kindertrauma

Year: 2010

Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Personally, I was never too wowed by ELI ROTH's CABIN FEVER; it had a few stand out scenes and I could get behind its adolescent fear of cooties but ultimately I was about as impressed as a late nineties SHANIA TWAIN i.e. not much. Claims that it would do for shaving your legs what JAWS did for swimming just did not hold true for this dude. (Full disclosure, I did fancy that one guy in it, JAMES DeBELLO, but only because his chin resembled a Virginia ham.) The point is, I had no desire to see a follow-up until I learned that TI WEST, the guy who helmed HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, directed it.

Sadly, any half-mast excitement that I may have mustered was stomped on like a champagne glass at a Jewish wedding when I also learned that TI had washed his hands of his sequel because some meddling producers tinkered the crap out of it. Well hey, I watched it anyway because that is not only "how" I do but also ALL that I do.

If the devil appeared before me in red pajamas and said, "Unkle Lancifer, you have been a horrible person and now you must live with me in hell forever and also I'm going to make you watch the same movie over and over for infinity to drive you insane and it has to be either CABIN FEVER or CABIN FEVER 2: SPRING FEVER so pick your poison you worm!" I would most definitely pick… CABIN FEVER 2: GIMME A SPRING BREAK! because the cinematography makes my eyes happy, the soundtrack is great (OMG. &WT.F!?! They play the PROM NIGHT song!!!) and the people who inhabit the movie do not act like dicks unless they are acknowledged as dicks. I can see why TI WEST doesn't really want this coyote ugly "seemed like a good idea at the time" trashy movie drunk dialing him during his current moment in the respectable sun, but it's entertaining enough if you wear the right goggles.

Frankly, if I was having a group of friends over (it could happen!) I'd probably feel a bit more comfortable subjecting them to this movie than TI's non-redheaded stepchild THE ROOST. I seem to recall forcing someone to watch THE ROOST with me and that poor person's beard growing three feet long and turning white in the process. Come to think of it, they may have left my apartment with a cane…so don't get too highfalutin there, TI. Although yeah, you're right in thinking the whole tacked on ending of this movie blows more chunks than the film's infected up-chuckers. Still, count me as pleasantly surprised.

There is a great scene in this movie where our main guy (DEADGIRL's NOAH SEGAN…call me!) tells the girl he's been following around like a puppy just what an obvious moron she is for dating the school douche. It's like a classic JOHN HUGHES scene that never, but should have, happened (imagine Ducky telling MOLLY RINGWALD to go fuck herself!) It's a great passionate moment and I could have used some more of that fine stuff rather than the profusion of puss gags. Of course, I'm not sure if the fans of the original CABIN FEVER would feel the same way but who cares, it's not like they're going to be happy with this anyway.

How many GARBAGE PAIL KID cards do you currently own? Count them…now! I'll wait… if my theory is correct your enjoyment of this film can be accurately predicted by counting those very cards! C.F.2 is not scary, it's not quite as funny as it thinks it is either (who is) but it IS ta-ruly gross. Ya know, around these parts that counts for something. Plus, I gotta say TI, stick with cinematographer ELIOT ROCKET that guy's got the goods!

Name That Trauma :: Reader Fred N. on a Basement Incest Baby & a Snagged Scarf

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Kindertrauma,

I just discovered your site, and thank goodness, because I have been trying to think of the name of this movie for years now.

I saw it on HBO in '86 or 87', I think. The story is told in flashback. A brother commits incest with his sister, spawning a monstrous creature that lives in the basement of their mansion years later. The brother is middle-aged now, still living in his boyhood home. He has imaginary conversations with his long-dead father. In his flashback the father has discovered the incest and is trying to have a heart-to-heart with his teenage son…"I know you're very popular with the girls," he intones in a fatherly way, as an opener to accusing his son of incest. "Your sister was beside herself. She was in tears," or something like that. After being confronted, the brother relives murdering his father so many years before.

