Traumafession:: Kevin M. on the Unblinking Stare in Encounter with the Unknown
ENCOUNTER WITH THE UNKNOWN is a largely forgotten 1973 anthology horror film that today's viewers will dismiss as cheap, stupid, boring and clumsy.
But many Kindertrauma readers will remember Mrs. Davis. (Either from the movie or previous posts.)
ENCOUNTER makes the most of its unknown actors, because it's a 70s docu-drama (like those low-budget Bigfoot movies where they feature documentary style re-enactments with supposedly true stories.) Actress Fran Franklin doesn't have any other credits. She IS Mrs. Davis, the same way Billy Redden IS the banjo kid from DELIVERANCE. You wouldn't want a famous actor like Meryl Streep in the role, that would just remind you it's "only a movie."
So here's my super-cut of every one of Mrs. Davis' moments in the film. She has one line in entire movie. But the filmmakers must've known she was the breakout star, because they kept going back to her with flashback after flashback. (Seriously, this movie has more recaps than an episode of the E! True Hollywood Story!)
ENCOUNTER is obsessed with the number 7: the power of the 7-sided heptagon, she's the 7th daughter of a 7th son. And while making this super-cut I realized: she comes back in 7 flashbacks (!!!!!!!)
Without a doubt Mrs. Davis is the most memorable part of the film. She's even featured on the cover of the DVD.
Anyone who grew up watching this movie is probably haunted by the Davis monologue (which is fitting since this segment of the movie is about being haunted by the memory of that very moment.) Probably because SHE NEVER BLINKS!
She holds the camera's gaze for 31 seconds with her wide-eyed stare. That's longer than cinema's longest stare-downs like Vincent D'Onfrio in FULL METAL JACKET, Jake Gyllenhall in DONNIE DARKO or even the Diner-lady in THE BIRDS.
Anyone with access to Snopes.com can blow-off the 3 urban legends that make up this anthology movie. But I saw this when I was 9 years old. (Oddly enough, it was the first movie my Dad rented when we got our VCR. Not STAR WARS, not E.T., but ENCOUNTER WITH THE UNKNOWN.) I believed every word that Rod Serling narrated and I bought into the supernatural mysteries. Today I know better, but I still get the chills from Mrs. Davis unblinking stare.
NOTE: This video was edited as part of KEVIN GEEKS OUT ABOUT DEADLY WOMEN. KEVIN GEEKS OUT is a monthly video variety show in Brooklyn, NY.
Sunday Streaming: Hollow Gate (1988)
Hey, it's high time for another installment of Sunday Streaming! I don't exactly recommend today's pick because it's mostly aggravating and generally tedious but I'm going to spotlight it here anyway so that I know where to find it! Ya see, just about every year, at around this time, I wonder to myself what is the name of that movie that begins at the Halloween party with the father trying to drown his son while he's bobbing for apples? And it takes me forever to remember. No, it's not INCIDENT AT RAVEN'S GATE and no, it's not the Horshack-starring HELLGATE, it's HOLLOW GATE! HOLLOW, HOLLOW, HOLLOW GATE! Now it is forever carved into my pumpkin head. I hope.
Picture this, Philadelphia in the late eighties and a young bright eyed and bushy-tailed Unk with a rolled up issue of GORE ZONE magazine in the back pocket of his overalls, searches the city for horror-themed entertainment! Back then there was not only a movie theater on every corner but also a video store too! Why, they rented videos in the drug stores back then! The oddest video store I recall was on the bottom floor of a nearby office building. It had one door to the sidewalk, one door that lead into the building and was smaller than a school bus inside. It had the tiniest selection and yet that selection consisted of hard to find titles I rarely bumped into anywhere else. They even had the notorious 555 (also 1988) in its bright pink florescent box! Working nights at the time, I would day-rent there; CHILLERS (1987), THE UNNAMABLE (1988), THE VIDEO DEAD and eventually, THE DEAD PIT with its blinking eyes!
