kindertrauma

Silent Night Bloody Night

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Like a Phoenix rising from the ashes of public domain limbo, SNBN is beginning to build quite a reputation amongst horror enthusiasts. Filmed in 1972 and featuring a P.O.V. insane asylum escape and creepily voiced phone terrorism, this holiday horror predates slasher boom catalysts HALLOWEEN and BLACK CHRISTMAS. Many are beginning to perceive it as the missing link between 70's sleaze and 80's assembly line gore mongering. Cursed with one of it's main star's death (JAMES PATTERSON), a 2 year stint on the shelf and famously poor quality transfer issues, this film's biggest break thus far has been a memorable presentation on ELVIRA'S MOVIE MACABRE in the mid eighties. (actually it double featured with my ultimate trauma inducer SATAN'S TRIANGLE) B-movie goddess MARY WARONOV stars as Diane Adams, the mayor's daughter in the town of East Willard who gets wrapped up in a chain of events involving a foreboding mansion's ownership. The house has a grim history that involves much of the town and the impending sale of the property has irked a shadowy black-gloved killer who could be anyone. What fascinates most here is the film's unique tone and visual style. Somber, barely decipherable images float along side Woronov's ice cold narration and an offbeat soundtrack to produce a nearly trance like effect. Fans of the eerie non-logic and ambiguous finale of LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH will feel right at home here. Those who prefer a clean get away after viewing should stand warned, recalling the film's plot as the credits roll is akin to trying to remember an elusive childhood nightmare.

INDELIBLE SCENE(S):

  • The abrupt PSYCHO-esque axe murder cuts through the foggy atmosphere like…well, like an axe!
  • The sepia soaked flashback that plays like THE BROTHERS QUAY animating the shroud of Turin
  • Woronov's factory cohorts CANDY DARLING and ONDINE appear
  • Wine glass shoved in eye
  • The shocking, befuddling conclusion

*KINDERFLASH!!!: For more on SNBN check out this recent review at MMMMmovies. The always alert and versed Vicar of VHS also unearthed this intriguing SNBN fansite. Thanks Vicar!

TALES FROM THE CRYPT Season One Ep. 2 "AND ALL THROUGH THE HOUSE"

Posted on By aunt john

i've been a bad girl this year santa!

After braining her husband Joseph Christmas Eve with a fireplace poker, Elizabeth (MARY ELLEN TRAINOR) shoos her Santa-obsessed daughter Carrie Ann off to bed, and sets out to dispose of his body in a snow-covered well. While struggling with the hubby's corpse, Elizabeth encounters an axe-wielding, insane asylum escapee (LARRY DRAKE of DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW fame) dressed in full Santa Claus regalia. With a swift kick to his holiday package, Elizabeth successfully fends off the lunatic, and a suspenseful cat-and-mouse game of naughty-versus-not-so-nice proportions ensues. Directed by ROBERT ZEMECKIS (the then-husband of Ms. TRAINOR), this half-hour episode of the late ‘80s HBO horror staple is a remake of the JOAN COLLINS vignette featured in the 1972 flick TALES FROM THE CRYPT. Although COLLINS leaves some pretty big pumps to fill, TRAINOR earns a well-deserved spot on Santa's shitlist.

INDELIBLE SCENE(S):

  • Elizabeth gives her husband the poker
  • Insane Santa climbing the ladder to Carrie Ann's window
  • The Crypt Keeper dressed as Saint Nick (in a word, adorable!)

Santa baby!

Christmas With the Krampus

Posted on By unkle lancifer


American Christian children are quick to laugh off empty threats concerning coal in their stockings as punishment for bad behavior. Austrian kiddies, on the other hand, better mind their P's and Q's. According to their ancient lore Santa, like a mob boss not wanting to get his hands dirty, enlists the aid of a menacing looking creature named Krampus. Horned, spike-tounged and covered in black fur, the big k takes his job seriously, and takes great joy in beating the living daylights out of children. Particularly nasty tots are shoved into his sack or basket and taken away forever. Of course, Krampy is nothing if not pure Kindertrauma poster boy material so to celebrate his centuries of accomplishments in the art of traumatization, we direct you to the always entertaining MONSTER BRAINS to get the real skinny on this under appreciated x-mas icon.