Meanwhile, there is a female visitor to the house. She knocks a bowl of fruit to the floor, and then bends down to pick it up. She is right over a floor grating. Cut to the offspring inside the floor grating, looking up at the pretty lady, breathing heavily. The ends of her long scarf are on the grating. We see them get slowly pulled inside the grating. As she tries to stand up the monster starts slamming her face-first into the grating, over and over again, using the scarf as a handle. I don't think we see much gore, just her hand squeezing some grapes to mushy pulp, and then going limp as she finally dies. Her face is, we assume, fully pulped as well. Isn't this how Isadora Duncan really died?

Does anyone out there know what this movie is called? This scene is this movie gave me nightmares. So naturally, I want to see it again.

Many thanks,

Fred

UNK SEZ: Fred, the floor grate and the bowl of fruit give this one away. It's 1980's THE UNSEEN which was recently released on DVD. Check out our review HERE, it's a Kindertrauma favorite!


The Uninvited (1988)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

More proof that just because I look like a nice person doesn't mean that I am one comes in the form of yours truly forcing your poor, long suffering Aunt John to watch THE UNINVITED. No, I'm not talking about the classy black and white ghost jam with RAY MILLAND and nope, I'm not talking about the inexplicable A TALE OF TWO SISTERS re-don't starring ELIZABETH "WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER" BANKS…I'm referring to the stowaway mutant house cat debacle of 1988. In case there is some kind of point to your life and therefore you have not stumbled across this feline focused fiasco, let me fill you in on why it's so rub your eyes, double take atrocious…

IT STARS MY CAT

When I first met my cat "GATO MALO" in an alley I knew very little about his history. Naturally I assumed he lived the typical homeless cat lifestyle of jumping trains, eating canned beans and carrying his few belongings in a bandana tied to a stick. Imagine my surprise to find out my little schnookums was actually an accomplished thespian that had rubbed shoulders with the likes of ROB "SILK STALKINGS" ESTES. The sad news is no matter how much I grill the bastard, he will not reveal where he hides his royalty checks!

GEORGE KENNEDY

I know video stores don't exist anymore but if they did, it should be mandatory that each and every one has a well-marked GEORGE KENNEDY section. That way I would not have to waste time digging through crap that stars TOM HANKS and that platypus lady. Not only is GEORGE KENNEDY the most handsome man who ever lived but he also starred in DEMONWARP!

CLU GALLAGER

Nearly unrecognizable in JERRY LEWIS false teeth and mumbling like a madman, CLU "RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD" GALLAGER comes off as a dangerously psychotic PETER SELLERS wannabe. Isn't this the same weirdo character he played in THE OFFSPRING? CLU, you scare me sometimes.

THE LADIES

As if wearing shredded x-tra large T-shirts over their bikinis was not classy enough, these two broads have discovered the ultimate culinary combo of champagne and ice cream sundaes! Parents of gay teens, don't waste your money sending your kid to "straight" camp; just pop the UNINVITED into the DVD player and voila! Yowza and zowee.

SPECIAL (as in short bus) EFFECTS!

Where do I start? So there's this mutant cat and when it opens it mouth, a smaller cat (or a rat?) jumps out and attacks people. I have no idea why this was attempted in the first place but there is absolutely no way to describe it. There is no consistency in the size of the beast from one scene to the next. The rules of time and space are not only outright rejected but given wedgies and laughed out of town. The only crumb of logic that is thrown is at film's end when we discover all the events took place on a toy boat in a bathtub. Try not to notice that the cat is a completely different color in the final shot.

GREYDON CLARK

I have no idea what the hell director GREYDON CLARK could have possibly have been thinking while directing THE UNINVITED. His earlier films SATAN'S CHEERLEADERS and WITHOUT WARNING (1980) are hardly masterpieces, but they do, for the most part, resemble movies.

In other words, this is a must own and I've been dragging around a frayed VHS copy for years. The new DVD (a double feature with the suddenly competent looking MUTANT (1984)) is not much of an upgrade in the picture quality department but really, why should it be? This is a real bottom of the barrel disaster that needs to be seen under the worst of circumstances, preferably under some level of inebriation. Now if only I could get GATO MALO to autograph a copy…

Name That Trauma :: Reader Erin L. on Sunny Day Sabotage

Posted on By aunt john

I've been trying to figure out what the name of this movie was. I think it was a short film that showed between features on HBO or Cinemax in the very early ‘80s. It was about a kid who moved from Earth to another planet where it rained all the time. I can't remember the gender of the Earthling, but he or she was always drawing pictures of the sun. Anyway, the kids on the rain planet didn't believe the protagonist's stories about sunshine, and they taunted him or her, chased them and locked them in a closet.