Anyway, I rented HOLLOW GATE at that joint and I had the highest hopes for it because it took place on Halloween but it totally let me down. To be fair, there is one scene involving characters having to flee across an open field at night that has a somewhat eerie, nonsensical nightmare quality to it but in general, this flick will try your patience. Then again, in the right mood, the killer's snippy lead balloon one-liners and the teen victims barely intelligible histrionics can be borderline hilarious. I guess it all depends on how much you enjoy not-so-great HALLOWEEN rip-offs. It looks like these days, HOLLOW GATE has found itself under the caring wing of the fine folks at TROMA and that information may be more telling than anything I can offer. More importantly, when someone asks you to list films that take place on Halloween (and they will) this film's title is a legitimate response! That is, as long as you can remember what the title is. That title is HOLLOW GATE and you can watch it below! I apologize in advance that it features killer Golden Retrievers…
For the Love of: The Mutilator (1984)
UNKLE LANCIFER: Let's all take a premature fall break and lovingly fawn over a horror jaunt like no other, Buddy Cooper's 1984 slash-terpiece, THE MUTILATOR! To salute this bad boy properly I have secured the help of stalwart MUTILATOR super-fan Amanda Reyes of MADE FOR TV MAYHEM fame. Ya'll know our pal Amanda is an expert when it comes to TV movies but it just so happens she's a walking encyclopedia when it comes to slasher flicks too! You can't talk to her about THE MUTILATOR without her eyeballs transforming into cartoon red hearts! I've seen it happen! Anyway, time's a wastin'! Let's get MUTILATING! Here are some of the reasons we love this special one of a kind flick so darn much…
AMANDA: Big Ed's Motives: Although a good slasher film doesn't need a backstory to be effective (the enigmatic Michael Myers in the original HALLOWEEN is probably the best example), sometimes understanding someone's murderous motives adds an unexpected layer to the film. PROM NIGHT probably did it best in terms of crafting a sincerely sympathetic killer; and while I doubt anyone feels sorry for Big Ed in THE MUTILATOR, there is definitely an element of "Oh yeah, I understand." Big Ed loves his wife, Little Ed blows her away. Big Ed gets mad. Little Ed's friends are collateral damage. No big whoop.
AMANDA (cont.): Honestly, the opening of THE MUTILATOR lays out a really complex story about a boy who did something really horrible (accidentally, sure, but still), and the trauma that follows the surviving family members. What makes the whole slice and dice somewhat gratifying is that we know why Big Ed is on the prowl. Look, I don't condone it, but Big Ed, I get you.
LANCIFER: Super Hero Pam: We need to talk about Pam as portrayed by Ruth Martinez. I'm going to go out of my way not to use the term "final girl" because it's inadequate and semi-condescending. Pam is not some meek goody-goody who cautiously squirms her way toward survival; Pam is the boss of everything and everyone and the obvious lone master of her own fate. If anything, Ed Jr. is the "final-boy." He's the one with all the psychological baggage to unpack due to his unresolved guilt over accidently killing his mother while cleaning his father's gun in the mega-Freudian pre-credits sequence. Not to be too spoiler-y but the way I remember it, Pam not only saves Ed Jr.'s life but she also quite literally carries him through the film's climax. She's his knight in pony-tailed armor and basically has to push him aside to kill his dragon for him because he's taking too long. She even drags his sorry ass to the hospital afterwards! I wouldn't be surprised if there was a deleted scene in which she jumped into scrubs, threw on some rubber gloves, mended his wounds and sewed him back together too. That's not even mentioning her jaunty cap, signature vest and candy apple shades, Pam's got style to spare.
AMANDA: The Shed of Death: There are just some places that are meant for doom. Look at the barn in FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 3, and the Shed of Death in THE MUTILATOR. What is so compelling about Big Ed's toolshed that everyone feels so damn duty-bound to visit it? This locale works out well since it just happens to be Big Ed's headquarters. Want to catch Ed sleeping with his battle-ax? Visit the shed. Arguably, this spot is equally as creepy as his war-torn vacation home, which is full of all sorts of dark treasures (remember when he ran over someone with a speedboat and then photographed and framed it?!?). But the tools of death and destruction run rampant in that shed. Everything from an outboard motor to metal spikes to that really horrifying and controversial fishing gaff can be found, so it works out well that everyone who is anyone finds their way into Ed's mutilation workshop. Works out well for the audience, I mean, not so much for the victims!
