kindertrauma

Cathy's Curse

Posted on By unkle lancifer

cathy's curse

CATHY'S CURSE (a.k.a. CAUCHEMARES) is an awful movie and I love it. I love subjecting people to it. I love watching a smiling, hopeful face, eager for a night of entertainment, slowly melt into one of disappointment and abject nausea. How many times have I forced others to watch this celluloid catastrophe with me? How many friendships have come to a screeching halt due to my insistence that it be regularly viewed? Moreover, how many of those unwittingly indoctrinated, now lost souls, left my home stumbling, screaming into the night just like the unfortunate visitors to Cathy's address?

If CATHY'S CURSE were just incompetent that would be one thing, but it goes far beyond that, it willfully defies rational thought. It laughs in the face of human comprehension. It dares you to follow its lead and then pushes you into a pit of mental strain that only those who have suffered severe head injuries could possibly understand. It's really more of an endurance test than anything else because CATHY'S CURSE is cursed alright. There is something supremely unnatural about it. Maybe it is evil in its truest form, a black hole that tears to shreds the fabric of everything we believe to be natural and real and good. I have come to fear that the atrocity's creation was no accident. If you handed a camera to a mentally disabled monkey, it could deliver a film that reflected something of what day-to-day life on earth was like. No, this is the handiwork of a diabolical madman.

On the surface it masquerades as just another child possession movie. You would think following the action would be simple as the ground it presumes to cover has been tread countless times before. Unfortunately, the "director" stubbornly insists on presenting us countless inconsistencies that go far beyond what viewers would be used to witnessing in a so-called "bad movie." (Imagine a mean-spirited TROLL 2 and you're not even half way there). The instances of counter logic are simply too frequent and too obvious to be a mistake. Why didn't anyone stop them? Considering that the production involved at least as many adult humans as we see on the screen, I can't help but wonder why no one had the wherewithal to intervene and inject at least a granule of sanity to the proceedings. Surely they had some inkling of what they were doing!? They HAD to know!

Maybe future generations will understand. Maybe visitors from outer space could decipher it. Is it an anarchistic treatise against cinema as a whole? An experimental Dadaist poem about the perils of puberty and the dismantling of the nuclear family? By exposing us to random images whose meanings are obtuse or non-existent, are we meant to experience first hand what it's like to be as insane as the people who inhabit this film are?

I am afraid. I am afraid that death will be like CATHY'S CURSE. I am afraid that the curse-a-verse is something real, another dimension beyond or own, a place where only wrong things happen. I fear that only a wall as thin as an onionskin separates our two worlds and that slowly that world is being absorbed into our own. I look in the mirror, am I Cathy's curse? Did I make this happen? Is this movie my punishment for unknown deeds in a previous life? Will it ever go away? If you have not seen it yet, do yourself a favor and stay away. Nobody deserves to live in this kind of turmoil. I am no different than a heroin addict. I know this wretched thing is killing me but life without it is now unimaginable. Me and Cathy are joined for life. She guides me to the abyss and I follow. Turn back gentle reader before it is too late!!! (more…)

Traumafessions :: Richard of Doomedmoviethon on "Christopher Lloyd's Sewed on Head"

Posted on By unkle lancifer

You remember AMAZING STORIES, right? The mostly schmaltzy and occasionally entertaining brainchild of STEVEN SPIELBERG. Well, my favorite episode, "Go To The Head Of The Class", premiered in November of 1986 when I was ten years old. Oh, it's only my favorite now because the terror it inflicted on me has only now finally subsided. For years, I've hated its director, ROBERT ZEMECKIS, for really messing me up (and for BACK TO THE FUTURE PART III). Luckily, Movieplex has been running the AMAZING STORIES "movies", which are just some episodes slapped together, and I have finally faced my fear.