Wouldn't you know it, right then it stopped raining and the sun came out and all those jerks were running and playing having forgotten about the kid they'd locked up. I know I didn't dream this but I haven't found anyone else who saw it.

Maybe one of your readers remembers it?

AUNT JOHN SEZ: Actually, this is one I remember! It ran on HBO in the early/ mid-'80s and it was based on the RAY BRADBURY short story "All Summer in a Day" and, from what I recall, it always was shown in tandem with the other BRADBURY inspired short "The Electric Grandmother."

Dig out your sunglasses Erin, 'cause here it is in its entirety:

Traumafessions :: Reader Lauren O. on an Aussie T.V. Ad

Posted on By aunt john

One of my childhood trauma inducing characters (along with STEPHEN KING's IT – God, that movie made going to the toilet/taking a bath/cleaning your teeth/walking past drains terrifying for years!) was from an Australian T.V. advertisement in the late ‘80s. Most likely between '86 and '89 when I was at my most impressionable.

I saw the ad broadcast on a 6pm nightly news program, as at the time it was considered quite controversial. I remember the newsreader forebodingly saying, "If you have young children you may want to ask them to leave the room now." I looked sidelong at my Mum and she didn't respond, which I was quite happy about. I don't remember specifics but I believe it was in black and white and set during a funeral at a graveyard. There were sobbing relatives and the camera was following the coffin being carried by two men into the back of a hearse. I remember thinking at this point that it was totally lame and not scary at all and that I was obviously pretty awesome for not being affected, but then it happened! The driver of the hearse turned around and he was some kind of horrifying werewolf-esque monster!! This shocked me more than pretty much anything, ever. I think it was a warning ad of some kind, maybe smoking, AIDS, cancer? I've tried searching the web with what I know and turned up nothing.

Obviously, I pretended that I didn't care so my Mum wouldn't think I was a wuss bag and went to bed as normal not long after. For that night and many, many after I would lie awake in a state of absolute terror seeing the werewolf hearse driver and IT standing in my bedroom doorway, casting long ominous shadows into my room from the hall light, waiting for me to fall asleep so they could come and get me.

I've never really lived down this fear although now it's been replaced by more grown-up fears like demonic possession (thanks to an UNEXPLAINED MYSTERIES style documentary when I was 11), RINGU-esque Japanese yokai stalkers and this bloody image that I know is probably faked but still scares the crap out of me if I start thinking about it in the dark. (See the freaky escaped-mental-patient looking ghost child in the background.)

Thanks for all the great movie recommendations – you guys have horror movie viewing persistence to be admired! xxoo

Kindertrauma Jukebox:: Aliens Rap

Posted on By unkle lancifer

UNK SEZ:: O.K. kids, you may have seen this lil' slice of genius elsewhere today but I've got to post it anyway. Nobody deserves to miss this and it's a great way to start the weekend. (Plus, the "Get away from her you bitch!" portion is borderline orgasmic.)

Name That Trauma :: Stexe of FutureChimp on a Pale-Skinned Pest

Posted on By aunt john

Hey, thanks for all the retro-trauma, and thanks for linking my blog in your sidebar.

I've just spent some time looking back at every "Name That Trauma" post from your most excellent site, and was unable to find any reference to my film in question. I saw it at the theater in 1975 or 1976 as a five or six-year-old, and I'm assuming it was first-run. It was a matinee, but not a kiddie film, as I recall some PG-level sexual content. The most traumatizing bit was a woman with white hair and white skin who was out in the woods and threatening some people in a cabin. She had no lines, but just snarled at the camera. More specifically, there was a Native American Shaman-guy who had some magical powers. At one point, he dumps some powder out of a small leather bag on his belt to create a line across a road. A car drives up and smashes into it, as if it were an invisible wall. That's about all I remember.

