Author: aunt john

O.K., here's one that scarred me in my youth and after 25 years I've never seen a mention of it again, anywhere.

It was in the ‘80s, cable T.V. when you had the remote control tethered with the long cable, a row of a gazillion buttons, and a lever to switch button levels (and to jam the buttons so you could watched the scrambled Playboy channel in the hopes of seeing a wavy boob.)

My folks went out for the evening so it was wavy boob time. I flipped on the T.V. and it went directly to HBO, Showtime or Cinemax where I caught just the very tail end of a movie. But those few moments would scar me for the rest of my life. It was a typical ‘80s low-budget horror flick where the person at the end was like, "Oh it's all over now" or, "It was all a dream" when, of course, you knew it wasn't.

As soon as they said it, right behind them the floorboards erupted; fire and smoke belched from the hole and you could hear the screaming of souls in torment. From the hole rose a terrifying demon, which grabbed the person from behind and sank back into the abyss. As they disappeared back into the hole, the floorboards went back into place perfectly as if nothing had happened and then the credits rolled. At the least, I was impressed with the demon's flooring skills.

Anyone ever see a low-budget ‘80s horror flick with this ending?

— bdwilcox

UNK SEZ: That sounds like the ending of WES CRAVEN's 1981 movie DEADLY BLESSING which is woefully not available on DVD. From what I've heard that particular bit was not directed by WES himself but added on by producers after he finished the film. I'm told that in the U.K. DEADLY BLESSING was released without that over-the-top supernatural close.

DEADLY BLESSING is one of my earliest theatrical horror experiences and I have to admit, that ending, directed by WES or not, got lil' Unk good. It doesn't really fit with the rest of the film but it sure flipped me out anyway. I tried to find a clip of that scene on YouTube but had no luck. I did scrounge up a few blurry screenshots, I hope they help!

Hey everybody,

I stumbled on this site pretty recently and have been chewing my 62-year-old mom's ear off about it. Which, to my delight, prompted her to offer up her own trauma for identification.

She thinks she was about 11 (which would have made it 1958 or so) and living in New Jersey. She saw an episode of what might have been a weekly T.V. program depicting eerie stories. (I just combed the episode guides of THE TWILIGHT ZONE and ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS and viewed every title that seemed a possibility, even straying into the early sixties to be thorough.)

In the damaging episode, a beautiful young girl receives instructions to climb a spiral staircase to the top of a castle turret (?). She does so carrying some sort of light source (lantern? candle?) and reaches the top to find a room with a mirror.

Peering into the glass, she glimpses herself as a withered old woman (possibly just old, but also possibly torn up- or debauched-looking in some way.)

Y'know, it may have been my mom who actually saw this, but the act of describing it has planted such vivid imagery in my own mind that I'm as eager as she is to have the thing named!

Thanks, all.

Hi there,

I've just discovered your wonderful site and wonder if you could help me with a kindertrauma my mum experienced as a kid.

It was a fairly old film, set in some kind of circus or carnival. There is a little girl who is always skipping around singing a song – it might be "Bye Baby Bunting" — and annoying everyone.

In the scene my mum remembers, a scary man (possibly a clown) snaps and starts jumping heavily on this kid, singing her annoying song in a kind of staccato as he stomps on her, finally realising she is dead. I think this happens behind a parked car.

My mum was going crazy trying to remember the name of this film.

Any suggestions?

Heidi

UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! After some back & forth with Heidi, she came around to the realization that Unk was correct with DAY OF THE LOCUST.

Greetings Kindertrauma,

I watched a movie with my parents when I was very young that has haunted me to this day. It was not a horror movie but I think more of a dumb action movie.

I cannot remember anything except for the end where the ‘bad guys' are chasing the ‘good guys' in some kind of animal reserve or something and one of the guys dunks another one's head into a thing of water where he is then eaten alive from the chest up by piranhas.

That scene has scared me for years and now I think its time to face those fears.

If anyone can help that would be awesome!

Regards,

Jonathan

Hey there,

My buddy Jason from the Wrecking Crue podcast has been bugging everyone lately trying to recall this movie from his youth. Normally, I'm pretty good at hunting down obscure flicks based on only a scant bit of memories, but this was a little too scant for me. So, the first thing I thought to do was turn to the collective wisdom of the Kindertrauma community!

Here's his description:

This young blonde girl moves into a building that if I recall is like a warehouse type building? Anyway she lives there alone, I think, and there are only two main characters in the film: her and a guy who I think is a cop.

There's something about a person in the walls and secret passages, and I distinctly recall a scene where she pulls down the bathroom mirror and finds a passage.

I want to say she had some sort of mental problems in her past but again not 100%.

It wasn't a horror film so much as a thriller and I think it would have been mid-'80s when it came out.

Any guesses, 'cuz I am STUMPED!

— Patrick K. Walsh

This Japanese monster scared the living crap out of me as a kid (late '70s, early '80s) and visions of it still do.

It was a man in a rubber suit, so the monster was bipedal and man-sized. It had a giant eye on its stomach, webbing for ears on its head and claws it used to kill the men who came after it. I can remember it on a ship running around killing people. The movie was in black and white.

I've searched in vain for this demonic apparition for years and no one knows what I'm talking about.

—bdwilcox

UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Kinder-treasure senski solved it with EVIL BRAIN FROM OUTER SPACE (a.k.a. ATTACK FROM SPACE)!

Chuckles here in need of help.

I was visiting my grandparents in New Albany, Indiana (a town that is, incidentally, loaded to the gills with creepy lore) when I happened upon a television broadcast that kept me up until dawn. This would have been around 1980. It was a late-night showing on one of the local UHF stations – oh, how I miss them.

I am fairly certain that what I saw was a British horror film, but I might be wrong on that detail. However, I recall clearly that it reeked heavily of ‘70s fashion. The plot involved cannibals – not the kind that ate Michael Rockefeller but instead the kind that would invite their victims in for a game of cards before dispatching them. I remember that the main cannibal was an older woman but at some point she was joined by her daughter. One of the main conflicts involved a man – maybe the father or brother – who tried to cover up the crimes of the woman and her daughter.

The details are fuzzy but the two most traumatizing scenes are fairly clear: In the first, the older woman murders another woman by stabbing her with a flaming, red-hot poker and then starts to eat her. The second is the end of the film – a person (can't recall gender) goes to the cannibals' house and goes up to the attic. There we see the woman and her daughter with the body of one of their victims – possibly getting ready to chow down. In the final moments, the mother and daughter are closing in with a pitchfork or meat cleaver. The ending was very grim, very bleak – I'm not sure that I had ever seen anything like it before.

I have searched around for 1970s cannibal films but all I can seem to find are references to the more typical cannibal exploitation films – CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, etc. This film could be very obscure – UHF stations were not picky about what they showed on the night shift.

Can my fellow Traumaniacs help me out, or will I be left forever baffled?

UPDATE NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Thanks to kinderpal VicarOfVHS for the assist with FRIGHTMARE.