In the episode, CHRISTOPHER LLOYD plays Professor B. O. Beanes, a dictator of a high school teacher who takes great pleasure in punishing his students. When loser goofball Peter Brand, played by SCOTT COFFEY, starts flirting with bad girl Cynthia Simpson, the lovely MARY STUART MASTERSON, in class, they both run afoul of their jerky teacher. In order to get even, Cynthia convinces Peter to practice a little black magic on old Mr. Beanes. They accidentally kill the guy and then try resurrecting him. But, of course, they screw up while casting the spell, tear the head off the photo of the evil teacher, so he comes back from grave headless and very pissed off.

The promos for "Go To The Head Of The Class" had me bouncing off the walls for its premiere. Looking at it now, I see what I loved about the episode. It's campy, sexy in a teenie bopper '80s kind of a way, creepy in a non-threatening way, and fun as hell. But nothing could have prepared me for the surprise ending (which I'm going to ruin here). When all of the severed head business appears to have all just been a dream, Peter Brand arrives late to class to find Cynthia balancing dictionaries on her upturned hands as punishment. He also finds Mr. Beanes with his head reattached to his neck. Unfortunately for Peter (and for me), Beanes removes his scarf to show that his head has been very messily sewed back on.

This completely freaked me out. You see, I had just had my appendix removed and I still had the staples in so I was a little sensitive about seeing sutures. My imagination starting working overtime as I imagined CHRISTOPHER LLOYD's sewed on head stretching backwards and snapping its stitches in a fountain of blood. This didn't happen but I started thinking about my own scar ripping open and my guts falling out. Now I know it sounds convoluted but in a matter of seconds, I had totally ruined this excellent little one hour horror special for myself. I turned off my TV and sat in stunned silence, afraid to move. Needless to say, I had a very sleepless night ahead of me.

UNK SEZ: Thanks Richard, we always love to hear from you. We here at Kindertrauma are big fans of your DOOMED MOVIETHON! Your traumafession got me thinking about something I witnessed on television around the same time which I thought was also an episode of AMAZING STORIES. After a bit of searching, I found out it was an episode of the new TWILIGHT ZONE's first season back in 1985. It's entitled PERSONAL DEMONS and it is directed by PETER MEDAK who did THE CHANGELING. The story is about a writer named O'Bannon who has writer's block and starts seeing this scary guy and others like him everywhere he goes…

They're sorta like evil Jawas or the guys from PHANTASM except all they do is laugh hysterically and tear all his shit up. They trash his car, attack him in a bar and nobody can see these dudes besides him. Anyhows, I was happy to discover that if you act now, you can view it on the youtube before some dillweed takes it down. Here are parts ONE and TWO. I don't want to ruin the story for anyone, but it ends up being a great analogy of the creative process (whatever you do, make sure you read the closing credits). This episode has stuck with me for years so I'm so glad I got a chance to view it again. Oh, how I love my computer.

Traumafessions :: Reader Carolyanne G. on The Wall

Posted on By unkle lancifer

all in all, you're just another brick in the wall

At six years old, I assumed that cartoons were all for kids. Maybe that's why I was so shocked by what my father had fallen asleep in front of. I walked in on him watching THE WALL right at the start of the trial scene. Just the voices in that song haunted me halfway through puberty, until I finally sat down and watched it. The one scene that really hit home with me was the sequence during "Another Brick in the Wall Part 2" where these little kids were being marched into a food grinder. I think between that scene and the "trial" sequence, it took my dad over an hour to calm me down.


UNK SEZ: Carolyanne, I've been waiting for somebody to mention this one! I love this movie, but I can definitely see how it would freak out a youngster. The whole movie is like being stuck in the head of a crazy person and you can't get much more kindertraumatic than a bunch of kids lining up to jump into a meat grinder! Plus who can forget the immortal lines: "If you don't eat your meat you can't have any pudding! How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?"

we don't need no meat grinder

Traumafessions :: Reader Amanda on Leprechaun(s)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

i want me gold!

My most vivid memories are about things that scared me when I was a kid. When I was little, about 7 or 8, I saw the movie LEPRECHAUN. It completely terrified me. In the middle of the movie I finally got up the courage to leave the room and ran to my bedroom and jumped on the bed from 3 feet away so anything under the bed couldn't grab me. Then I spent all night lying awake terrified that leprechauns would come up the side of the bed while I was asleep. A couple of years ago when I was about 23, I watched LEPRECHAUN on T.V. and I couldn't believe how cruddy it was. It's amazing what crap will scare a kid. To this day I've never been a fan of leprechauns.