LANCIFER: The Location: I really adore THE MUTILATOR's oceanfront location. It feels so familiar to me. I know it was entirely filmed in Atlantic Beach, North Carolina but I can't help but think of a friend of mine's house in Long Beach Island, New Jersey. I would not set foot in such a place during the summer but it's one of my favorite places on Earth off-season. There's this dreamy end of the world atmosphere everywhere and it's so spooky walking the streets with nary a car around. Director Buddy Cooper does such a great job capturing the quiet eeriness of an abandoned beach at night where you can barely see five feet ahead of you and you almost feel like you're walking on the moon. Plus the guy deserves serious praise for making a rather small house feel like an expansive maze-like mansion you could get lost in. Kudos, Buddy!
AMANDA: That line: "I'm going to set a new high score on video machine." That line has to be one of my all time favorite things ever. There's something so beautiful about the all-purpose and somewhat odd dialog which is followed by dramatic pauses throughout THE MUTILATOR. While the premise is dark and possibly allegorical, there's no flowery metaphors in the line readings as this film heads from point A to B in much the same way a Ferrari goes from zero to sixty. And it's wonderful in all of its un-ironic, unpretentious glory.
AMANDA (cont.): This line is also delivered by the lovely Frances Raines, who made several low budget films throughout the eighties before she basically disappeared from the face of the earth (according to IMDb she is happily married with a son… yay!). This isn't her best role, that would probably be the even more surreal DISCONNECTED, but she's totally adorable and I'd love to join her for a game of video machine if she'll have me.
LANCIFER: Nothing to do with the film itself but I have to tip my hat to THE MUTILATOR's striking poster! It's one of my all time favorites and I think the depiction of such a dark concept (four victims hung on a wall, one alarmed at the prospect of getting gutted by a giant hook) being presented in such bright bubbly primary colors perfectly captures the film's contrasting nature. Seriously, I can't think of many films that swing so swiftly from light-heartedly goofy to unsettlingly sadistic, can you? I'm also going to admit serious affection for the earlier and more folksy and raw FALL BREAK art because it sports similar counter intuitive hues and there's something so off about it that it looks like it may have been drawn by the film's psychotic killer himself.
AMANDA: Morey, Morey, MOREY: Truth: It was incredibly hard for me to pick just one character to talk about (hence, Frances above, Morey here and some more characters below). Morey Lampley, who plays the ill-fated Mike in THE MUTILATOR, never made another film. Whether or not he was buddies with the filmmakers, or simply auditioned for the role is unknown to me. In fact, pretty much anything aside from his character's brutal death by outboard motor remains a riddle wrapped up in a mystery inside an enigma. And maybe that intrigue is part of why I sometimes find myself skimming the net, looking for any piece of info I can unravel on the lanky blonde victim.
AMANDA (cont.): There's something hypnotic about Morey stalking the grounds of what looks like a closed down amusement park, quoting lines from NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. But it's really mostly during his death scene, which is probably the second most violent one in the film (the first being the infamous fishhook scene, which is almost too nasty for its own good). Although he only registers a sense of mild discomfort during the actual act of the killing, his body is completely mutilated (hence the title, I suppose) in the full body shot. The combination of moderate distress and the utter brutality of the attack actually haunted me upon my first viewing of it. Since then, I've grown to love Morey's big smile and goofy dialog delivery. He should have been a contender in the slasher movie world!