12 Movie Characters Not To Invite to Your Holiday Party

Posted on By unkle lancifer


After years of entertaining at the holidays, we here at Kindertrauma like to consider ourselves armchair experts when it comes to decorating with tinsel and making homemade eggnog. We've also learned exactly who is deserving of a get-together invite, and who would be better served with a restraining order. Like Santa, we maintain a list of partygoers who are naughty and nice, and the following folks have been blacklisted from all future Kindertrauma-sponsored holiday functions:

12. SCROOGE (ALASTAIR SIM) a.k.a fun removal machine: The only time he takes a break from talking about work is when he's mid-delusion, bargaining with the angel of death.
11. Scut Farkus (ZACK WARD) from A CHRISTMAS STORY: Do you really wanna stare at this mug from across the table?
10. JACK FROST: He's a rapist, and he'll leave your bathtub a mess.
9. The hobo (voice of TOM HANKS) from THE POLAR EXPRESS: Much like the film he occupies, he's under the false impression that he's heartwarming and charming when in actuality he's stomach churning and nightmarish. Like a crappy movie that won't end, he's the guest who stays forever.
8. Alternative-universe Claire Phillips from SCROOGED (KAREN ALLEN): Aside from hating poor, starving children, she apparently shares the same powder puff as JOAN VAN ARK.
7. Mr. Potter (LIONEL BARRYMORE) from IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE: Although richer than God, he's not above petty theft. Keep your eye on this one; we caught him digging through the pockets of the coat pile in the Kindertrauma master bedroom last year.
6. CHRISTMAS EVIL's Harry Stadling (BRANDON MAGGERT): A notorious cross dresser, he's likely to slip out with your wife's slip, and your grandma's church wig.
5. Mrs. Mac from BLACK CHRISTMAS (MARION WALDMAN): Most likely to drain your liquor cabinet and, more importantly, the hidden hooch kept in the back of your toilet tank.
4. Young Grinch (PASSIONS star JOSH RYAN EVANS) from HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS: Sure he's adorable, but not only is he way high maintenance, he also brings back unwanted memories of wee '70s songster PAUL WILLIAMS. Trained orangutan Nurse Precious is a better bet.
3. Mrs. Deagle (POLLY HOLLIDAY) from GREMLINS: She's an unrepentant dog hater, and she requires a chairlift.
2. Grandpa Chapman (WILL HARE) from SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT: This crazy coot clams up in group settings yet we'll talk your ear off as soon as he gets you alone. Don't even get him started on Santa Claus; his obsessive paranoid conspiracy theories rival those of fellow party pooper OLIVER STONE.
santa's slay
1. If you do make the mistake of inviting the above nine, there is a quick and easy way to get rid of them. Just invite our #1 pick Santa (BILL GOLDBERG) from SANTA'S SLAY. In the opening sequence, he takes out FRAN DRESHER, CHRIS KATTAN, REBECCA GAYHEART, and JAMES CAAN, proving that he's quite adept at demolishing a room full of D-listers.

The Haunted

Posted on By unkle lancifer


For anyone who has ever stayed up late watching a supernatural reenactment show like A HAUNTING or UNSOLVED MYSTERIES and found themselves with an unshakable sense of the creeps, This 1991 television movie may be just for you. Unavailable on VHS or DVD, it has never the less acquired a following thanks to repeated showings on the SCIFI network over the years. SALLY KIRKLAND plays Pennsylvania house wife Janet Smurl, a woman whose family is overtaken by malevolent spirits. With little by the way of special effects or money-shots, this straightforward slice of alleged reality gets under the skin in a way most of its big-budgeted haunted house brethren could only dream of. Taking place over several years and involving not only the family but their neighbors, church, and the media at large, it presents the ghostly manifestations as something exhaustingly relentless in a way that the old "one lone night in a mansion of strangers" never could. KIRKLAND, with her downplayed narration and histrionic free performance, warrants actual sympathy and it's almost impossible for the viewer not to imagine what they would do under similar circumstances. Whether you believe in things that go bump in the night or wonder if the Smurls were bumped in the head, this tale is real "keep the lights on" material.

INDELIBLE SCENE(S)

  • Dad is raped by face changing succubus
  • Voices in the pillow
  • AMITYVILLE HORROR rejects Ed and Loraine Warren investigate and discover creepy looking pilgrim ghosts
  • The strange amorphous shadow that travels through the duplex wall and upsets poor granny
  • The crazy shape crashes the camping trip while the vacant house goes bananas disrupting the neighborhood with shrieks and groans
  • Hey! It's that amulet toting "Bitch" ASHLEY BANK from MONSTER SQUAD! Someone's cruising for a honorary traumatot award!

TRAUMAFESSIONS :: Reader Jason P. on Invaders From Mars

Posted on By unkle lancifer

One of my earliest memories of a movie creeping me out as a kid would be the 1953 original INVADERS FROM MARS. I caught it on television when I was probably no older than six or seven on what must have been a black and white set because I was recently surprised to find the movie was actually shot in color despite my recollections. So this kid sees a flying saucer land in this spooky field out behind his house in the middle of the night and tries to convince his parents and the authorities of what he saw. Problem is, each time someone investigates they get dragged down beneath this sandpit that the saucer has burrowed beneath.