UNK SEZ: Agreed! I'm not a fan of Leprechauns either! They really need to start working on their public image, as it stands , even when they are not killing people, they come across as profoundly greedy and woefully prone to obsessive compulsive disorders and Napoleon complexes. If I had magical powers I think I could find something better to do with my time than go on and on about how great my bucket of gold is and how everyone wants it! Get over yourselves, leprechauns! Nobody cares!

Kinder-Tantrum :: Monsters & Kids Should Be Allowed to Enter Into Friendships!

Posted on By aunt john

i want a monster to be my friend!

Years before that red-furred, homicidal maniac (whose name I am afraid to type) took up residence on America's favorite multicultural thoroughfare, SESAME STREET was home to a gaggle of adorable monsters. Despite reports from readers and listicle makers to the contrary, your Aunt John, in his formative years, found the monsters to be the best part of SESAME STREET in the 1970s. I loathed Snuffleupagas and flat-out hated Bob too. I wanted all my shows brought to me by the letter M for Monster!

My prayers for more monster screen time were answered in 1975 with the release of this innocuous enough seeming power-ballad "I Want A Monster To Be My Friend":


The song was released on the The Sesame Street MONSTERS! LP which, with its good beat that I could dance to after kindergarten left out for the day, became #1 with a bullet on my Fisher-Price turntable. It was so awesome that it made me forget about my former musical obsessions Snoopy vs. The Red Baron, and The Monster Mash LP by Peter Pan Records.

Flash forward to this past November and Virginia Heffernan in the New York Times, the "Paper of Record" that was so kind to recently name-drop Kindertrauma (umm, scroll down, we're beneath the Al Sharpton link), reported that the DVD treatment of old-school Sesame Street was getting hit with an "Adults-Only" warning label. WTF? Was Mr. Hooper that bad-ass of a curmudgeon?  This news left your dear old Aunt John reeling and thinking. Thinking, that is, about whatever happened to my favorite monster song!?!

After some extensive research, (cough, Googling), your Aunt John was s-h-o-c-k-e-d to learn that back in 1984, some bored housewife launched a campaign to have my favorite monster tune censored:

The song was removed from rotation on Sesame Street in 1984, after a mother complained about the song's bridge:

If I make friends with a friendly monster,
I'll let him bounce me on his knee.
I'll let him do whatever he wants to,
Especially if he's bigger than me.

These lyrics, interpreted in an unwholesome way, could be seen as encouraging children to give in to physical demands made by adults. A New York Times article on April 9, 1984, summarized the situation:

The monster song on the children's television program Sesame Street is about to lose four lines because of a mother who feared they would encourage child molestation. Marty Deming, a mother of two, objected to the lines. She said Edward L. Palmer, vice president of the Children's Television Workshop, told her Sesame Street will stop using the lines, even though the producers felt the song "has nothing to do with encouraging children to let real adult persons make improper advances on them."

Shame on you mother of two Marty Deming, and your over-active imagination. It's a song about friendship and acceptance, not one that actively encourages small children to succumb to the advances of bicycle shop proprietors.

Thanks to Deming, the song is no longer available on any SESAME STREET re-issues and compilations. Thankfully, the good folks over at the now-defunct 365 Days Project are not afraid of befriending monsters and have the song available for download.

Kinder-News :: Righting the Wrongs of the AFI

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Not unlike 9-1-1, AFI (The American Film Institute) is a joke. Yeah, you heard that right, a joke, and a really unfunny joke like the one about six being afraid of seven. Although they thought to include such non-popular, non-relevant genres like "Sports" and "Courtroom Dramas" on their DUMB LIST, for some reason they neglected our most favorite genre of all. And no, it's not horror. We're all for the ostracizing of horror films, the last thing we want is for horror movies to go mainstream; we're talking about… wheelchair movies!!! (The inclusion of REAR WINDOW in their suspiciously WATCHER IN THE WOODS free mystery list simply does not suffice!) We can overlook their bizarre, borderline flippant, spurious assessments of cinema (Girl at video store: "Let's travel to the magic fantasy world of GROUNDHOG DAY!" Boy at video store: "No. I'm in the mood for a sweeping, globetrotting epic like SHINDLER'S LIST!"), but the smug oversight of making their choices blatantly handicap inaccessible must be corrected at once! We here at Kindertrauma neither have the time nor the will power to right all the wrongs in the world (so please stop asking), but as far as this glaring error in judgment goes, we are more than handicapable.


