kindertrauma

Year: 2010

Name That Trauma :: Reader F. Munoz of Mexico on a Chaotic Casino

Posted on By aunt john

Hello Fellow Fans of Kindertrauma:

Thank you so much for having this great website.

It really brings back wonderful memories from our childhoods.

I have been trying to find out the name of a movie I saw about 30 years ago. It was the very first movie I saw on my first BETA VCR.

All I remember was that there were people playing cards at a casino table, a man unties a woman's dress and her breasts are shown, the people at the casino are surprised and somebody seizes the confusion and throws a knife and kills another man.

That was the first scene from the movie, my mother did not allow me to see the rest of the film because of the nudity on it. I really don't know if it was a horror movie, maybe it could be from Spain or Italy. Perhaps it is from the mid ‘70s. All I remember that the name of the movie in Spanish was "EL HACHA".

I have tried to look it up as "The Axe" on IMDB and all I found was:

Lisa, Lisa (1977)
aka "Axe"
aka "The Virgin Slaughter"
aka "The Axe Murders"

Il rosso segno della follia (1970)
aka "An Axe for the Honeymoon"
aka "Hatchet for the Honeymoon"

This book has helped me to trace down films that I couldn't watch when they were first released at the theaters because of my age. It has the original name of the movies (in the language they are from) and the movie names in Spanish given at the movie theaters in Mexico.

I hope somebody can help me with the movie I'm trying to find.

Thanks,

F. Munoz
Mexico

The Voluptuous Horror of Alien

Posted on By unkle lancifer

I once facetiously said that horror heroine Ellen Ripley officially belonged to the world of sci-fi because she broke bread with robots and drove a spaceship to work. The truth is, no amount of blinking computer lights or sparkling stars can keep ALIEN from being one of the purest examples of a horror film in existence. ALIEN may wear a sci-fi jumpsuit but when you look into its eyes, horror is all you see. I started this project hoping to show the similarities between RIDLEY SCOTT's stone cold masterpiece and that of the classic horror films that came before it, but as you'll see I fell off the rails a great deal and included films released after ALIEN as well. The reason for that, I'm sure, is because that is where the greater share of my familiarity (and DVD collection) lies. (I also ended up including some other examples of the sci-fi horror hybrid; both genres have always been thick as thieves anyway-why split hairs?)

Although I may have lost my initial point in the process, I think I discovered a bigger truth, that the mechanisms shown are eternal. As I see it, the notorious scene of the alien baby bursting from JOHN HURT's chest may have signaled an exciting new path ahead for both genres but at the same time it exposed something as ancient and primal as birth itself. ALIEN, Lt. Ripley, have I told you lately how perfect you are?

Traumafessions :: Gregg Holtgrewe: Writer/Director of Dawning on The Exorcist

Posted on By unkle lancifer

""If your bed starts shaking, just come and get me as quickly as you can," those were the words my mother spoke after watching THE EXORCIST for the first time. Needless to say, I shared a bed with my sister that night so I wouldn't have to be alone. It was after that when the images started to come. Night after night I would try and fall asleep and I would see the images of Regan's face coming at me in a continual loop. My parents thought about taking me in to a psychologist for it but I figured I could fight through it by continually watching the film and facing the horror which is, THE EXORCIST, the single greatest horror film ever made.

As much as I tried I couldn't get the film out of my head as a youngster…I even went so far as to tear out the picture of Regan's head which was on the inside of early Fangoria covers and put it on my wall…but I think it only made things worse. What really got to me was the randomness of the event and the fact that there really didn't seem to be any logical explanation. Watching the mother go through the torment of trying to figure out what's wrong with her daughter was terrifying enough (especially watching her be put into the machine for catscans), but the things which happen to her in her room and the way it slowly builds is filmmaking at its best, in fact, I didn't learn to sleep with the lights off until I went to college and had a freshman roommate, I was 19. My dad would always come to the top of the stairs and tell me to turn my light off before going to be because of the electric bill but I would only turn it off for a moment and just as quickly get the lights back on, it was too much lying in the dark, in the basement, thinking about being possessed and trying to justify to God why I was a good kid and shouldn't be possessed by the Devil or whatever evil spirit it was.

