Author: aunt john
Traumafessions :: Tracy V. of Joe Bob Briggs on an Electrical Safety Film
When I was a young'un in the '70s, whenever my 6th health teacher didn't want to teach, he'd show a film. (The one on the dangers of alcohol that starred SONNY BONO was groovy, man.) The one that scarred me for life was a safety film about electricity. I was fine with the 'don't fly kites near electrical wires' and the 'don't climb electrical pylons' portion of the film…and then a little girl with her dolly decided to play with the electrical box in her front yard. (I don't know the technical term for the things, but they're kind of rectangular, stand several feet high, and are painted a dull green.)
The lock was broken on the electrical box on that fateful day little Sally decided to explore, and she opened it right up. Inside were two white electrical thingies that Sally thought would make a perfect house for her dolly. So Sally reaches in…ZAP!...cut to a scene of a blackened, burnt up doll. I could only assume little Sally looked the same way.
To this day, if I see any neighborhood children anywhere near those boxes, even those that are safely locked, I want to scream at them to RUN AWAY! DON'T GO NEAR THE BOX! So I guess the film worked…
My name's Tracy V., and I help out at Joe Bob Briggs' website. (Joe Bob being the most famous expert on drive-in cinema ever to come out of Grapevine, Texas.)
Thanks for letting me get that traumafession off my chest,
Tracy V.
AUNT JOHN SEZ: Thank you Tracy V. for bringing an oft unspoken issue to our attention. The importance of electrical safety cannot be stressed enough! While I was unsuccessful in locating the film that traumatized you, I did unearth this chestnut from across the pond which plays out like The Gashlycrumb Tinies set in a electric sub-station. Poor J-I-M-M-M-Y!
Name that Trauma :: Readers Geofree of Enter the Man-Cave & Bill P. on "Recorded Live"
A few months back, Geofree C. of Enter the Man-Cave emailed us this:
Hello my fellow Philadelphian brethren at Kindertrauma,
I will keep this short and sweet. When I was a little kid back in '81-'82 (yeah I'm old), I remember HBO used to show a short film as filler between their programming. The short in question is called "The Tape" I believe. It is about a man who goes to a job interview (I think) and is attacked by a massive mound of reel-to-reel tape. The man finds a magnet which he uses to fend off the sinister tape, but puts it down to make his escape. The Tape uses this opportunity to wrap around the man and eat him. All that is left is his clothes…it even spits out a shoe. Back in the day, it creeped me out. Nowadays, I would appreciate a stop-motion, low budget attempt at entertainment by a hopeful filmmaker now that I am older. If anyone knows the name of this short or could point me in the right direction to see this again after many years, I would greatly appreciate it. I researched the internet over the last year or so and have been unsuccessful, so trust me that I am not asking this out of laziness. I put this on my website Enter the Man-Cave as well, but the response and accuracy at kindertrauma is uncanny. And if I can't trust a uber-blog like kindertrauma run by a fellow Philadelphian, who can I trust to help me out? If this has already been posted and I missed it…my apologies!
Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!
Geofree
Having addressed this short with Reader Phibes a few months before, I emailed Geofree the answer and forgot about it until it popped up again this past week from Reader Bill P. who emailed us this:
I can't remember if I have submitted this before, or seen it in your archives but his has bugged me forever. Back in the good old days of cable, when they had short subjects between movies; I saw one about a guy who goes to an office for a job interview. He finds the office empty and wanders around calling out and looking for signs of life. He wanders into a sound editing room and suddenly tape begins unreeling off a rack of spools and attacks him. He is chased around and around, at one point he finds a magnet and fends off this seething mass of tape, until one bit of it burrows into the carpet and comes up behind him and the rest follows, swallowing him up, leaving nothing but empty clothes. The entire time the tape is in motion it makes this sped-up rewinding sound, even having weird little conversations with its component parts. Any leads on this would be greatly appreciated.
The answer to both questions is the 1975 short RECORDED LIVE:
Traumafessions :: Reader EA on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
I was inspired to send along a trauma that I feel may not be unique to me, but I'm pretty certain I've never heard of anyone else who was emotionally scarred….
…by Aerosmith.
Well, more specifically, by Aerosmith's performance of "Come Together" in the SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND movie. Mind you, I was about 5 or 6 years old when I saw this movie (I didn't see it when it was released theatrically in 1978, I caught it on T.V. I assume it didn't make the T.V. rounds until a good year or two after its release, so I'm fairly confident but not 100% on the timing). As much as it's mind-blowing to comprehend, I was aware of the SGT. PEPPER'S movie before I was aware of the Beatles. So in my young mind, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" was a Bee Gees song. "Got to Get You Into My Life"? Well, that's Earth, Wind, and Fire, of course. And don't even tell me some dude named Paul McCartney wrote "Maxwell's Silver Hammer." That was sung by the King Tut guy from SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE!
