Back in the mid-'70s, my town library showed movies for kids on Saturday afternoons: rows of chairs, reel-to-reel projector, the screen that you stretch open and hook at the top, etc. One Saturday (I was probably 7 or 8), the librarians walk around before the film with a bowl of candy. Thanks! I'll have a Tootsie Roll, please. Then, the feature started: SON OF BLOB (a.k.a. BEWARE! THE BLOB). Harmless enough for an adult to watch, but when GODFREY CAMBRIDGE sits back in his easy chair, not knowing the Blob is waiting for him…let's just say that the following scene of CAMBRIDGE, covered in Blob up to his neck screaming his head off, traumatized me for years to come.
The cheese-tastic TV movie KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS (1977), starring famed thespian WILLIAM SHATNER, traumatized me in a way that I was only able to shake after revisiting the source last month. There's a scene where WOODY STRODE's character gets attacked by the spiders as he's driving his truck, causing him to roll his truck down an embankment. When Sherriff SHATNER and his partner get to the truck and try to open it, STRODE's lifeless body flops into frame. Either he's covered in spiderwebs or the blood's been sucked from his body. Either way, this image affected me for years to come. I had nightmares of this corpse peeking at me from my bedroom doorway while I was in bed, tiptoeing across the doorway to the other side. I was actually a little scared to watch this clip again as research before I sent you this TRAUMAFESSION. But after revisiting it as an adult, I've been able to laugh it off (thank God).
What's glaringly absent from your bucket of kindertrauma fun is a wonderful animated children's movie entitled THE MOUSE AND HIS CHILD. Oh gosh, how can you lose in a movie about a little wind up mouse and his wind up mouse son going on an adventure to become real and have a family? Oh I don't know, how about being beaten and whipped by city rats, enslaved in the gutters of the world, and a delightful scene where a toy donkey is torn apart for being a poor worker, screaming for his life as rats pull his limbs off and kill him.
Fun for the whole family. My father made me watch it because he said it was a "quality" children's story. Only WATERSHIP DOWN is more violent in terms of "delightful cartoons".
Dear Traumameisters: I don't scare easy. Most horror stuff bores me or makes me laugh. Even back in the day. But there was this one thing on TV… Don't ask me what the show or movie was. I googled and found a couple old movies from the '50s, one by Corman, about octopi that went postal. But all they did was get big and beat on stuff. This was different. I was no more than ten, probably, which puts this event in the late '60s. Broad daylight, some black-and-white movie or show is on.
SCENE: Underwater. Several divers confront a big octopus. Octopus TALKS! Something like "What the hell are you doing in my domain?" or "I rule your sh%t!" Octopus points a tentacle at one diver and shoots LIGHTNING! The man melts to a sizzling skeleton before my unbelieving eyes. Graphic detail. Smoke coming out of eye sockets, if I remember correctly. Octopus says something like "See what happens when you F with me?" All I can tell you is that I went ape and begged my mother to change the channel and make that nightmare go away. I have never seen anything scarier, except maybe ALIEN. Good thing I was 20 when that came out. If I had seen ALIEN when I was ten, I would probably have put out my eyes.
I could do at least a hundred TRAUMAFESSIONS related to things my older brother did to me as a child, but really, who wants to read that? I will just share how my brother's preoccupation with the rock group Kiss traumatized me. It was the ‘70s and my brother was crazy about Kiss, so of course he had all their records, etc. However, it was the purchase of the 1977 Marvel comic book that both terrified and intrigued me at the same time. As many children of the seventies recall, this comic book actually contained blood from all four members of Kiss. At the age of six, I found this concept frightening. Okay, it wasn't really the blood from Paul, Peter, and Ace that I was scared of, it was Gene's blood. I mean, at that point in my life I really thought he was a demon. Naturally, Gene Simmons was my brother's favorite member. He use to stick his tongue out like Gene to freak me out. Anyway, even though I was scared I couldn't stop myself from constantly peeking at this comic book. I would have nightmares about that stupid thing, but then I would find myself looking at it again. Recently I started thinking about the comic book again and found a website where someone had scanned all the pages. Now I can relive my childhood trauma whenever I want.
I know some may find it silly, but the character in JOHN CARPENTER's PRINCE OF DARKNESS that is most frightening to me is the student who gets bruised and then ends up absorbing the most liquid from the jar. When she wakes up she still has her cute outfit and cute blond ponytail, but her teeth are black and her skin looks like an unbaked pizza. You may laugh, but her childlike wide-eyed glee as she "opens" mirrors and hisses, "Father!" always gives me the willies.
UNKLE LANCIFER SEZ: Mike, I'm not laughing! PRINCE OF DARKNESS has a haunting quality all its own. Both unusual in the CARPENTER canon and an almost perfect blending of all his most recognizable themes, the "Darkness" in PRINCE is surprisingly pitch black and the stuff real nightmares are made of. Some of that often-silly imagery you mentioned only adds to the creep factor! I, like apparently many other people, have always been taken aback by the film's disturbingly ambiguous end scene(s). Shrouded in static interference and accompanied by barely audible voice transmissions, its apocalyptic fever dream warning from beyond has always gotten to my core. Although hard to pin down, hard to focus on, faulty, digital imagery has been utilized in many movies post BLAIR WITCH, in 1987 this message from this future was suitably ahead of its time. (It should be said, RIDLEY SCOTT used similar staticy, vague visuals to great effect in early scenes of ALIEN as well) If you think about it, recent flicks like CLOVERFIELD and [REC] are all over this first hand, message from ground zero vibe. In the lone case of PRINCE OF DARKNESS though, the techno "transmission" is invading a dreamy subconscious state and involves a supernatural ultimate evil…scary stuff. Interestingly, CARPENTER thinks of PRINCE OF DARKNESS as the second film in an "apocalypse trilogy" that also includes THE THING and IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS. I'm sure there's many viewers who began the film laughing at JAMESON PARKER's massive porn mustache but found themselves later in bed, in that weird blurry state between awake and asleep, wondering where the images in their own dreams originate from.
"This is not a dream..not a dream. We are using your brain's electrical system as a receiver. We are unable to transmit through conscious neural interference. You are receiving this broadcast as a dream. We are transmitting from the year one, nine, nine, nine. You are receiving this broadcast in order to alter the events you are seeing. Our technology has not developed a transmitter strong enough to reach your conscious state of awareness but this is not a dream. You are seeing what is actually occurring for the purpose of causality violation."
NOTE: Audio "samples" from this ominous message are found on DJ SHADOW's album "Endtroducing" and MARILYN MANSON's version of "Down in the Park." Although there is no direct connection, to me, NINE INCH NAIL's entire album "Year Zero" seems cut from the same cloth as well. While we're at it , it also reminds me of one of my favorite record covers, THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN's "April Skies" which, like PRINCE OF DARKNESS, came out in 1987.
