Author: aunt john

I have been trying to find out the title of this film for years – just to make sure I avoid it, it scared me so much; but not in a, "Oooh that gave me the creeps" way, but in a, "Someone just got murdered right in front of me!!!!" kind of way. I always thought it was a version of MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY but from what I've managed to glean from Google, it's not.

I must have been about 10-11, so somewhere between 1979-81 and this film was on T.V. in the UK. At that time we only had three channels in this country, so that narrows it down – I don't think I'll forgive the BBC if it was them!

The only scene I remember was the part that traumatised me (I left the room and never returned until much later when I knew the damned thing HAD to be over). Set in the late 17th-early 18th century, with large masted ships, the scene had either (1) A crew rebelling, or (2) pirates attacking; whichever it was a young man in a naval uniform of the time (black tailcoat) and brown hair in a ponytail was hanging by his foot/feet from a rope tied to one of the crossbars from the mast which would hold the sail, and was swung back and forth, quite high and fast, as the other men (or maybe just one man) stabbed him in the chest and he screamed. It was very realistic and completely unexpected, coming as it did on a Saturday afternoon.

Please can someone help me? I know it wasn't a dream as my nightmares are much more surreal than that!

Kind regards,

Elizabeth M.

Dear Kindertrauma,

When I was a kid, back in the early to mid-80s, my father used to take me into the record store in our local mall (specifically, the Listening Booth in the Palmer Park Mall in Easton, PA) on occasion. While he was digging through the LPs, I was staring at the images in the heavy-metal posters that loomed at adult head-height over the shelves.

I was particularly terrified of one large poster that depicted a sort of Frankenstein-esque monster holding up by its hair the head of a freshly decapitated witch. The witch's body lay on the ground at the monster's feet, and a number of red and blue veins were dangling from the head and extending to the neck. (That's the part that is seared indelibly on my brain.)

Much later, I grew up to be the sort of adult who loves horror movies. I'd love to look at this image again to see if it really is as horrific as I remember.

What I can't remember is what musician or band this poster was advertising! My Google-fu is usually pretty good, but I can't come up with anything for this image. Unfortunately, the record store went out of business years ago, so I can't ask them. I know it's not the sort of thing that Kindertrauma generally handles, but maybe it will ring a bell for you?

Even if it doesn't, I adore your blog! Thanks for any leads you might have.

— Carolyn

Hi Uncle Lancifer and Aunt John, I hope that this is where I'm supposed to submit my appeal for help with a kindertrauma. This one particularly upset my younger sister (largely because I would recreate it just before she went to bed-aren't siblings lovely?).

I can't remember much, except that it was probably an American T.V. movie and that it must have been shown on UK T.V. sometime in the late '80s.

I remember that there was a mother and a little girl, and that the little girl menacingly told her mother, "I have something to give to you" whilst concealing a knife behind her back. Then, bizarrely, I remember said Mom going to a cemetery and opening what she thought was her daughter's coffin and finding a robot girl there.

No, it doesn't make much sense to me either and I hope I'm not confusing it with SMALL WONDER. But if anyone can help, I'd be very, very grateful as it's bothered me for years!

—CreepyCarrie

First Up! Keep up the great work, Kindertrauma is a wonderful and insightful website!

I am trying to track down a movie that has played on my mind for the last 18 years. I was about 12 when I watched this movie on T.V., the same night I saw what I thought was a ghost in the hallway and had an asthma attack. I've been trying to piece together that particular night for years!

I am sure the plot involved an architect and maybe flashbacks to a site in Egypt. Two scenes I vaguely remember were the lead actor sitting beside a possible redhead while she was in the bathtub and some kind of demon appearing in a car windscreen or looking down from the roof a car and causing a car crash.

The film has haunted me for years, I have never been able to locate it – even after endless plot searches on IMDb! I thought it could possibly be SCHIZO/PLAYROOM but am not sure.

Can anyone help end my trauma????

Thanks,

Tristan

Hi guys,

Long time reader, first time writer. When I was a kid, my friend would have sleepovers and rent horror movies that haunt me to this very day. The one I am seeking today may have been double-billed with BEYOND THE DOOR II, a movie that made me sleep with clenched fists for years afterward – the thought of waking up with a crumbling hand in mine was so terrifying.

The movie I am looking for was watched on video sometime between 1983 and 1989. It featured a man who had obtained an amulet that allowed him to psychically act outside of his body as he slept. I think he received the amulet from a man in prison. I remember two crimes that he committed. He caused a big crate or a piano to fall on someone by snapping the rope it was swinging on. He also scalded a woman in a shower by increasing the water temperature and seizing the glass door closed. She ultimately breaks through the glass door and is covered in cuts – I can't remember if she lives. In the end, he is captured as he sleeps and incinerated – he wakes up as he burns.

One final question, where the hell were my parents when I needed them?

— Craig's Friend Meg

There was what I believe to be a made-for-TV movie in the mid-late 1970s, and I suspect it was some type of supernatural anthology thriller. Promotions for it involved an RV in the desert, a woman in a wheelchair patting a dog or something only to fall down an exterior staircase, and a kid popping up from a circle of plastic milk crates or the like.

The striking portion of the film I saw on T.V. involved the RV: a middle-aged couple on vacation in the desert were attacked by large boulders rolling across the flat desert landscape. The genuinely terrifying part for me was that the husband first was trying to find out what these heat-blurred dots on the horizon were by repeatedly walking further and further away from the safety of the camper to get a closer look with his binoculars.

I think even back then, I suspected the massive boulders were "fakey," but that was just inconsequential to the terror I felt at knowing something is completely and hostilely amiss and yet still being compelled to find out what it is at the expense of your protection. The fact that the distance between the man and his means of escape in their presumably safe RV was shown in a long shot just psychologically added to the danger.
Eventually this RV would also be telekinetically commandeered while the husband was on the roof and the wife was helpless to override the steering wheel of the speeding vehicle, if that's any help in identifying this.

Does anyone know the title of this film?

Thanks again for your help! Take care.

Sincerely,

Stickmann

UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Special thanks to NurseKrud for solving it with GHOSTS THAT STILL WALK!

Hello,

Can you help me name a movie?

This is the movie that I thought was SLEEPAWAY CAMP, so I rewatched S.C., to find out that I was wrong. The movies are similar, but the difference is in the end. While the S.C. has the very clever "girl with a penis" ending (loved that craziness b.t.w.), the movie I'm thinking about is different.

It must have been perhaps 15 years since I saw it. It's an ‘80s movie and in the end they are chased by the killer in the deep woods (looks like a jungle) with a knife. I think the killer is one of them, and that it's a guy. But the guy's face literally morphs into a girl's face or is it the other way around?

It's really weird. And that is the big twist. I remember it scared the living crap out of me.

I would love to see it again!!

Thanks,

— Nicholas