The last few years of high-school saw the release of 'THE EXORCIST 3 and I bought the poster and hung it above my bed…maybe I was trying to torture myself, I'm not sure, but again, I think it just added to the tension which went along with sleeping each night. As I got older and would revisit the film, I started to notice what truly separated THE EXORCIST from almost all other horror movies…the drama. No other horror film before or since, in my opinion, has done such a remarkable job at exploring the depth of each character and their own personal demons. Once the '80s hit horror movies became a consistent barrage of chase scenes where paper-thin characters run around screaming and it means nothing to me. Granted, there might be some good moments but a great horror film should stick in the audiences brain and make them think and wonder and put them in a place which isn't safe…not just a series of "look, a monster, run" and then some arbitrary moment where they figure out how to kill the creature, it's ridiculous. The simple fact that horror films place characters in a situation where, more often than not the audience wants them to die, just leaves empty movie-goers and feeds into a society which already lacks compassion.

There is really nothing "safe" about THE EXORCIST – even when we know that it's a demon of some sort and she's possessed it still feels as if we're involved in a helpless situation where not only is there something "evil" happening, there is also a deterioration within the characters themselves and that hasn't really been done since. Hell, the film was nominated for Best Picture alongside a Bergman film, that's incredible to me and at the time, it was one of the biggest box-office successes of all-time…now it's just a big marketing gimmick to get people into the theater for the first weekend and after that it doesn't matter. I have a problem with that and THE EXORCIST is where I look for inspiration as a filmmaker, especially when it came to making DAWNING. Imagine if horror films could've kept developing after the 1970's instead of being sucked into the world of Reaganomics and the need for more and more wealth…a time in which horror and action films merged…we might have more horror films up for major awards and crossing the line between horror and drama. Horror movies are so safe now-a-days that I've actually been out of the horror loop for almost a decade if not more.

To me it comes down to one thing: "Horror can be dramatic and drama can be horrific" and THE EXORCIST is a shining example of this."

UNK SEZ: Thanks Gregg for the powerful traumafession! Folks, Gregg's film DAWNING has quite the buzz surrounding it, it's won multiple awards and you can check out the official website HERE. Those who've caught it are happy to sing its praises; check out these smitten reviews from our blogging brethren:

Name That Trauma :: Reader Saraeg on an Old Outer Space Flick

Posted on By aunt john

Dear kindertrauma,

I am older than the most recent traumatized citizen, and would like to ask if anyone knows the name of this movie. It is a ‘50s space movie where the astronauts land on some unidentified planet and in just the area where the ship lands, it is transformed into an earth-like atmosphere with the usual plant life.

The astronauts go to explore and find a cave, which seems okay but there is a mysterious curtain of plant tendrils that seem to guard a secret! When one of the astronauts puts his hand through the curtain, he screams in pain and pulls his back and it is frozen! Some kind of aliens fooled the earthlings so that they would land their ship on their planet. That scene is the only part of the movie I remember.

Does anyone have a clue?

Thank you very much.

saraeg

UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Two times the thanks to Kahotep & Senski (WordPress, KINDERTRAUMA's content management system of choice, is a cruel mistress) for coming forward with JOURNEY TO THE SEVENTH PLANET.

Name That Trauma :: Reader Caitlin on an Eyeball Nest

Posted on By aunt john

Here goes – I remember having this friend growing up, and he would always show me really creepy comics whenever his parents weren't around that scared the crap out of me (one even made me run out of room all the way home!)

Out of all the creepy things I saw, there is one that sticks in my memory and I think about from time to time. I'm pretty sure it was a comic or a book, and it was about a little girl who was lost in a subway station. She kept trying to get out and look for her mother, but she was always running into creepy characters, one which was an old bag lady or something along those lines.

One image stays with me – the little girl sees a bird's nest and goes up to it, relieved to see something normal, but when she looks into the nest there are not eggs or adorable hatchlings, but human eyeballs. That is always the point where I stopped reading and would freak out.

Does anyone know what I'm talking about? This would have been when I was four or five, so we're talking 1990/1991, but it could have very well been before that time. If anyone could help me out, I would really appreciate it!

Caitlin

Kindertrauma Funhouse :: Greetings From Happy Town!

Posted on By unkle lancifer

UNK SEZ: C'mon get happy! One of our lucky players will win a HAPPY TOWN T-shirt on this very day! HAPPY TOWN (or as I like to call it, the new AMY ACKER show…long live ILLYRIA!) is a brand new show premiering this Wednesday on ABC (check local listings for times). What is the mystery of this happy town and who the heck is the scary magic man killer? You'll have to tune in to find out. I'm thinking this one looks pretty good and I need a new show to watch! Hey, it's from the channel that gave us TWIN PEAKS and besides my boo AMY ACKER, it's got SAM NEIL of IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS, FRANCES CONROY of best show ever SIX FEET UNDER and STEVEN WEBER from that other version of THE SHINING. Maybe this is something we can all watch together kids! What's an hour a week right? Plus, didn't ABC give us nearly all of our favorite made-for-T.V. movies back in the day? Show some love! Anyway, you gotta have this T-SHIRT, it's in a little bread loaf package. If it doesn't fit, give it to a friend or your beloved mail person to cheer them up. GET GUESSIN' and watch HAPPY TOWN this Wednesday!