Sadly, that's not even the tip of the trauma.
No, the mind-scarring came during the introduction of the FVB – Future Villains Band. Played by Aerosmith, they sang a version of "Come Together" that still taints my appreciation of the song and haunts my dreams. Something about the sleazy, snake-rattle opening of the song, the way the band marches out, head down like zombies, and Steven Tyler's hideous mouth hissing words like, "hold you in his armchair, you can feel his disease" – Well, it just TERRIFIED me.
Years later, when I discovered this was actually a John Lennon song – it made no difference. The song still conjures up dark images of Steven Tyler attempting to turn Strawberry Fields into a "mindless groupie" with his big evil lips. Shiver.
Talk about a double-edged trauma. First, the movie ruined the song "Come Together" and, for a long time, Aerosmith itself, AND it had me thinking for years that the Beatles' concept album was actually a god-awful ‘70s cheesefest narrated by GEORGE BURNS. SGT. PEPPER, I shake my fist at you in rage!
Thanks! Keep up the trauma. Love the site.
For your reference, here's the performance terror itself…
100 Feet
The onslaught of nor'easters that have bore down repeatedly on Kindertrauma Castle these past weeks have afforded your Aunt John some serious sofa time with the streaming Netflix. While I would like to expound upon the nuanced performances of KATE & ALLIE SEASON 4 at great length, I think this forum is better suited for a discussion of the other abusive relationship tale I also sat through… 100 FEET.
In short, FAMKE JANSEN plays Marnie, a freshly paroled murderess placed on house arrest for killing her abusive, police officer husband and BOBBY CANNAVALE plays Shakes, the hard-nosed cop/ former partner to the murdered husband keeping an obsessively watchful eye on Marnie's every confined move. Since Marnie is on house arrest, (title alert) she can't physically be more than one hundred feet from the monitoring device installed in her home and if she is, an alarm is tripped that summons Shakes. Whereas your Aunt John would be tripping the alarm every five minutes ("Oh hi there BOBBY CANNAVALE, did I set off that alarm again?"), Marnie and Shakes don't exactly mix since she killed his partner. Cops sure are sensitive to stuff like that. To make matters worse, Marnie's house is haunted by her abusive husband (the tragically over CGI-ed MICHAEL "EDDIE & THE CRUISERS" PARE) who continues to deliver beat downs from beyond.
Despite a wavering accent (is she supposed to be an outer borough New Yorker or only when she's upset?) JANSEN delivers a solid performance as a woman trapped in rather hellish existence. She has become the scorn of her friends, family, and neighbors and just when you think she has found some slight solace in the arms of the grocery delivery boy (a surprisingly not annoying ED WESTWICK of GOSSIP GIRL) along comes that pesky PARE poltergeist. And herein lies the biggest drawback to the flick; if you are going to cast Kindertrauma favorite MICHAEL PARE, at least give us a good look at his mug other than in the awkwardly staged old photos Marnie takes off her walls. I know he is supposed to be a ghost and all, but PARE's obscured performance ends up being reduced to a series of repeated fade-in/sucker punch/fade-outs drowned in river of overly computerized blood.
Written and directed ERIC RED (BAD MOON), 100 FEET plays out like a Lifetime woman in peril yarn doused in supernatural syrup and dunked in a bucket a testosterone, and I'm not talking about CANNAVALE's or PARE's hormones; I'm talking about studly JANSEN's. Something tells me that if you were truly on FAMKE's shit list, you wouldn't get the chance to come back from the dead, she'd get it right the first time.
Name That Trauma :: Reader Bigwig on a Crazy Crater and Cursed Kids
Hi Aunt and Unc….
I was hoping one of you trauma-ites may be able to piece this one together..
This harkens back to the late ‘70s early ‘80s, and reminds me of a NIGHT GALLERY re-run, although I can't put a name on the episode(s), nor can I find it when I search. I think there were multiple short stories told in the same hour or half hour. Of course we may have watched a few shows back to back as kids staying up too late for our own good and there is a chance they are unrelated.
What makes this difficult is the trauma comes from the story I know the least about.
Trauma Story: Creepy Smoke-filled Hole
The show is in color.
There is a hole in the ground, in a field. It's spring or summer, and there's a big tree nearby. The hole is bigger than a grave…maybe about 20 feet in diameter. The hole is filled with a thick smoke/haze, like dry ice, which fills it to grass line. You have no idea how deep it is. It is in the tall grass, and no one knows what's at the bottom of it, although awful sounds can be heard. . I think a kid finds it, and goes back to tell someone.
