Search Results for: grimpressions

Even though I was probably only in kindergarten, I remember the movie WITNESS being a huge deal around the time it was released. It was such a big deal that my parents granted me a pass to watch my first R-rated movie. WITNESS was partially filmed in Lancaster County, PA and we lived in the city of Lancaster so everyone was excited to see it and to watch a movie that had to do with the Amish. The Amish brought a lot of tourism to our area and since my family lived in the city and only saw them when we drove to the country or the farmer's market, we still found them to be somewhat mysterious.

It seemed like my Aunt was the only member of my extended family at the time to own a VCR so anytime a good movie came out, we had to view it at her house. She had a big living room with a wrap-around couch which could seat a decent amount of family. My Aunt was considerate enough to warn my parents that there was a scene that might be too scary for me. At that point I decided that I wanted nothing to do with this movie at all. I remember my parents telling me I could just cover my eyes when the scary scene started. I told them that I wanted to nap and I buried my head in some throw pillows and pretended to be asleep. I couldn't help but to listen even though I didn't want to watch.

Not too far along into the movie, maybe 10 minutes or so, I heard my Aunt point out the "scary" scene to my parents. I listened as the music swelled and I could here a man gasping and screaming. Soon after, it all seemed to calm down. I didn't trust that it wouldn't happen again so I kept my face covered. I stayed in this position so long that I did eventually fall asleep.

As the years went by I was granted more R-rated viewings, mostly only being allowed to watch what my Mom wanted to watch. She was in love with MEL GIBSON in the ‘80s and ‘90s so I got to watch the LETHAL WEAPON movies. I liked DANNY GLOVER's portrayal of Detective Murtaugh as GIBSON's partner.

During the 90's, my parents broke down and subscribed to the Prism network. Prism was a Philadelphia-based, premium movie and sports channel. I would tell my Dad that I was recording the encore showing of a Sixers or Phillies game and be able to record late-night soft-core classics such as FELICITY ('80) and CINDERELLA ('77). Of course from time to time Prism would air some quality, more-recent movies. On Prism I watched movies like GRAND CANYON and THE SAINT OF FORT WASHINGTON in which DANNY GLOVER played humble, proud, and stoic characters who had the ability to talk down any thug who wanted to start trouble.

My curiosity peaked about the movie I had avoided watching a decade when Weird Al Yankovic released the video for his "Gangster's Paradise" parody called, "Amish Paradise." He pretty much solidified Lancaster as the unofficial Amish capital of the world in his "Amish Paradise" video which prominently displayed a "Welcome to Lancaster" sign in it.

I finally rented and watched WITNESS only to be horrified by the scene I had shielded my eyes from years before, not because it looked like little LUCAS HAAS was about to meet his maker, but because I was watching my 'BELOVED' Detective Murtaugh, who played a corrupt Philly cop, slashing some guy's throat. It made me sick to see DANNY GLOVER playing a bad guy. I was able to tough it out anyway and continued through the whole movie. WITNESS turned out to be a great film. It was totally worth it to see: HARRISON FORD hiding out in an Amish community and kicking a local bully's ass for picking on his new friends, a great representation of Amish nudity courtesy of KELLY McGILLIS, and the unforgettable silo death scene.

— Grimpressions

Some of the movies that scared me the most as a kid were made-for-TV movies based on true events. Sure many of them are corny and deviated from the actual facts, but as a kid most of the time I didn't realize it. I was fascinated by the movies that had to deal with horrible accidents or people being disfigured. I don't know if I was an insensitive little shit or if I just watched too much TV. One film I'll always remember was WHY ME?

It aired a lot in the '80's, mainly on Lifetime. I remember the first time I watched almost the whole movie was particularly horrifying. I was at my cousin's house during a summer afternoon while my Mom was working. My cousin, who was around my same age, just had surgery done to his eye and he had to wear a patch over it. I'm not sure who thought this was a good idea, but the patch his doctor made him wear was a skin-colored bandage. I guess from a distance it was less noticeable than a patch like a pirate would wear, but up close it was really off-putting to an eight-year-old kid. It looked like skin had melted over his eye. I shouldn't have been scared of him, but I was.

So as I avoided hanging out with him during his recovery, I found other things to do like watch Lifetime with my Aunt. She was watching WHY ME? It was about a nurse who's face was disfigured in a car accident. Here's another situation where I shouldn't have been scared, but I was. I remember it looked like skin had melted over her mouth after she had one of her operations to reconstruct her lips and it reminded me of my cousin's eye so I couldn't get away from it. I was also freaked out by one doctor's drawings and I wondered why he wanted to make her look as ugly as his sketch. All of the medical jargon completely went over my head at the time and I didn't realize that facial reconstruction was such a long process.

Watching parts of the movie on YouTube, I now realize that a lot of the plot is based on how controversial and groundbreaking the doctor's procedures were. He wanted to use vaginal skin to repair the nurse's lips. I was also pleasantly surprised to see BRUCE ABBOTT make an appearance as one of the patients.

— Grimpressions

The video for MICHAEL JACKSON's "Leave Me Alone" was in heavy rotation on MTV when I was a kid. I wasn't old enough to be in charge of the remote yet so whenever I heard the music start for it, I knew I had at least a minute to get away from the T.V. and find something else to do. The part that freaked me out about it when I was a kid was when MICHAEL dances with the Elephant Man's skeleton. My Mom had told me that M.J. bought the Elephant Man's bones which she said was pretty morbid. At 8 years old, I also thought it was very strange.

I didn't know who the Elephant Man really was. The only frame of reference for a man that resembled an elephant I had was my Snout Spout figure from the HE-MAN/SHE-RA cartoons. To think that there was an actual 6-foot-tall man with the head of an elephant walking around at one time and now MICHAEL JACKSON had his bones at his house really disturbed me.