First Up: The Honorable Mentions…
SCARY MOVIE 2

Although we were hesitant to include a Wayans Brothers' comedy on our list (WHITE CHICKS, anyone?), we can't deny the hypnotic power of dueling wheelchairs, especially when one is captained by DAVID CROSS and the other, a ghostly RICHARD MOLL!

ASYLUM

As this AMICUS anthology aptly illustrates. Being in a wheelchair sometimes makes you vulnerable to sneaky attacks by lil' miniature robot dudes!

PIN

The kooky anatomy doll that goes by the name of "PIN" (short for Pinocchio, natch) is known to take a load off of his plastic feet and travel by wheelchair occasionally.

Now, fasten your seat belts, it's time for…

THE TOP TEN WHEELCHAIR MOVIES!!!!

10. MONKEYSHINES


For people who are not used to it, being in a wheelchair can really suck the big one, but as far as consolations go you can't beat lil monkey Ella, look at that face! She can dance, make breakfast, kill your mom and she'll even make out with you! You'd have to be bananas not to love her!

9. THE ATTIC

Some haters would say feigning the need for a wheelchair in order to make someone your own personal servant is diabolical. I say I just got a new role model!

8. THE CHANGELING

The always-unwelcome TRISH VAN DEVERE is once again chased out of someone's home with the threat of bodily harm. This time however it is by a possessed wheelchair that drives itself!! Take a hint TRISH and get lost!

7. SILVER BULLET

This hot rod inspired wheelchair makes that old timey busted up wicker model from the THE CHANGELING look even more like a piece of crap. Thanks Uncle Red, you're the best raging alcoholic we know!

6. THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE

Have you ever felt great sympathy for a person who is confined to a wheelchair? Meet Frank and say goodbye to those feelings forever. Here's a guy that will actually have you routing for a family of Texan cannibals… that's right we said Texan. With his non-stop whining and fussing, Franky boy may be the most unlikable portrayal of a handicapped person since that girl from DIFF'RENT STROKES who called everybody, "Turkey!"

5. NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: DREAM WARRIORS

A kid in a wheelchair dreams that he can walk again. It should be a time to celebrate except that America's favorite child molester Freddy Krueger is such a douche that he makes a super evil wheelchair to run the nerd down! Next, using the dream world rules, the kid turns himself into a fanciful wizard complete with the magical power to die in an embarrassing costume.

4. THE PIT

A hostage to kindness and the wheels beneath her, Mrs. Oliphant wrongly thinks Jamie Benjamin is going to do her a solid when he offers to push her chair. Instead he dumps her and her wheels into a pit of bloodthirsty Neanderthal monsters!

3. WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?

Every dining experience is drive-thru when you're stuck in a wheelchair. Too bad chef Baby Jane serves dead birds as appetizers and the main course is rat!

2. FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2

Finally a movie that depicts the reality that being in a wheelchair is the ultimate babe magnet. This poor guy was just about to get laid, but in true FRIDAY fashion he instead got a machete lodged in his face and propelled backwards down a flight of stairs during a lightning storm. Harsh I know, but that's what makes it the best kill ever!

1. MAC AND ME

The makers of this E.T. rip off did not have the dough to pull off a fantastic "flying your bicycle past a full moon with your alien buddy" scene, so they settled for the next best thing by shoving a dummy into a wheelchair and throwing it off a cliff. It's sorta similar if you ignore the whole opposite direction thing. What, your heart doesn't explode with the wonder of life and the beauty of friendship when you look at this image? What is wrong with you people?!

