sly, conniving Fox, PINOCCHIO joins a boatload of other wayward boys on a trip to Pleasure Island, a bad boy's paradise where everything that grown-ups won't let you do is not only allowed, but encouraged. PINOCCHIO and his friends gorge on sweets, smoke cigars, play cards, fight, break glass, drink beer (maybe it's meant to be root beer, but that's not how I remember it) and gleefully break every rule they can think of, basking in the glow of completely unsupervised freedom.

It all seems pretty great until PINOCCHIO, green from smoking stogies and sick on sweets, listens to one of his pals waxing poetic on the wonders of being bad. The boy lets out a long, boisterous laugh that, in mid-guffaw, becomes the bray of a donkey! His bravado suddenly gone, the boy brays again, this time in terror, as his hands curl into hoofs, his ears elongate, his snout grows, and he transforms horrifyingly into a little, LITERAL jackass! The editing, animation, and sound design here is bad enough (terrified by what's happening to him, the tough boy starts wailing pitifully for a mother who ISN'T THERE before the last bit of his humanity disappears and with it his power of speech), but then the same thing starts to happen to all the OTHER boys on Pleasure Island, paradise suddenly transformed into a Boschian Body-Horror HELL! Not content to let that horror suffice, the Disney team turns the screw further by having faceless brutish toughs round up the boys onto cattle carts (Holocaust imagery! Great for the whole family!) to be sold either into hard labor or to the glue factory. As the train pulls away, the jackasses that once were boys can be seen weeping helplessly, the victims of their own uncontrolled appetites and, presumably, lax parenting.

The now donkey-eared PINOCCHIO manages to escape with Jiminy Cricket's help, and later has to face the larger horror of Monstro the Whale; but for me as a kid, that was a cakewalk compared to the horror, helplessness, and horrible separation from one's loved ones depicted in the terrifying "Pleasure Island" segment. I'm even a little shaky writing about it now, more than thirty years later!

DAMN YOU DISNEY! Even THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON didn't do THIS to me!

AUNTIE SEZ: Thanks for sharing Vicar! Kids, be sure to visit the Vicar of VHS at his virtual Pleasure Island, a.k.a. Mad Mad Mad Mad Movies, where bad behavior is most definitely encouraged and will NOT cause jackass ears to sprout from your impressionable heads.

mad mad mad mad movies

The Midnight Hour

Posted on By step-nephew redboy

AUNT JOHN SEZ: Hey kids, your Unkle Lancifer and I have to jet off to Delaware today for a last minute, bulk Halloween candy shopping spree. Despite the short notice, we managed to rustle up one the coolest music aficionados on the interwebs for a return babysitting engagement. So everyone, please be on your best behavior for REDBOY, and be sure to check out all of the great spooky, Halloween tunes he has been featuring on BLUES FOR THE REDBOY.


blues for the redboy

And if I hear of anyone acting up while we're gone, I am coming back with nothing but a bag of Mary Janes! Without further ado, here is REDBOY and his take on the made-for-television masterpiece THE MIDNIGHT HOUR:

Seeing as how Halloween is quickly approaching with all the subtlety of a rocket-propelled grenade, the time has inevitably come for the smell of burning leaves to fill the air, and for elderly neighbors to start crafting popcorn-balls and baking Rhubarb pies to benefit UNICEF and …Oh, wait a minute. I'm sorry. That's Norman Rockwell's America…

Let's back this up a tick.

As an adult, the most frightening thing I and others of my kind will have to contend with this Halloween will be showing up at work sober, that is if we can even recall the season at all, the holidays blending together so much like a TIM BURTON pastiche. It's disheartening, I know, but it wasn't always like that.

If you can imagine, there was a time when kids weren't too fat or too lazy to Trick or Treat; a time when overzealous parents weren't x-raying Charleston Chews looking for dope needles, and eggs and toilet paper could be purchased without three forms of ID. As was customary, children made the neighborhood rounds without chaperons, filled as many pillowcases as time would allow (I personally used different masks and hit the good houses several times) before settling in at home for a scary movie; their poor little tummies on the verge of prolapsing under the weight of all that peanut butter and nougat.

The movie – oh well that was easy. You had the WORST WITCH or the equally safe THE HALLOWEEN THAT ALMOST WASN'T, in addition to the usual programming block of cartoons. And the kiddies were content with that, edging their nightmarish bets with GARFIELD and FAT ALBERT.  But as a seven-year-old too old for the existentialist crisis of IT'S THE GREAT PUMPKIN, CHARLIE BROWN and too young for torture porn, I required something a bit stronger…like THE MIDNIGHT HOUR for instance.

A made-for-T.V. movie lensed in 1985, THE MIDNIGHT HOUR was a relatively bloodless endeavor staring a veritable who's who of "Who the Hell Are They?" including LAVAR BURTON (READING RAINBOW), SHARI BELAFONTE-HARPER, DEDEE PFEIFFER (Michelle's younger sister) and the venerable DICK VAN PATTEN. That's not to say that the film didn't have its charms, or indeed, its teeth, DICK VAN PATTEN notwithstanding.