LANCIFER: Those Savage Kills: Speaking of THE MUTILATOR's semi-surprising sadistic streak; it's fitting this fine film was recently released by my heroes over at ARROW because it makes such a great companion for another recent offering of theirs, the fabulous BLOOD RAGE. Both of these eighties babies share a similar Ying/Yang, giddy/gory, goofy/grim dichotomy. THE MUTILATOR has got to be the zaniest, most jovial film to ever feature decapitation and strongly implied genital mutilation by way of an oversized fishhook. I love to be taken off guard like that! I love to find myself mirthfully giggling one minute and then all the sudden…record scratch sound…I'm being pushed towards feeling queasy and genuinely disturbed. Like BLOOD RAGE in its unadulterated form, THE MUTILATOR delivers the frothy splatter slasher fans crave and it does so in a way most modern horror films fail to. I know you don't need bloodshed to make a horror movie good but it certainly helps to make a party picture that you can enjoy with your more rambunctious friends. Not that you can't enjoy it by yourself with the invisible friends in your head. I do.
AMANDA: Couple at the convenience store: Remember when I said it was really difficult for me to narrow down one cast member to give some love to? That extends to the very limited supporting crew of locals who add just the right touch of extra flavor to an already piquant tale of madness and mutilation! The couple featured at the convenience store featured in the opening credits appear to be non-actors who are having a ball with their short but humorous scene where they let Ralph talk himself into buy an extra case of beer.
AMANDA (cont.): There are two notable things about this scene. One is that it would seem Ralph believes that two six packs will be enough liquor to get him and his five friends through a week at the beach! The second amazing thing I noticed is that couple does not appear to know exactly where they are. When we first see the woman, she is obviously waiting for a cue before she moves. The actor playing the cashier has a half smile through the entire scene. The overall effect is charming because, inevitably, this regionally produced shocker is all about heart… even if the heart in question is the one being ripped out of your chest. It's love.
AMANDA (cont.): Addendum: I may be the biggest MUTILATOR fan I know. I first saw this movie on a date back in the early nineties and was way more impressed with it than I was with my date. I found it on VHS a few years later and it became a regular spin for me, especially in the later nineties when I worked graveyard and needed to unwind at 8 a.m. This, along with PIECES, were movies I loved to watch while falling asleep (lord knows why), and have become like a comfy afghan that keeps me company on the cold nights of life.
AMANDA (cont.): Recently, the director, Buddy Cooper emerged when there was an announcement that a Blu-Ray release was on the horizon. His facebook page (HERE) is an amazing space to get a real behind the scenes look at the film, and it's also where he sells some memorabilia, and interacts with fans. So charmed by Buddy and Big Ed, I currently own six posters (3 for THE MUTILATOR proper and 3 for the alternate title FALL BREAK), two copies of the FALL BREAK song on 45 (in all my life I never thought I'd have that), and several continuity Polaroids and storyboard sketches. They are all treasured items that look so good next to my gorgeous Blu-Ray copy of THE MUTILATOR. The feature length making of documentary extra confirms that this film was indeed a labor of love, made by people simply looking to produce a good movie and have a good time along the way. I love this movie so much, I feel like I could go on forever, but I think between Lancifer and myself, we've got the bases covered!
LANCIFER: That Song: No post about THE MUTILATOR would be complete without mentioning its theme song. I'm just going to come right out and say it's genius. It's somehow perfectly fitting and totally inappropriate at the same time. It is inescapably eighties sounding through and through and its point blank storytelling nature has a familiar super-catchy sitcom opening theme allure. It describes in loving detail that time of year when summer has died and the weather has cooled and you're mentally preparing for the long haul hibernation of winter but you're just not ready for it yet and so you go skinny-dipping possibly after an ill-advised amount of alcohol consumption. How it never became a number one hit across the country, I'll never know. I'm sure for many, the moment that this song starts near the beginning of the film, is the exact moment they knew they were about to watch something special. Most importantly singer Peter Yellen's repeated refrain that, "We're going to have a good time" is a sung promise that THE MUTILATOR never fails to keep. Truly, if you let this movie fall into your arms, it's going to break into your heart.