Years later, I saw the movie THE ELEPHANT MAN with my Mom. I remember feeling sorry for him and thinking how silly I felt believing the Elephant Man actually had the head of an elephant as portrayed in the video for "Leave Me Alone." It also turns out JACKSON never actually purchased the bones, although he did make an offer to buy them.

— Grimpressions

Freddy Krueger didn't really scare me the first time I watched A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET when I was about 8 years old. I saw Freddy as more of a cartoon character than anything else. Maybe it was because he could change shape and had a wicked sense of humor. Don't get me wrong, I love ROBERT ENGLUND's acting, but I found him funnier than I did scary. There was another horribly-burned mangler that traumatized me, even though I wouldn't get to see him in action for over another decade, the killer from 1982's HONEYMOON HORROR.

My parents got their first video rental membership in the late '80s from a discount drug store called Phar-Mor. They were always trying to find a bargain so we ended up shopping there a lot. Their rental section was tiny, consisting of maybe a few hundred videos, but I remember it was usually swarming with people mainly trying to snatch the new releases. I spotted an empty video sleeve which had an illustration of a couple, in their underwear, sitting on a bed, surrounded by flames, and a guy with a hatchet looming over them. I picked it up and flipped to the back to be startled by a picture of a bald man that looked like the skin on his face was burned away.

I remember it looked like he was in pain, maybe because he resembled a normal person rather than a one-liner spitting maniac like Freddy. I couldn't really tell from the taglines on the box if this guy was supposed to be bad or good, but I gathered that he was the character with the hatchet on the front. The thought of being disfigured by fire scared me more than anything. Since the couple on the cover were in their underwear, there was no way my parents would let me rent it because that insinuated a possible sex scene or nudity which was off limits. Now if the couple who was about to be slaugtered were fully-clothed, that would've been a different story. I was too afraid to watch the movie anyway. I think we ended up renting GHOST DAD that day.

Everytime we went back to Phar-Mor, I 'd scan the entire section to find HONEYMOON HORROR. I would dare myself to pick up the box and check out the back. Half the time I'd chicken out. So when I found the VHS 12 years later in a bargain bin at a video store that was switching over to only renting DVDs, I was finally ready to face the terror. The movie was a sorry excuse for a slasher and wasn't interesting at all for the first hour. I fast-forwarded to the last ten minutes to when the scarred killer busts through and shatters a kitchen door to hack some girl up with and ax. Even though the gore effects were laughable, it was worth the 7 bucks I payed for this scene and to have the video box. He then gets his guts blown out with a shot gun by, who I assume was, the girl's lover. He had also killed a couple of other people before this scene, but his face isn't revealed until the last ten minutes. The best part is, he sits up and throws a knife into a guy's back from across the room for one final kill.

I read on IMDB that Sony Home Video bought the movie from its filmmakers' for $50,000, distributed it, and it made $22,000,000 on rentals world-wide. With the images on the sleeve I can believe it. I'd be surprised if anyone who actually watched it wasn't disappointed. HONEYMOON HORROR was a nice addition to my little video nasty collection. It's since been packed away in my Mom's basement and I haven't watched it for years. It's such a terrible film that I'm not sure it's worth digging up anytime soon.

—Grimpressions

I stumbled upon this great site about two weeks ago and I've been visiting several times a day ever since. KINDERTRAUMA has rejuvenated my interest in old horror movies and pretty much anything that creeped me out as a kid. So as I religiously watched every minute of THE WALKING DEAD this Fall I kept asking myself where I've seen JEFFREY DeMUNN who plays, Dale, the older man in the group of survivors. I looked up his filmography and I realised that he played the father in a made-for-T.V. movie that scared the crap out of me as a kid called THE HAUNTED: A TRUE STORY.

I remember getting our first V.C.R. when I was 8 or 9 years old, around the time the first BATMAN movie came out on video, back when it would take a year for movies to be released on video. From that point on I proceeded to tape anything on that looked scary. We only had basic cable channels so I ended up recording a lot of T.V. movies, mostly based on true stories. It became somewhat of an art for me because I'd pause the taping and kept the commercials out so perfectly so that you almost couldn't tell they were recorded from television except of course for all the black fade-out and fade-in's and the family-friendly tackiness that accompanies T.V. movies. One of these movies was 1991's THE HAUNTED: A TRUE STORY, which was based on the case of the Smurl family haunting which took place in Pennsylvania during the 70's and 80's.

The movie was one of the more effective made-for-T.V. films. I started to realise how terrible a lot of them were as I got older and stated to rent rather than watch T.V. The acting was great and there were a lot of scary scenes. The ghosts that haunted the family were so relentless that they even followed the family when they tried to get away on a camping trip. The thought that ghosts could follow you outside of the house that was haunted terrified me.

The ghost appeared mainly as a floating, black mass. The usual events took place, chairs and dresser drawers moved on their own, radios turned on when unplugged, the family would hear voices, and there would be unexplained cold spots throughout the house. The black marks that re-appeared on the walls even after a fresh coating was applied was different along with the creepy pig squeals and snorts that would be heard coming from behind the walls.

The one scene that traumatized me though was when THE WALKING DEAD's own JEFFREY DeMUNN is raped by a female entity. DeMUNN who plays the father, Jack, is watching T.V. in the living room after everyone else goes to bed when he sees the ghost, who is an attractive girl at first, come down the stairs. She picks him up and throws him across the room. She straddles him and, at first, and he seems like almost doesn't mind it. The scary music swells and the ghost gets uglier and uglier and Jack starts to freak out. I finished recording the movie, but I couldn't watch it again for years.

Luckily some kind, or demented, soul posted the whole film in 10 parts on YouTube.