kindertrauma

Month: July 2013

Sunday Streaming:: Something Evil (1972)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

It's time again for Sunday Streaming! This past weekend has put me in the mood for SOMETHING EVIL! This made for television movie from 1972 stars our dear departed friends SANDY DENNIS and DARREN McGAVIN and features JOHNNY WHITAKER of A TALKING CAT? fame! It was directed by that guy who did DUEL! You can read more about it in THIS post from 2007 but maybe you shouldn't because look how I used to write in big giant mounds of indecipherable goobledegook that today, even I can't decipher! What the hell?! Best to just to enjoy the fine movie below!

Name That Trauma:: Reader Dee Emm Elms on a One Word Demon Destiny

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Here's hoping you can assist me with a Kindertrauma by proxy –

A friend of mine tells me of a movie she saw when she was younger, which would place it around mid-80s or perhaps a little later.

Details are vague, but here's what she knows:

There's a girl who keeps having visions of a demon surrounded by fire. She goes somewhere – an island? a cave? – because it's her "destiny" to confront this demon.

My friend thinks that the title is one of those totally generic 80s one-word horror movie names like DESTRUCTIONATOR or KILLMONSTRINATOR or DEVILATOR or something to that effect.

Hope you all can help!

The Conjuring Funhouse!

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Can you conjure up the 10 differences in these two THE CONJURING posters?

Oh yes! Today is the day! THE CONJURING is THE movie I've been dying to see! I know it's not very professional (haha!) or kosher to judge up a movie before you've even seen it but let me tell you, a movie that has VERA frickin' FARMIGA and PATRICK hells yeah WILSON portraying ghost hunters ED & LORRAINE WARREN would have to be pretty God awful for me not to love it like a hurricane. By existing alone, this movie has already won half of my heart. If the trailer is any indication, what with its nightmarish take on THE CLAPPER, the other half of my heart will soon follow. Wow, they even got LILI TAYLOR on board! And it's from the director of INSIDIOUS (and some other stuff!) and there is apparently a creepy doll in it! What else could you ask for? This is true leaving your house and paying too much for a ticket material! Sold.

And man, I really miss VERA! Even though it may have veered in weird directions that it often abandoned, I loved BATES HOTEL to the umpteenth degree based mostly on FARMIGA alone. In fact, it kinda ruined other shows for me. I couldn't even finish HANNIBAL due to its fussy, overbearing nihilism and when I tried to jump back into TRUE BLOOD , it seemed like the line between it and TWILIGHT was less distinct than I remembered. (Although I have to say BATES MOTEL certainly didn't ruin ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK for me, that show is goooood and I'm still all about AMERICAN HORROR STORY.) Am I setting myself up for disappointment? Nah! My trusty spectre detecter is telling me this one's most likely a safe bet!

Name That Trauma:: Alex G. H. on a Girl Trapped in a Closet…with Spiders!

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Hi!

Love your site!

My friend has a traumafession and I told her you could help her out. The details are spotty but here it goes…

Late '90s, early 2000s movie that her parents had rented….there was a little girl locked in a closet, a kidnapping situation. And then spiders got involved!

This is probably a tough one.

Thanks for everything, whether we can solve this or not.

UNK SEZ: This a tough one and I have a wild, wild guess. Could it be possible that the spider mentioned was not in the closet but in the film's title? I'm imagining a kid watching ALONG CAME A SPIDER (2001) which involves a kidnapped girl, who at some point, I believe, is kept in a closet and thinking that at any moment surely a spider was going to make an appearance. I know it's a reach but you never know. Of course, there is probably a movie out there with a little girl in a closet with an actual spider in it too! Do any of our fine readers know of such a movie? Please come into our parlor and let us know!

Traumafession:: Sofia D. on Oakie Doke

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Hi, I'm 14 so I don't know if I really count with the whole 'ruined childhood' thing, but I do have a show that continues to scare the crap out of me. When I was around 3, and my brother was 5, we used to watch a kids show with our mum called OAKIE DOKE. It was about a friendly tree guy who helped his forest friends with their problems. But he still managed to be creepy as hell, despite the innocent pretext. He talked to himself, and had this creepy smile that never changed, even when he was talking, so it looked like he'd snapped years ago and was close to brutally murdering all the forest critters. All the characters looked like dolls with painted features. This probably isn't really the sort of thing you look for, but I wanted to submit it. Thanks!

UNK SEZ: Au contraire, Sofia D! This is exactly the sort of thing we're looking for! There is something clearly not right about this Oakie Doke fellow. He looks like he might be related to my childhood nemesis the dreaded MISS HICKORY!