Traumafession:: Doctor Pseudonymous of Senseless Cinema on Deadly Blessing
Hello. I have been reading your site for years and have always enjoyed all your features and quizzes. Your Sunday Streaming links have led me to a lot of great, underrated movies. I would like to share a traumafession (and also, not to be too self-serving, I hope you can share a link to the blog I started recently). Here goes with the traumafession:
The most traumatizing thing I ever saw as a kid–and I saw it repeatedly–was the TV spot for Wes Craven's Deadly Blessing with the spider falling into the woman's mouth. (I know this has been mentioned before on Kindertrauma as a Name That Trauma, but I think it's traumatizing enough to bear repeating.) The unbearable suspense of the spider descending toward the wide-open mouth still gets to me today. In my memory, it lasts a long time, but I'm sure it was really only a second. It wasn't just that the image itself was so horrifying, and obviously real; it was the fact that you could be watching your little black and white TV in the afternoon and your harmless show could be interrupted, with no warning, by this scene that was intensely creepy and repulsive. I couldn't believe they were allowed to show such a disturbing thing on television! And yet every time it came on, I couldn't look away.
On a different note, I have great memories of watching Hammer movies (on that same black and white TV) with my father when I was young. We would stay up late and watch Christopher Lee as Dracula, trying to catch as many of those Hammer Dracula movies as we could. When my father died a few years ago, that was one of my fondest memories.
Now for the self-serving part. I started a blog last month called Senseless Cinema , a response to comments that movie reviewers sometimes make about films that are so weird or poorly made they seem to come from another universe. The conceit of Senseless Cinema is that those movies are in fact from another universe, and I have traveled from that universe to set people straight about the brilliance of these films. I defend movies that are generally considered terrible in a way that comes across as (I hope) pompous and at least occasionally humorous. So far I have covered movies like The Nightmare Never Ends, Demon Wind, and Shriek of the Mutilated (another Name That Trauma).
Name That Trauma:: Tristan R. on an Unsolved Trauma From Six Years Ago!
Traumatic mission to name my trauma!!!
6 Years ago I left this trauma (HERE) in the hands of the good folks at Kindertrauma but have still never managed to find the culprit…it's time to try again!!!
I remember seeing this on TV in the early nineties ( it was in colour). Hope I'm not getting scenes confused but I'm sure it was a film which initially begins at some archaeological dig maybe in Egypt then focuses on a family either in England or America who are affected by a curse or possession related to the dig? I'm sure their was some kind of bad spirit and hallucinations involved but one scene I remember really vividly after all these years was of a conversation between a woman and her lover – she is laying naked full frontal in a bath (think she had red hair) and he crouched beside her clothed (Either one of them may have been possessed). This was so long ago I couldn't tell you if it was trashy or art-house…whatever it was made an impact on my young mind.
…and I'm sure there may have been a scene where something evil appears to man as he is driving in his car windscreen or looks down from the top of the car into the windscreen???
Suggestions I've had and followed up on are – The Kiss, Playroom, Gargoyles, Manhattan Baby…it was none of these. I wouldn't rule out it being an episode of a TV show either.
HELP!!!
Name That Trauma:: Michael A. on a Repeated Staircase Stumble
When I was a kid in the early '80s, I made a point to catch Suspense Theater every Saturday afternoon. It aired on WPGH in Pittsburgh and showed mostly horror movies — like Hammer/Amicus/AIP stuff — with a dash of sci-fi (including timeless classics like Starcrash and Starship Invasions). It also showed one unidentified movie that I've wondered about all these years later, but I only remember the opening-credit sequence.
It's in color, and I'm guessing from the '60s or '70s. It starts with a guy walking up a dark stairway. He reaches a door at the top of the steps. The camera stays near the bottom of the steps, looking up at him from a distance. The door opens. Someone or something then emerges and hits the guy, apparently striking his head. He then tumbles back down the steps and toward the camera.
Now here's where it gets especially weird and memorable: the movie loops that footage — starting with the door opening — all the way through the opening credits. So you see the guy take a hit and fall down the steps over and over again until the movie really begins. Sadly, that's all I recall.