A man either climbs down and back up, or falls in, and when he gets out he is wide-eyed, babbling, and certifiably insane.
That isn't the end, but it's as far as I got that fateful night….I'd love to know where I can see this through to its conclusion, now that I am all brave, and have the option of a pause button. If it helps, the entire vignette was about this hole, it's not part of a larger story.
If it is helpful, I remember more about the short that preceded this one, although The Hole had me terrified far more, since I didn't stay up to find out what was in it, or perhaps we never found out, making it even worse.
Precluding Story: Doomed Teens
A group of teens are somehow privy to the prognostication of a fortune teller, or gypsy. Maybe they are cursed by her. Her enigmatic foreboding (paraphrased) statement is, "One by land; two by air." Two of the three guys in the group are killed, one in a land related death, the other is involved in some death at the airport. The girlfriend of last remaining kid is frantic as she hears the news, and rushes to her boyfriend's home. Landlady/Mom says she just missed him; he's going……skydiving!
Can anybody help me out?
Reader Bigwig
UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Extra special thanks and a round of high fives are in order for eggplantq who knew that Reader Bigwig was talking about 1973's ENCOUNTER WITH THE UNKNOWN.
Name That Trauma :: Reader Jackie M. on Costumed Criminals
My question is about a T.V. movie that aired in the U.S. sometime between '85-'89. A group of male criminals in Halloween costumes (a Santa Claus, a bird of some sort, maybe a turtle) are hiding out or digging in a tunnel and then going after people. I vaguely remember them ringing someone's door bell then killing them. It is night when they are running around and I think there is snow on the ground. If someone can solve this they are amazing!
Thanks,
Jackie
AUNT JOHN SEZ: Jackie, unless there is another movie with hardened criminals decked out in costumes, I am pretty sure you are thinking of the Australian export FORTRESS which played ad nauseum on basic cable in the mid-to-late '80s.
Name That Trauma :: Reader Liam on a Barred Bed
Congratulations – Kindertrauma is an AWESOME site! Here's my half-remembered trauma:
Sometime in the late '80s/early '90s I saw a scene on UK television; (I think) a man was on a bed, possibly a four-poster, and somehow bars appeared from the sides of the bed turning it into a big cage. I think the bars shot up from the edges of the bed, but I'm not sure.
A very hazy memory, but it scared the crap out of me at the time. If anyone can name this film or T.V. show that would be amazing.
Thanks!
Liam
Name That Trauma :: Reader Amy D. on a Tragic Tunnel
Hi,
I'm wondering if anyone remembers this movie, I saw it when I was really little probably 5 or 6, I can remember this movie scaring me and it's always been in the back of my mind but I can't place it, it's some kind of kids movie.
A girl is playing in her front yard, it's back in time because she and her parents are wearing old fashioned clothes, dresses down to their ankles. Some men come across them and take them hostage, there's a shoot out with the bad guys and the family inside and someone else outside. There's a secret passage in the fireplace I think it was where you could climb into a tunnel. The father sneaks towards the secret opening and is shot, the mother rushes to him and is also shot, then the daughter rushes to the mother.
The next part I remember is one of the bad guys and the girl climbing into the tunnel, the girl runs away ahead of him and she suddenly screams and disappears from sight, I think it's years later and there's this mystery as to what happened to this girl.
My next memory is of another girl in modern time running down the same passage and falling but a guy catches her or pulls her up before she falls, they both look down and see the skeleton of the girl who fell years before, and I think the guy says something like now we know what happened to _________. He says her name I think. I'm pretty sure this was the end of the movie.
Any ideas? I can still very vividly remember the little girl falling while trying to escape and her parents being shot in the crossfire and collapsing. I would love to know the name of this movie. I'd appreciate any ideas. Thanks!
UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! The unstoppable Senski got it with 1983's MYSTERY MANSION!
Name That Trauma :: Reader Kirsty D. on a Possessed Person With Lumpy Looking Skin
I posted a post yesterday on the IMDb I Need To Know board, asking if anybody knew what the name of this movie was, but nobody answered. All I remember is a dark haired young man getting possessed or turning evil, and getting lumpy looking skin. There's a scene where he goes under the kitchen sink and while he's under there he sees a hand hanging from the top.
In one scene he's chasing some older woman in the house, I think in the basement, and she tries to run away from him from on one side but then runs into him on the other. It was like a scene in EVIL DEAD 2 when Ash was possessed. AMITYVILLE 2 came on T.V. a couple years back, and I thought for sure that it was the movie, but these scenes weren't in it. I saw it when I was about 3 or 4, it's a distant memory and those are the only scenes I remember.
Just wanted to see if anybody out there can name this movie, I know it's really vague.
Thanks in advance.
UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! After further investigation, it was AMITYVILLE 2.