kindertrauma

Author: aunt john

Traumafessions :: Reader ScaredStraight on The Brave Little Toaster

Posted on By aunt john

I know it's been brought up HERE, but I'd like to bring up in more detail just how traumatizing JERRY REES' adaptation of THE BRAVE LITTLE TOASTER was for me.

It came out in 1987 and I must have seen it about two years later, so I would have been around four at the time. It's a cartoon movie for kids so my parents must have thought it was a quality movie to show to my niece and me. While she's always been able to dismiss it as a mundane film, that movie gave me reason to stay up on countless occasions for two or three weeks after first watching it.

While the movie is simply about faithful companions (in the form of appliances) searching for their long-gone master, the movie has some dark undertones that JERRY REES decided to throw in to, what I would assume at the very least, appeal to an older crowd.

A few things come to mind…

First off; the air conditioner. The idea that a character within the movie would explode would frighten some, but looking back on it now it seems as though one could see this as a person who is bordering on the edge of paranoia induced insanity takes the final plunge and has a psychotic episode before effectively committing suicide.

While the Toaster's nightmare always did give me chills, I was always filled with a sense of sadness when the toaster comes in contact with the flower in a scene that seems surreal in comparison to the rest of the film. It teaches the valuable lesson that unrequited love = death.

But by far the creepiest scene of the movie (with the help of VAN DYKE PARKS' creepy soundtrack) was when the band of appliances found themselves in the junkyard. The song, titled "Worthless", stayed embedded in my head while I watched innocent cars tell their tragic tales (loaded with social commentary) as they were carried off to meet their fate. While other parts of the movie can be debated as to whether or not they are actually killed (The Air Conditioner is fixed and the flower does not die per se) these cars are crushed and mangled into cubes leaving no question that they are gone.

While this movie is a great indication as to why I love children's movies when I was a child, as opposed to ones I see nowadays, all of these elements combined made for one creepy movie for a little kid to watch.

Name That Trauma :: Reader Mike on a Baby-Swapping Monster Book

Posted on By aunt john

I saw this site and have spent the past few days reading various traumas; most of them I can understand what makes them so frightening. There are a few traumas that I would love to ask about but above all others there's one that sticks in my memory more than any other. I believe I was four or five (‘89-‘90) when I was shown a children's book. The details are very vague, but if memory serves me correctly it was a fairytale about monsters that stole a woman's baby and replaced it with a monster (I want to say ogre but don't quote me on that).

I can barely remember anything else, but I would also venture to say that someone goes to fight the monsters and reclaim the baby. Sadly that's it. The picture of the "baby" that had been put as a replacement to the child was very frightening and I refused to ever read it again. Unfortunately I can neither remember who had shown it to me nor what ever happened. If anyone could help me I would be greatly obliged.

UNK SEZ: Anybody out there remember this baby swapped with monster tale?!

UPDATE: Name That Trauma Solved! It's "Outside Over There" by Maurice Sendak. Mad props to the Mickster for solving this one so quickly!

Traumafessions :: Reader Mike on Scary Stories 3

Posted on By aunt john

I remember reading the SCARY STORIES series when I was a kid. The stories would fascinate me while the imagery was…imaginative is the best word that comes to mind. There was one picture above all others that disturbed me and that could be found in SCARY STORIES 3: MORE TALES TO CHILL YOUR BONES. I am not certain but I believe the story is titled "The Room." All I have based on it was that it came right after the story about the girl that had been raised by wolves.

I remember that I was reading it in third grade (I had to be eight) and I refused to let my friend have it because the stories themselves were captivating. When I turned to the next page though and the slanted eyes and crooked smile of the woman caught my attention my heart began pounding and I quickly closed it; passing the book over to my friend with a shaky voice.

It took me years to be able to face my fear and look back at the illustration and even now I have a troubling time staring at it for too long. Believe me though that it's a memory that's never faded.

UNK SEZ: Crooked smile? Are you thinking of this story from SCARY STORIES 3 entitled "The Dream"?….

Traumafessions :: Reader NiNi on "They Thirst" Book Cover

Posted on By aunt john

Hey, this is cheaper than therapy! While I'm thinking about traumas from the ‘80s, here's another horror that shaped my youthful psyche: the first-edition cover of ROBERT R. McCAMMON's THEY THIRST. Horror novels were even more common than horror movies in our household, and this book lay on the coffee table for quite some time to scar my kindergarten-era mind.