I will be grateful (and impressed!) if anyone can ID this movie.
Thanks,
Name That Trauma:: Brother Bill on a Sightless Backwoods Cabin Dweller
It's one thing to forget the name of a movie you saw as a little kid 20, 30, 40 years ago but this "Name That Trauma" is just plain embarrassing because the film I'm trying to place couldn't be more than a decade old, meaning it came out sometime in the late 2000s.
All I remember is there is a girl living in a backwoods cabin with no eyes (or eyes were removed, or blind… whatever it was, she couldn't see) and she wears a blindfold with those old-timey flat glass eyes attached to it (looks very creepy.) I want to say the cabin decor and the way she dressed was almost retro-50s ish(?), as if stuck in a time warp, wearing hand-me-down clothes from generations ago. Somehow a man wanders into her cabin and he ends up with his own eyes removed and his still living body hanging from a tree with a rope run through his empty eye-sockets. OUCH! It may have been a subtitled film, I can't remember.
It's NOT Sheitan (2006) which also features eyes getting removed and was around the same time-period sort of maybe.
A little help here?
Mini-Tribute:: Creature (1985)
Stop me if you think that you've heard this one before. The other day I snagged a used VHS tape of a movie I had vague negative memories towards at one of my favorite thrift shops because what the hell? It was only a dollar. But halt the presses! After watching the movie, I ‘m pretty sure my bad memories of it must be false implants of some sort because I suddenly love it! The movie in question is 1985's CREATURE. Am I sure I even watched this before or am I mixing it up with a sloppy fusion of ANDROID (which also featured KLAUS KINSKI) and boring INSEMONOID (which also featured a pissed off space monster)? As it turns out, CREATURE is one of the more entertaining ALIEN wannabes and from now on, I'm going to think of it in the same high regard as say FORBIDDEN WORLD (1982) and GALAXY OF TERROR (1981). Good lord is there anything more fun than a sci-fi horror hybrid riding the coattail exhaust fumes of the unmitigated masterpiece ALIEN? Doubt it.
And you know what's really weird? As much flack as CREATURE gets for being an ALIEN clone when you watch it now, it's actually more like a psychic precursor prediction of PROMETHEUS (try saying that a hundred times fast). Seriously there's some kind of DEAD SPACE death disease bouncing around this flick that transforms KINSKI into a black-eyed, space helmet headed zombie-oid who could easily have been lifted right out of that semi-recent spooky space jam. Plus you want stars? I'll give you stars! CREATURE boasts cinema's greatest father, LYMAN WARD!!! He's the dad of both FERRIS BEULLER and ELM STREET 2's Ron Grady (ROBERT RUSLER). And how about sophisticated glamour-puss DIANE SALINGER? Not only did she star in both PEE WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE and PEE WEE'S HOLIDAY, she was also married to PEE WEE as Penguin's ma in BATMAN RETURNS! She's a total badass in this and probably the inspiration for that Kay-Em 14 character (LISA RYDER) in JASON X. Not that you need more than KINSKI.
I guess now is the part when I'm supposed to plead to the powers that be that CREATURE be released on Blu-ray but nope, I gotta say I'm all set here with this rusty and crusty VHS tape! The picture is actually way better than what I had prepared myself for and there's something so fitting about watching low-tech science fiction on tape because it comes across as an intercepted transmission of some sort. Plus I'm a horror fan not a horror consumer and yes, I really dig the nostalgia factor. Folks keep trying to make nostalgia a bad word but that's never going to work on me. Perhaps the most retro reaction I'm going to have toward CREATURE is I'm going to watch it again! Does anyone remember when a movie rental was so special that you tried to get as many views as you could out of it before you returned it? In closing, this is one of the best dollars I ever spent. CREATURE delivers all the eighties goodness you could ever want plus it's never stingy on the blood and gore and it's kind enough to treat you to a decent view of the big bad monster. What more can you ask for? Should I have told you the plot? C'mon you know the plot.