Traumafessions :: Elisabeth Fies: Writer, Producer & Director of The Commune on The Birds

Posted on By unkle lancifer

It's so hard for me pick just one movie that traumatized me as a kid! I was sooooo frightened of horror movies. One of the earliest ones that changed me was THE BIRDS. I never even saw the whole movie, but the eyeball-pecking scene was enough when I was six to make me so afraid of crows that I would no longer walk to my best friend's house alone. She lived only four houses away, but crows used to gather on the electric poles between us. So not only did I have nightmares and fears about Mr. HITCHCOCK's masterpiece, but I actually changed my life schedule around those fears…my parents would have to watch me walk me past the birds so I could play with my friend!

UNK SEZ: Thanks ELISABETH for the great traumafession! All of you horror fans out there are sure to be interested in ELISABETH's award winning film THE COMMUNE, it's been dubbed "true horror" by PRETTY SCARY. You can read much more about it on the official website HERE, and watch its snappy trailer below. (Notice that the peacock in the trailer is safely behind bars!)

Traumafessions :: Reader Greg V. on Homey the Clown

Posted on By aunt john

Hey Kindertrauma team–

I came across your website in a search for the Rag Man of the NUTCRACKER FANTASY movie, and I loved your reader's treatment of it. Thought I'd contribute a snippet:

As kids growing up on the North Side of Chicago in the early ‘90s, my friends and I were enthralled (that child's mix of abject terror and insatiable fascination) by stories of a child abductor dressed as Homey the Clown, DAMON WAYANS' character from IN LIVING COLOR. This was a bona fide news story on local Chicago networks, not just a product of our own twisted imaginations.

The guy apparently drove around in a van and attracted kids to the van, upon which he would abduct them and molest them. This was in the heyday of child abduction scares, STEPHEN KING's IT, and only a few decades after John Wayne Gacy in the Chicago area.

Anyway, Homey was reportedly at large in the neighborhood of my grammar school, and so for the better part of a school year (maybe third grade), whenever we'd see a yellow van (I think that was the alleged color of Homey's ride), we would all rush to the school fence, sometimes with rocks or baseball bats in hand, and start to yell, "Homey, it's Homey." Again, who knows the veracity or the extent of the original news item, but it certainly caught our imagination!

NOTE: Last Supper clown painting courtesy of HERE.

Name That Trauma :: Reader Liam on a Haunting Hall of Portraits & a Maniacally Morphing Daddy

Posted on By aunt john

Hi Kindertrauma,

I sent a trauma last month, but alas it's unsolved so far. However, I have total faith in Kindertrauma to identify these two trash-movie-memories that came back to me last night.

Both are horror movies, probably ‘70s – ‘80s, and maybe Italian.

One has a scene near the beginning; a character walks through a dark passage with expressionistic paintings covering the walls. Later it is revealed that one of the portraits was actually a living person hiding among the paintings. The face was "witchy," I think. The trick must've been well executed because we rewound the video to inspect the original scene and, sure enough, the live actor (or actress) was there. We just hadn't noticed the first time around.

The other movie had a final act which owed more than a passing debt to THE SHINING. Dad's gone berserk, mother's traumatised, and her attempts to protect her young son are frustrated by whacked-out shape-shifting highjinks. I think there's a scene where she approaches what appears to be her son, only for "him" to reveal his face as a grotesque monster (shades of DON'T LOOK NOW, although the face here was more of a supernatural-rubber-prosthetics-fest). I know there was a scene with a surprisingly successful "effect," whereby the son appears to the mother at the end of a corridor, rushes toward her, and on arrival, morphs into the maniacal father. This was achieved by positioning the camera so that the boy drops out of shot as he is arriving at the mother's feet, at which point the actor playing the father springs up in front of her.

Keeping my fingers crossed that one of these will ring a bell with someone.

Thank you!

Liam

UNK SEZ:: Liam, so sorry that your last "Name That Trauma" still stands unanswered, don't give up though! As for these two new queries I am glad to say that one is already solved. That second movie you mentioned, the one with the boy morphing into his crazed dad, is one of my favorites, MARIO BAVA's SHOCK A.K.A. BEYOND THE DOOR 2 from 1977!

bad daddy!

So that's one down, let's see if any one out there recognizes the first one, it sounds familiar…

UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Thanks to Taylor for getting the first one with DARIO ARGENTO's DEEP RED.