The book itself? Not especially scary. But the cover was the stuff of ‘80s airbrushed nightmares! The dead black pits of the eyes in the skull-like face… the tiny LATOYA JACKSON nose… and worst of all, the bloody red lips and needle teeth of that over-sized mouth. Every time I saw that damned book, I would discreetly flip it over so I wouldn't have to see it.

Nowadays, the illustration kind of reminds me of an anglerfish in drag, or the misbegotten lovechild of JAWS and THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW. But the 5-year-old inside me remembers the fear of stumbling across this image in the darkened living room on my way to that nighttime glass of water…

Name That Trauma :: Kinderpal FilmFather on a Troubled Teen Special (Torn Book and Dead Deer)

Posted on By aunt john

This Trauma has been popping up in my head lately, and has been recurring for the last 25 years or more…

  • It's not a movie, but more like some kind of afterschool special or classroom film from the late '70s/early '80s.
  • It features a young teen boy, probably 15 or so, who starts off nice (helping feed a local man's deer, for example) but ends up hanging with the wrong crowd of no-goodniks (a couple of other boys his age, if I remember correctly).
  • One day they're in class, where a snooty teacher shows them his most valued possession: a book signed by his favorite author.
  • Later, the boys walk by the shed where the local man keeps his deer feed, and there is some poison nearby (I forget why, just play along). The two other boys grab a pitchfork and plan to rip open the feed and poison to mix them together, but the main boy stops them…only to grab the pitchfork and do it himself.
  • Following this, the boys break into their vacant classroom and trash the place…with the main boy mimicking the teacher while holding the book, saying, "THIS is how much I love this book." He then rips the book in two down the spine.
  • Hearing someone coming, the two friends flee while our main boy hides behind the door. Their teacher enters the room, sees his precious book ripped apart, holds the pieces to his chest, and drops to his knees, sobbing.
  • Somehow the main boy escapes, and as he's walking home he passes the local man, who's surrounded by dead deer that ate the poisoned feed. Not knowing the boy did it, the man asks him to help remove the deer (cut to a closeup of one of the deer's heads, its eyes glazed over).
  • Instead of helping, the boy runs away from the scene, finally collapsing against a tree and sobbing hysterically. The end.
  • During the credits, a male narrator in voiceover wonders aloud why the boy did such things.

Can anybody out there help me identify (and possibly locate) this special? Like I said at the beginning, it's been nagging at me on and off for decades.

UNK SEZ: That movie is called UNKLE LANCIFER: THE EARLY YEARS. Nah, I'm just kidding, I would never sob against a tree! Jeez, FilmFather I have no idea but it does indeed sound like an after school special of some sort. Anybody out there got any clues?

NOTE: This has little to do with anything and I apologize but does anybody out there remember the afterschool special entitled THE COSMIC AWARENESS OF DUFFY MOON (1976) that stared IKE EISENMANN (ESCAPE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN, LANCIFER KERWIN ( SALEM'S LOT) and coined the inspirational power slogan "You can do it Duffy Moon?" They referenced it on THE VENTURE BROTHERS once and I found my self doing a spit-take of recognition worthy of MARTIN SHORT.

UPDATE: LANCE KERWIN talks "Duffy Moon" at the remarkably addictive retroCRUSH HERE.

I CAN'T SHUT UP: How Kindertraumy is this Indian Safety poster that retroCRUSH spotlights HERE?

UPDATE: Name That Trauma SOLVED! It's an educational film from 1975 called THE BOY WHO LIKED DEER. To learn more about it, feel free to fawn over The Haunted Closet.

Traumafessions :: Reader Jeffrey P. on Fraggle Rock & the THX Logo

Posted on By aunt john

When I was little, I always loved to watch videos of THE ADVENTURES OF SPOT in the playroom, but there was a preview before the episodes that scared me so much, I almost threw out my SPOT videos. It was a preview for a JIM HENSON show called FRAGGLE ROCK, and here's what scared me: The part where these giants called the Gorgs grabbed a Fraggle, but the Fraggle got away. I found it on youtube today, and boy it was different from what I remember:

Scare level ( on a scale of 1 to 5 screams): 2.5 screams, if you are 6 or under, 0 if over.