The plot of THE MIDNIGHT HOUR settles on teenage loser Phil Grenville. Phil just so happens to be the ancestor of local witch hunter Nathaniel Grenville who, 200 years prior, very famously did away with resident witch Lucinda Cavander, effectively ending her curse on the unassuming New England town of Pitchford Cove.

Grenville and his friends, wishing to make an entrance at a "totally rad!" costume party, sneak into the local wax museum to "borrow" some authentic costumes and effects, including a trunk which belonged to Grandfather Nathaniel Grenville. Wisely deciding that grand larceny ain't nothin' without a little funerary desecration, the gang heads over to the local cemetery to inventory the trunk whereby they happen upon an old parchment containing the original spell cast by Lucinda two hundred years ago tonight (What are the odds, huh?).

And if you need one good reason why SHARI BELAFONTE-HARPER's character should NOT read that friggin' spell out loud, in addition to the fact that it is Halloween night two-hundred years to the day, then consider momentarily that she also just so happens to be the ancestor of hanged witch Lucinda Cavender. Needless to say, all kinds of undead wackiness ensues.

THE MIDNIGHT HOUR is just the kind of light-hearted romp networks go weak in the knees for. Shot on the cheap and with little fuss, it was the perfect band-aid for a typically quiet network holiday. Though for all its comedy and near-misses, there is some genuinely creepy stuff going on, enough to freak out even seven-year-old me.

To say the dead rise from their grave to plague Pitchford Cove would be an understatement, as coffins literally explode (!?!?) from the ground in a shower of dirt, loosing vampires, werewolves, even (I shit you not) a seven-foot tall zombie serial killer who is more than a little pissed-off at his having been fried in the electric chair. As the evil begins to spread through Pitchford Cove, the townspeople themselves become all manner of undead.  The local zombified judge (already an abusive alcoholic dick even before he was dead) attempts to bash his son's head in with a rock before deciding on the less violent alternative of strangling his punk-ass to death on top of a Cadillac Deville.

To make matters worse, two hundred year old witch / vampire Lucinda shows up to the Halloween party, attacking great granddaughter SHARI BELAFONTE-HARPER (rather incestuously) in the wine cellar, latching onto her neck like a lamprey in slo-motion as bottles of Merlot burst off the shelves to the tune of 'How Soon is Now' by The Smiths.

That's another thing, THE MIDNIGHT HOUR has one of the best soundtracks of the eighties (second only to RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD).With Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, Wilson Picket, Credence Clearwater Revival and narration by Wolfman Jack, it certainly left an impression on most of the 'tweens who saw it, undoubtedly contributing to the film's cult status.

The movie spends a lot of time padding out the heavy stuff with some zombie comic relief, including a midget zombie and an undead heavy-petting session, giving way to a ridiculously out of place '80s song and dance number so indicative of 'Thriller' that Michael Jackson might just have legal recourse to punch director JACK BENDER in the face.


Following all the moon walking and rotten crotch-grabbing, the terror gets right back on track as the darkened streets of Pitchford Cove begin to resemble Beirut – cars burning, littered with garbage – as the undead infect every last citizen down to the milkman (They even vampirized the goddamned dentist!).

It isn't long before grandson Phil Grenville, along with a hot, and strangely non-putrefied dead cheerleader named Sandy, put two and two together and figure out the secret to stopping the curse. Only problem is they have to contend with an undead PETER DeLUISE of '21 JUMP STREET fame…and if that doesn't traumatize you, then you are already dead inside.

Will Phil Grenville succeed?

Will the town of Pitchford Cove get swallowed up by Lucinda's curse?

Will ABC be able to recoup their production budget in ad revenue?

These are all questions that I could have cared less about as a kid. I was just happy that network T.V. was showing a horror movie before bedtime.

THE MIDNIGHT HOUR actually holds up pretty well upon repeat viewing, not that ABC has ever endeavored to show it again since its original broadcast. Nor can the average gen-x'er afford the steep $400 price tag the movie tends to fetch on DVD (!?!?). Sure the feathered hair and shoulder-pads are undeniably 80's, but the darker moments – witchcraft, teenage death, etc – are still strong in the minds of viewers today, even if the requisite ghosts and goblins have not fared nearly as well.

Speaking of… while sitting at your house this Halloween, waiting for that smattering trick-or treaters to drop by dressed up as characters which you are so far removed from culturally that you don't even recognize, just remember that there was a time not long ago when the holiday was not strip-mined by Hallmark and sponsored by Commerce Bank; a time when Halloween was a full scale riot for candy supremacy, and the dead roamed the land with earthly feet.

Unlike good ole' Lucinda Cavender, the real curse of Halloween is disenfranchisement, but that ain't nothin' that a little network T.V. and about 15 rolls of Smarties won't cure.