Author: unkle lancifer

The cover of the VHS for the movie FRIGHT NIGHT still sticks in my brain to this day as one of the scariest things ever to have existed ever. I've always been a horror movie fan, even as a little kid, and whenever we went to go rent movies, that aisle was always my first destination. But for some reason, the cover of FRIGHT NIGHT would stick out like this unwatchable terror: that swirling, foreboding cloud forming into a demonic face above a suburban house. I grew up in Phoenix, AZ, where we had like 5 storms a year, and the storms we did have were usually intense. So every time the sky would get dark and clouds would gather, the image of that ethereal monster face forming over my house was literally enough to send me running home in abject panic, no matter where I was or what I was doing. Needless to say, when I finally watched the movie as an adult, I was disappointed.

NOTE: Besides being an excellent trauma-confesser (remember Maneater?) Nat is a veritable renaissance man. If you would like to hire, stalk or oggle him in his natural habitat he can be located HERE.

I'm not officially a "Trekker" but I grew up with and enjoyed the original STAR TREK series and have been a science fiction fan since I've known how to read.  So, when I was in junior high and STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE came I was definitely hot to see it – it was right on the crest of the wave of spectacular sci-fi movies spawned by STAR WARS and promised to be a much needed updating of the franchise to give it the visual grandeur the characters and stories always deserved.

So, I plop myself down in the theater and the first few minutes are as promised: the visuals are great, the Enterprise has received a refit making it arguably the most beautiful starship in cinema history, and all the characters are back looking great and ready for action.  However, no sooner does Kirk arrive on board the Enterprise, a console blows up in the transporter room and two new crew members die during transport.  Now, anyone who's watched the show knows that death is nothing new to STAR TREK; Red Shirts go down like handfuls of popcorn throughout the series and in some episodes, whole planets get snuffed. But usually the on-screen deaths are quick and easy – "Ensign So-and-So" goes out in a flare of pretty green phaser light or "Yeoman Bazzfazz" gets poison plant darts in the chest or steps on an exploding rock.

Not so in STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE.

The unfortunate crew are turned into living Georges Braque paintings and they are apparently conscious the whole time because while Kirk and others are trying to save them they are *writhing* around in the transporter beam and SCREECHING LIKE BANSHEES WITH THEIR SACKS CAUGHT IN A THREE-PHASE SOCKET!! Grape-flavored Christ on a stick!  It's a good thing the rest of the movie moved along in such a sedate fashion because it took almost two hours for my heart rate to get back to normal after that.  Then it took a couple days to be able to get through the day without imagining what it would be like to have my eye socket displaced by my anus.  Sweet merciful Buddha, what a way to kick off a return to the world of STAR TREK!

 

In our hometown mall there was always one corner that was a little darker, gloomier than the other and this corner housed our Woolworth's store.  At Halloween time they put on the requisite window display and it was pretty tame considering.  But one year they put out a black velvet cloth and from under was creeping a hand.  No blood, no sharp implements nothing – but my sister saw me gazing at it with rapt attention and then began to tease me that the hand was going to follow me home and hide under my bed, the hand was going to get me. And after that I had months of nightmares where the hand was following me, the hand was hiding just out of my sight.  So one of the most traumatic moments of childhood had to do with the disembodied hand.

The 1974 movie EARTHQUAKE also did me in – I couldn't ride in an elevator for a long time after watching this one.  In one scene they show people in an elevator during the quake and the cables break and it plunges them to their doom. As a special, extra-cheesy 1970's effect they put big red splotches over the scene to ram home to the viewer that yes these people died, were mashed to bits, no more.  I rewatched the movie recently and was amused at how hokey the scene really was – but to a five year old, pure fear. 

UNK SEZ: Fellow LOTTD member Absinthe is the mastermind behind GLOOMY SUNDAY a brilliant spot that takes an exhaustive look at the world of Gothic romances. There's always something new there and besides Absinthe's penetrating observations, visitors are treated to an impressive catalog of those groovy gothic paperback covers of yesteryear. Add a little darkness to your day and drop by!
 

Absurd though it may sound, the Hall & Oates song "Maneater" traumatized me so much that I actually stopped listening to the radio. I used to listen to the radio all the time, but once that song came out, and once I heard it late at night (which, given my age at the time, was probably like 8 or 9pm), it freaked me out so badly that I had to enter a self-enforced radio silence for fear that the song might come on again. I was, of course, taking the lyrics too literally; my metaphor glands had not dropped yet.

Being born in 1973, I came across a barrage of horrifying images on T.V.: The Zuni Doll from TRILOGY OF TERROR, DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW, The "V" TWINS! — but nothing was more damming to my psyche than the WAYLAND FLOWERS abomination: MADAME

Pure terror to a toddler.  When her freakish gaping maw was shut, her face looked like two large people screwing each other.  I quickly would change the channel to let's say, Mr. Rogers, but wait!… There's LADY ELAINE FAIRCHILDE, the lesser freakish sister of MADAME.  Ahrgh! I can't win.

I dare you to try to hold in your screams when you look at MADAME's home site…

I dare you.

UNKLE LANCIFER SEZ: Turnidoff, you are right. MADAME is scary as hell, but she's also notoriously difficult to work with. Based on legends that exist solely within my alcohol-rattled mind, she was, in fact, the first choice to star in the film adaptation of STEPHEN KING's MISERY. Lo and behold, a young moxie-filled, opportunistic KATHY BATES did a bit of an ALL ABOUT EVE number on the aged puppet and snatched that part right out of her puppet hands by seducing a then-naive meathead named ROB REINER.