Name That Trauma:: Reader Armando P. on Junk Yard Killer Robots & an Infected Thumb

Posted on By unkle lancifer

I recently heard about your site through one of Geeknation's podcasts and was hoping to submit, for your approval, a "Name That Trauma."

The trauma– that I can't get out of my head after 20 something years– is a film where a group of people are held up in a junkyard (?), where the survivors are trying to figure out who is human and who is a killer robot, I think. Anyway, my trauma is a scene in the film where each survivor cuts their finger to prove their humanity. One of the survivors cuts his thumb too deep and it gets infected. That scene traumatized me just because the dirty and sweaty feel of it all. If you can help me find out the name of the film I will be eternally grateful. Kindertrauma, you're my only hope.

UNK SEZ: I sadly do NOT know the correct answer for this one! I was hoping it might be MUTANT HUNT (1987) if only to justify my posting a video from MUTANT HUNT. Oh well, we can still watch a scene from MUTANT HUNT as we try to identify the correct answer can't we? Yes, we can! MUTANT HUNT used to be on Netflix Streaming but then it ran away! Come back, little Sheba!

Traumafessions :: Reader GCG on They Made Me a Criminal (1939)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

I owe my love for old film to the public domain. When I was a wee lad, our local PBS affiliate could easily afford to broadcast old movies once a week, as long as they had been overlooked decades earlier for copyright protection by the studios that produced them. The usual suspects would appear over the early years of my obsession: His Girl Friday, Scarlet Street, Sabotage, The Red House, Mr. Robinson Crusoe, and so forth. But one of the first old movies I saw on PBS was They Made Me a Criminal, a 1939 Busby Berkeley boxing picture starring John Garfield and the Dead End Kids.

There was one scene in particular that is the subject of today's Traumafession. Garfield and four of the kids drive to a remote irrigation water tower in the middle of farmland and the wooden tower is full of cool, clean water, and they all decide to climb the exterior ladder and go for an illicit swim. A few minutes later, a farmer opens the valve to the tank, sending water gushing toward the crop furrows. Caught up in their fun, the swimmers don't realize that the water level is dropping until it becomes impossible to reach the top edge of the tower. One of the kids is a weak swimmer who is already struggling to stay afloat. Garfield tells them not to worry -— the water will drop down far enough that they will be able to touch bottom. But then the same farmer shuts the valve. Now the top edge is too high and the bottom too deep to touch. They are becoming exhausted, particularly the one boy who can't swim very well. It was all a horrible accident, but I can imagine a less imaginative Jigsaw devising this terrifyingly simple trap as a sort of dry run for his future mayhem.

I was riveted and aghast. Not least because I have never been a great swimmer and could easily sympathize with the boy who struggled in the water. From the very beginning, his friends mocked him for being reluctant to get in and then, once he was in, for thrashing around in a pathetic dog paddle. Well into their predicament, before the boy begins to sink from exhaustion, his friends even get mad at him briefly for being forced to support him while they try to figure a way out. They're tired, too, and the last thing they need is a weight around their necks. The shame layered upon the terror of the situation was too much for me. Thanks to the public domain — again — there are a kajillion YouTube channels that have this film available to watch. The scene in particular is about 40 minutes into the movie, for those who would like to watch it…

They're Back! Kindertrauma II: The Other Side

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Hey, look we're back and better than ever! Well, actually that "better than ever" part isn't accurate but the part about us being back is mostly true. Sorry we were away for so long. Our move turned out to be a great deal more arduous than expected. We had zero Internet for a time and then when we did get it back, I didn't exactly welcome its return with open arms. I needed all the white plastic flakes in my snow globe brain to settle before I could even think about turning my computer on. I did play a great deal of Candy Crush on my phone though. I admit that. It didn't help much and neither did imagining zillions of Chicken Little apocalyptic scenarios. Do they make thunder shirts for people? Why do dogs get all the luck?

Somewhere along the line I became morbidly obsessed with the Artax –sinking notion that my working hard on something and my not doing anything at all both produce uncannily similar results. Naturally this resulted in oblivion-seeking naps followed by more oblivion-seeking naps. Futility is the fluffiest pillow. Almost too late I realized the cause of my discombobulation, molasses-dipped ennui and dramatic Mathew Perry-style weight loss was my foolish decision to go cold turkey from my required dosage of trauma. No wonder my kilt was off-kilter! And so I return. Thanks for your patience stalwart kindertots and my apologies to anyone whose submissions were not processed promptly. Hopefully we'll be running at full capacity soon! There's still plenty of trauma gold in them there hills!