Kinder-News :: What Not To Wear Scare?

Posted on By unkle lancifer

jason vorhees is a sexy beast!

Fashion and FRIDAY THE 13TH go hand in hand like….I don't know, who goes hand in hand? A person with a hand and another person with a hand, I suppose. Why are you reading this Kinder-drivel when EVIL ON TWO LEGS is not only brave enough to assess the fashion don'ts of your favorite series, but also brave enough to invite "A GIRL" along to make sure the proceedings are legit! We don't know who this "A GIRL" person is, but we think she should have her own blog A.S.A.P.!

Traumafessions :: Reader Eric Z. on Son of Blob (a.k.a. Beware! The Blob)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Back in the mid-'70s, my town library showed movies for kids on Saturday afternoons: rows of chairs, reel-to-reel projector, the screen that you stretch open and hook at the top, etc. One Saturday (I was probably 7 or 8), the librarians walk around before the film with a bowl of candy. Thanks! I'll have a Tootsie Roll, please. Then, the feature started: SON OF BLOB (a.k.a. BEWARE! THE BLOB). Harmless enough for an adult to watch, but when GODFREY CAMBRIDGE sits back in his easy chair, not knowing the Blob is waiting for him…let's just say that the following scene of CAMBRIDGE, covered in Blob up to his neck screaming his head off, traumatized me for years to come.


UNKLE LANCIFER SEZ: While certainly the unfortunate demise of GODFRY CAMBRIDGE, both in real life and in SON OF BLOB, is lamentable, may we take one moment to consider the horrible fate of perhaps the ultimate Arbogastian "One you might have saved." Yes, I'm speaking of this baby kitten whose curiosity gets him yanked out of a nearby kitchen window shortly after an ill-advised investigation of that damn blob with his wee little kitten paw! He never even got to fulfill his destiny of napping all day and begging for food all night. Why even a dog gets it in this movie, is nothing sacred?!!

Traumafessions :: Reader Eric Z. On Kingdom Of The Spiders

Posted on By unkle lancifer

kingdom of the spiders

The cheese-tastic TV movie KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS (1977), starring famed thespian WILLIAM SHATNER, traumatized me in a way that I was only able to shake after revisiting the source last month. There's a scene where WOODY STRODE's character gets attacked by the spiders as he's driving his truck, causing him to roll his truck down an embankment. When Sherriff SHATNER and his partner get to the truck and try to open it, STRODE's lifeless body flops into frame. Either he's covered in spiderwebs or the blood's been sucked from his body. Either way, this image affected me for years to come. I had nightmares of this corpse peeking at me from my bedroom doorway while I was in bed, tiptoeing across the doorway to the other side. I was actually a little scared to watch this clip again as research before I sent you this TRAUMAFESSION. But after revisiting it as an adult, I've been able to laugh it off (thank God).

Traumafessions :: Reader Jessica M. on The Mouse And His Child

Posted on By unkle lancifer

What's glaringly absent from your bucket of kindertrauma fun is a wonderful animated children's movie entitled THE MOUSE AND HIS CHILD. Oh gosh, how can you lose in a movie about a little wind up mouse and his wind up mouse son going on an adventure to become real and have a family? Oh I don't know, how about being beaten and whipped by city rats, enslaved in the gutters of the world, and a delightful scene where a toy donkey is torn apart for being a poor worker, screaming for his life as rats pull his limbs off and kill him.

Fun for the whole family. My father made me watch it because he said it was a "quality" children's story. Only WATERSHIP DOWN is more violent in terms of "delightful cartoons".


UNK SEZ: Sorry I missed this movie but I do remember reading the book as a kid. Besides all the severe hardships those toy mice went through (Now that I think about it they were sort of like the replicants in BLADE RUNNER searching for a way to wind themselves and take control of their destinies.), I'll never forget the illustration of a can of dog food that had a picture of a dog carrying another can of the same dog food that had a picture of a smaller dog doing the same, over and over and smaller and smaller presumably until infinity. That head trip freaked me out more than the rats, and I used to stare at it for hours!