I'm sure this movie actually happened. I'd love to see it again to check if that white-skinned woman is as horrifying as I remember, or just laughable in retrospect. Won't someone help?


UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Special thanks to Reader BaronExu for knowing it was SHADOW OF THE HAWK from 1976 with JAN-MICHAEL VINCENT.

Traumafessions :: Reader Clint on the Sounds of Silence

Posted on By aunt john

When I was 4-ish (1978), the big thing for me to watch was public television. WETA Channel 26. MR. ROGERS, SESAME STREET, and THE ELECTRIC COMPANY.

I don't think we got cable until 1981 (when I was 7) or so… Back when A&E and Nick were the same channel, there were 5 movie channels (everyone knows about HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, and even The Movie Channel, but few people remember the Home Theatre Network), and HBO wasn't descrambled but was set at the tap for your house. (Meaning I could get it in my room via a cable split without a cable box, unlike the descrambled channels.)

You know what the most memorable moment of all that programming was for me? Not a specific show, but the period of silence between SESAME STREET and THE ELECTRIC COMPANY; the period of time where the screen is completely black for an unpredictable amount of time (TV programming was not necessarily run by computers back then, and WETA 26 was, after all, a local public station), followed by someone insanely screaming "HEEEYY YOOOOUUU GUYYYYYYYSSSSS!" and THE ELECTRIC COMPANY logo.

Anyway… The silence between the two shows scared the shit out of me. I wasn't scared of the "Hey You Guys!" scream as much as the anticipation of waiting for it to happen. It filled my adrenal gland and my soul with a sense of dread. The same sense of dread I feel today if I wake up and notice that the music has inexplicably stopped playing. Is the power out? Did my computer fry? Will I be able to sleep without anything to entertain me enough to keep my thoughts from madly racing?

I've never been a fan of silence. I listen to music 24/7/365. I don't sit in silence. Period. Ever. Even if I'm sitting outside in the middle of the woods, alone, I'm going to be projecting my hearing as far as possible, trying to hear as many different sounds as possible. It took me awhile to realize that my dislike of silence goes all the way back to the 1970s. At least I'm consistent.

— Clint

Name That Trauma :: Reader J.R. on Public Access Programming

Posted on By aunt john

I recall that when I was in high school, there were a variety of educational, "after school special" kind of shows that would air on one of the local public access channels. They were all pretty old (from the ‘70s and ‘80s, and they dealt with the subjects that one would come to expect from such programming (alcoholism, dating, illness, friendships, etc.)

When I was 18, in the spring of 2000, (maybe a little too old to be scared by a public access show??), I was home early from school after exams. I happened to flip to the public access channel, which was airing a show about a young mother living with HIV. She had two young children, and I believe she had moved in with her sister so her sister could help care for her and her kids. This all sounds fairly innocuous, and at first it was. However, during the last 10 minutes or so, things began to change. First, there was a scene where the kids and their mother were playing a board game (maybe Monopoly?) because they were stuck inside due to the rain. The scene cuts to the kitchen, and all of a sudden one of the kids runs into the room and yells, "Aunt so-and-so, mommy cut her hand in the living room and there's blood everywhere!!" Then you see the mother with her bloody hand wrapped in a towel or something.

Things became even more unsettling in the next scene (after the bleeding had stopped). It's the middle of the night, and the mother is sitting alone in her bedroom with the lights on, and she's staring into a mirror, covered in sweat, and sobbing. The camera then zoomed in on her face, all sweaty and teary, and lingered there for about ten seconds before her sister came in and consoled her. That scene really freaked the shit out of me. What added to the creepiness of this show was the face of the woman who played the mother; she had a really nasty, curly brown rats' nest of hair, and her features were very harsh and angular. I recall that her lips were very thin and almost pursed as well.

The last thing I remember is that the show ended with the woman and her sister saying the rosary on the porch, and during the credits, the name of some Catholic production company came up. I don't know if anyone out there has seen this, but it really disturbed me at the time I saw it. I really love the site, and I hope someone out there has seen this show and was also disturbed by it. Thanks!