As a corpulent teen coming of age in the 1980s, your Aunt John's only recourse for attaining peer acceptance was to wear black on the outside (to hide the fat on the inside), and to become a devotee of Siouxsie Sioux. Based on the 1977 TV movie THE SPELL, the way the social pecking order worked was apparently somewhat different for high school girls of a certain weight in Southern California in the late ‘70s. Our flick focuses on Rita, a big girl forced to live in the anorexic shadow of her foxy younger sister, played by the 1970s welfare-to-work-mother's answer to Jodie Foster – HELEN HUNT, and her ginger-locked ice queen of a mother, the questionably beautiful LEE GRANT (seriously, does anyone out there in KINDERTRAUMA land consider Ms. Grant pretty)? The movie commences with our pleasantly plump protagonist, clad in the requisite dumpy-pants gray sweat suit, being asked to climb the rope in gym class. While being audibly tormented by her classmates, who are all wearing sexy, crotch-cut Spandex unitards, young Rita steps up to rope while her arch nemesis executes some sort of Cirque du Soleil aerial maneuver high above the gymnasium floor. One side look from Rita at the Illeana Douglas-looking lady gym teacher, and the mean, skinny girl falls to the ground like an undernourished sack of potatoes. At home, Rita doesn't fare much better with her looks-obsessed lawyer father scolding her for asking for seconding helpings, and scheming to ship her plus-sized patootie off to a boarding school in England. Rita strikes back by sneaking out the house late at night in a Stevie Nicks cape for bewitching trysts with the aforementioned lady gym teacher, needle pointing an awesome Persian Cat handicraft, combusting some neighbor woman who saw her mingling with the lady gym teacher, and using her powers to nearly drown her waif-like little sister at a swim meet. The movie concludes with the most awesome mother/daughter showdown set in a 1970s open-air kitchen, and let's just say that the only supernatural force at work here kept Ms. Grant's ginger bob from moving. That shit looks like helmet.Speaking of which, please help us out with our first ever KINDERTRAUMA poll:

Who wore it best:

Please vote in the comments.

When I was young I was scared of two things, The Bermuda Triangle and the Devil. I was pretty sure the triangle had to stay put, so if I decided not to go on any plane or boat rides I would be all right. The devil too, I imagined was easily identifiable, (resembling the character on the Underwood Deviled Ham can) and pretty much restricted to staying far underground in a place called H-E-double-hockey-sticks. These theories and more would vaporize the night I begged my mother to let me stay up and watch SATAN'S TRIANGLE a 1975 television movie. The film starts off pleasantly enough with the Coast Guard finding an abandoned vessel with one lone survivor. Doug McClure listens intently as an icy Kim Novak recounts the paranormal demise of all aboard. Doug is a skeptic and is able to find logical solutions to every mysterious anecdote she has to offer. It's all very soothing to realize that every spooky unexplainable occurrence can be effortlessly shot through full of holes by the rational McClure. After everything is put in its place and we decide nothing is amiss, a helicopter arrives and suddenly the fabric of all we thought was real begins to unravel at a demonic speed. As much as I'd love to reveal the ending, I really couldn't do it justice anyway… suffice it to say, it's still the scariest I've ever seen. Besides bearing witness to the creepiest, longest, direct eye contact, smile ever put to film; my sense of reality along with Mr. McClure's character's was smashed into a million pieces and would never be repaired. My mother had her hands full trying to get my screaming, crying ass into bed that night and, for what seemed like years, I would huddle under the covers trying not to think bad thoughts. From that night on I lived with the realization that the devil and even the Bermuda triangle were a lot closer than I thought.

INDELIBLE SCENE(S):

• The levitating cadaver
• Death by swordfish
• EVERYTHING that happens after the Helicopter arrives…

Lack of coordination and mild case of childhood obesity aside, the real reason I never strapped skis to my feet and realized my childhood fantasy of being the toast of the late 1970s lodge scene was due, in part, to the made for TV movie Snowbeast. In a nutshell, some sort of unseen monster has been viciously attacking and terrorizing the winter sport enthusiasts at the seemingly under populated Rill Lodge and Ski Resort. I use unseen in the literal sense; perhaps due to a tight budget disguised as a suspense device, our monster is camera shy, and viewers are treated to some heavy breathing and shaky camera work from the perspective of said snowbeast each time he is about to pounce on a victim. Disregarding the mounting body count, the elderly owner of the resort plows ahead with the 50th Annual Winter Carnival. Clearly not one to miss out on a shindig, the Snowbeast makes his first on camera appearance, much to the audible horror of the soon-to-be-crowned Winter Carnival Queen. The Snowbeast responds by smashing out a window, inciting a riot amongst the carnival crowd, and murdering the Carnival Queen's mother in the parking lot. This was the scene that scared me off the slopes some 30 years ago, and this was the scene where I stopped paying attention to the drawn out love story involving the over-the-hill Olympic skier and his annoying wife.

INDELIBLE SCENE(S):

• The appearance of the Snowbeast at the window
• The murder of the Carnival Queen's mother in the parking lot. I want that sticker off her door
• Any scene with Sylvia Sidney as Carrie Rill, the Annual Winter Carnival obsessed resort owner. During the carnival melee, Ms. Sidney does her own stunt work and takes a tumble to the gymnasium floor, all the while shrieking about the crown that was meant for the runaway queen. The crown is crushed by one of the oddest pair of snow boots documented on celluloid