Hey, it's BLACK CHRISTMAS sneaking around with an alternate title! There are ten (I hope) differences between these two posters, can you spot them all?
Month: November 2012
Name That Trauma:: Todd J. on a Detergent Eating Baby and a Gabby Sitter
Greetings! Just found your site! PLEASE help me locate a vital traumatic film from my youth. Back in '72 when I was in second grade we had to watch a classroom safety film of sorts in which a nice, suburban couple goes out for the evening and hires a negligent babysitter to watch their toddler…the babysitter ends up gabbing on the phone while her toddler charge eats detergent. You guessed it. The kid chokes to death tho' the babysitter doesn't seem to notice. The parents come home and the kid is dead in his crib. This film scared the living CRAP out of me! I went home totally scared of detergent and soap!!! Took me forever to allow soap around my mouth! To reinforce my fears there was a story in the National Enquirer soon thereafter about a kid named Stevie who ate detergent and had to eat the rest of his life with a feeding tube. My favorite book on classroom films, Mental Hygiene, doesn't seem to list anything like it. Any ideas???
Traumafession:: Brian Joynt On You Can't Do That On Television & Slumber Party Massacre 2
Dear Kindertrauma,
I love your site! I came across it while searching the web for a good list of Christmas-themed horror movies. I have to say, the one thing that truly creeped me out as a kid was a certain TV show. I don't know if anyone else fears this "kid show" the way I did, but there was something about it that just didn't work with me.
The show was "You Can't Do That On Television," which came on Nickelodeon. I don't remember a whole lot about it, because I never wanted to watch it, and because maybe I've chosen to forget it. It was just too bizarre. It was like all these normal kids were trapped in some kind of alternate dimension. The kids were the only sane ones. You had a bum named Barth who cooked rats and garbage into his hamburgers, and the kids had to eat it. You had these clueless parents–I remember the mom of one kid as this strange, pale-looking thing that seemed like she was heavily drugged, or had just walked out of some hellish landscape beyond anyone's comprehension. Worse of all, it seemed like there was no escape. The kids were trapped in this world. There was no way out. And if you said certain things, slime splattered down on your head out of nowhere. I hated this show. To this day, I don't want to see clips of it, or even hear about it. Anyone else have these same feelings?
Something else I remember from an early age: waking up in the middle of the night and wandering into the living room to get something to drink, where my dad was asleep on the couch and an HBO movie was on the TV. In the movie, a guy had a large drillbit on the end of his guitar, and when he played it the bit started whurring away. I watched in horror as this psychopath strummed chords and thrust that drill into screaming women. The movie, I later came to discover, was "Slumber Party Massacre 2". I thought about that maniac for many long, sleepless nights. And I could hear that drill in my nightmares.
Brian Joynt,
Author of Blind Date
Name That Trauma:: Reader Eric on a Dark Christmas Comic
There was a comic book I read in a store when I was a kid. It was kind of a black and white magazine type one, maybe Heavy Metal or one of those? Anyway, it was an Xmas story. The kid's father looks out the window to see Santa on the roof. Santa falls off the roof and crushes the father. The kid sees this and spends years planning revenge. Eventually he confronts Santa on Xmas and I think shoots him. Later on he's thinking about it and his mother goes outside. He hears something, goes outside, and his mother's been crushed by a giant Easter Egg, and it ends with him saying, "…the bunny…!"
I guess it was meant to be kind of funny but it sort of freaked me out as a kid. Anybody know this one?
Kinder-News:: Silent Night is Coming to Town
UNK SEZ: My apologies if you have already heard about this but just in case you missed it, yours truly and Kindertrauma appeared in yesterday's New York Times in an article about the upcoming remake of SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT! Check it out HERE! SILENT NIGHT stars MALCOLM McDOWELL and JAIME KING and will be available on December 4th!
Help Mrs. Mac Find Her Hidden Hooch Funhouse!
Mrs. Mac has hidden 10 bottles of hooch in the bookshelf and now she can't find them! She's sobering up, so help her quickly!
Happy Thanksgiving! Love, Kindertrauma
T. U. R. K. E. Y. Squad!
UNK SEZ: These movies are NOT turkeys! They're all wonderful and waiting for you! Watch them in this precise order and YOU will become a member of the T.U.R.K.E.Y. Squad!
"T" is for TROG, a film with not one but TWO beasts!
"U" is for THE UNINVITED. A mutant cat! On GEORGE KENNEDY, he feasts!
"R" is for RAWHEAD REX, who just pee'd on a priest!
"K" is for KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE! You'll know exactly what to expect from the title at least!
"E" is for EQUINOX from this film, it's theorized, much of THE EVIL DEAD was fleeced!
"Y" is for YOU BETTER WATCH OUT! (CHRISTMAS EVIL) Yay, our days without holiday horror have officially ceased!
P.S.: Happy Thanksgiving to you & yours!
Name That Trauma:: Reader Tomb on a Crazy Car-sized Conch Commercial
Back in the mid-to-late 70's There was this advertisement for what I think was a horror/sci-fi anthology series. The scene starts out with an old man walking on a beach. He comes across this large shell-like thing that was washed upon the shore about the size of a car. Curious, he examines the thing at close proximity, then all of a sudden an arm-or-toungue-like projection comes out and grabs him. The old man gets pulled inside as he fights and screams to no avail. Scary as hell!!
This was just the commercial for the show and it scared me. To this day I can't remember the name of the show. It didn't have a long run, maybe one season if that. It might have been a British show that was syndicated to local U.S. broadcasters, or one of those Anglo-American ITC productions.
By the way, I think I did see one of the episodes, it was about a man lost in the desert; he meets a guy on horseback and asks for help, or a way out, but then the guy says something like, "Sorry but you don't know me well". then he disappears as if he was just a mirage.
This has been a lifelong quest to see this again!
Thanks Kindertrauma
Tom B
Traumafession:: Reader Josh T. on an Animated O.J. Simpson
I was very little when the OJ Simpson trial was going on. I did not understand it. It absolutely terrified me to listen to the news and everybody trying to say how they thought everything happened, especially with that ice cream melting.
But the thing that REALLY scared the ever loving crap out of my tiny self was when one local news channel brought in a CGI expert who made a primitive CGI rendering of what they thought happened. They were these badly done 3d models of people that basically were blocks with blocky arms, domed heads with just eyes on them (dead, soulless eyes). The "OJ" model stabbed whoever it was he was accused of killing with a knife. But it was all in slow motion and horrible.
I was so scared, and I ran into my room and cried in terror and begged my mom to call someone, preferably the news studio. I'm not sure what I expected her to tell them, but I was just so horrified.