Whenever I started watching a DISNEY video, I always ran from the room before the movie started. Why? Because of terrifying THX logo. The DEEP NOTE scared me so much, that I haven't watched a DISNEY video ever since. Here's the logo:

Scare level: 4 out of 5 screams!

The Ghost of Flight 401

Posted on By aunt john


Continuing with the theme of '70s made-for-television movies set on unbelievably roomy commercial airplanes comes the ERNEST BORGNINE-led THE GHOST OF FLIGHT 401. The opening credits feature a flight crew of pretty stellar actors (RUSSELL JOHNSON of GILLIGAN'S ISLAND, HOWARD HESSEMAN of WKRP fame, and the lovely and talented KIM BASINGER); however, save for BASINGER, none of the aforementioned icons survive the routine flight from New York to Miami and all perish when their plane crashes in the swampy Florida Everglades.

Of course, a major airplane disaster is no match for co-pilot BORGNINE, and he manages to make it out of the bog and to the intensive care unit where he flat lines in the subsequent scene, but not before telling his wife that he loves her and their two small children. Cut to the obligatory graveyard scene, followed by some reminiscing over the loss of Papa Bear BORGNINE, and the lives of those that work at the airline seemingly return to normal. The salvaged pieces of the crashed plane are used as replacement parts for other planes within the fleet and BASINGER eventually finds herself passing out peanuts and reminding passengers to return their seat-back trays to the upright position.


Alas, BASINGER is not the only flight crewmember from the doomed Flight 401 to return to the friendly skies; the ghost of BORGNINE joins her. At first he only appears to the female stewardesses in the galley, and their claims are dismissed as hysteria by smarmy airline pencil pusher GARY LOCKWOOD. In fact, he sends BASINGER off to a company therapist before allowing her to fly again, and she delivers one of those over-the-top, Emmy-baiting monologues about her dead Mama worthy of recitation by MARY CATHERINE GALLAGHER. The supernatural cameos by BORGNINE continue to escalate, and after the male pilots begin to substantiate the stewardesses' claims, LOCKWOOD begrudgingly agrees to attend a séance to rid the airline of its in-flight ghost once and for all.

As far as séances go, THE GHOST OF FLIGHT 401 features a real snoozer. No crystal balls, no Ouija boards, just two really dull mediums who tell us that the late co-pilot is attached to the repurposed parts of the plane and he wants everyone to be safe. Even BORGNINE skips this scene and it anticlimactically ends on a dull note with a stock shot of the clouds and a voiceover saying that the ghostly appearances promptly stopped after the séance.


Based on a book based on the actual crash of an Eastern Air Lines plane, THE GHOST OF FLIGHT 401 pales in comparison to THE HORROR AT 37,000 FEET. It tries too hard to be serious, and sidesteps it full potential. With BORGNINE haunting the plane and a young BASINGER pushing a drink cart, one should expect first-class thrills, not cramped, coach chills.

Traumafessions :: Reader NiNi on Rockwell's "Somebody's Watchin' Me"

Posted on By aunt john

After seeing that people were traumatized by HERBIE HANCOCK, I'm surprised there's no mention of one-hit-wonder ROCKWELL, whose video for "Somebody's Watchin' Me" used to freak me the hell out as a kid. Highlights include the shadowy floating head, the zombie guy in tighty-whities carrying a roast pig (wtf??) and the shower spouting blood (a particular childhood worry of mine). But these weren't the real traumatizers of this video; I'd been on a steady diet of horror movies practically since birth, thanks to a horror-loving mother.

No, the kicker was in the last moments of the video, where the creepy grinning mailman is seen to have a horribly deformed and strangely slimy-looking left arm, poorly concealed behind his mailbag. I suspect that it was scary because he looked otherwise normal (if a bit serial-killerish); making it worse is the way that poor ROCKWELL walks up to him in obvious relief after dealing with all the rest, only to be faced with this misshapen horror. Let me tell you, it made me suspicious of mailmen for quite some time! I would eye them surreptitiously, on the lookout for a disgusting withered claw, and all because of ROCKWELL.