What's worse is that these victims come back…different. The kid's father, who was sucked into the ground, is cold and even hostile toward his own son. At one point the father even smacks the kid down to the floor when his son spots a strange growth on the back of the dad's neck. Soon the father is taking his wife up to be abducted and reprogrammed and the poor boy doesn't even know his own parents anymore. As a child, the Martians (when we finally see them) were much less scary than the thought of my parents suddenly becoming unfamiliar or mean. To this day I still sometimes double check the back of my parents' necks for any strange protuberances!

BUCK ROGERS Season One Ep. 14 "SPACE VAMPIRE"

Posted on By unkle lancifer


Certainly good old Buck Rogers can be relied upon to deliver a nights entertainment to the kiddies without damaging their fragile minds. Sure the entire cast's skin tight spandex attire verges on the pornographic, but the violence is sure to be nothing more than a couple laser blasts, and there's always the lovable "ambuquad" Twiki to keep things light. On January 3rd 1980, in an episode entitled SPACE VAMPIRE, Buck and company may have slightly overestimated their audience's capacity for horror. Unprotected by the ability to seriously question the ridiculousness of what they were witnessing, many children went to bed if not scared, than certainly bewildered. While taking Twiki in for repairs, Buck (GIL GERARD) and Colonel Wilma Deering (ERIN GRAY) find themselves quarantined on a space station, and in the direct path of a "Vorvon", a vampire-inspired alien that sucks the life from its victims. This Vorvon, being that he has working eyeballs, immediately sets his glowing red sights on many an adolescent boy's wet dream Wilma. The creature's appearance, with it's cabbage head and unibrow, is unsettling enough, but the transformation of Col. Deering from intelligent heroine to whimpering victim to lascivious heathen is the stuff permanent psychological scars are made of. Of course our Buck does save the day by sending the neo nosfuratu hurdling into a star breaking his Svengali hold on our dear Deering, but the damage is done. Wilma is left verbalizing her shame like a slowly sobering crack whore and pre-adolescent boys are left contemplating the now horrifyingly thin line between abject terror and vague arousel.

INDELIBLE SCENE(S)

  • E.T's mom's main squeeze CHRISTOPHER STONE's awesome ‘stache
  • The Vorvon cruises the space station's disco singles bar and only Wilma can see him
  • Vorvy appears as glowing red orb to enter Wilma's quarters and drains her with his long fingers
  • ERIN GRAY goes totally nuts draining folks, coming on to Buck, talking like a tranny and planning world domination! "I like the taste of fear best of all!"

TRAUMAFESSIONS :: Reader Robert on Friday the 13th

Posted on By aunt john

It was 1980. I was 11. My brother said he would take me to a movie that night, and I could just pick whatever I wanted to watch. I narrowed the choices down to THE LONG RIDERS and some horror flick called FRIDAY THE 13TH. So we left that evening and as it turns out, there was rain, heavy rain that night in Savannah, GA. The city itself kind of looks creepy at night, but with the downpour and the streetlights there was a weird orange glow outside as we headed towards the Lucas Theater. So not only were the streets looking eerie, but the theater itself was in an old, Victorian building. (more…)

Food Of The Gods

Posted on By unkle lancifer


Ozone depletion and the melting of polar ice-caps seem like a small environmental price to pay when considering H.G. WELLS' notion of mother nature's ultimate revenge. If the idea of a giant chicken pecking you to death isn't enough to get you to separate your glass from your plastics nothing will. Hayseed farmers Ma and Pa Skinner (JOHN McLIAM and actress/director pioneer IDA LUPINA) stumble across some Texas tea that bubbles from their property. Resembling pancake batter, the gruel has the unique ability to transform animals and insects to abnormal size. The INCONVENIENT TRUTH though, is that once super-sized the denizens of this farm develop an ornery attitude that leaves several unfortunates very dead. MARJOE "Are you washed in the blood of the lamb?" GORTNER and PAMELA FRANKLIN (lil' Flora from THE INNOCENTS!) must battle these abominations, not to mention many an unconvincing miniature and split screen effect in order to stay alive. Besides the faulty fowl previously mentioned, wasps, worms and a plethora of rats must also be reckoned with. This PG-rated late night favorite delivers more laughs than chills, so call some friends and watch this baby with plenty of beer. Just remember to recycle the cans.

INDELIBLE SCENE(S):

  • Giant rooster attack is one for the ages
  • The nearly transparent pre-CGI wasps
  • Ida's arm being chomped by giant worms is one effect that still effectively turns the stomach
  • Extensive scenes that can only be described as actual rat snuff
  • The ominous carton of milk at film's end