kindertrauma

Author: unkle lancifer

The Boogens

Posted on By unkle lancifer


Yellowing newspaper articles fill us in on the tragic past of a silver mining town in Colorado. Cave-ins, disappearances and mysterious deaths lead to the abandonment of further digging and the permanent closing of the mines. Flash forward to the early eighties when dynamite blasts signal the grand reopening of the cursed labyrinth. Enter THE BOOGENS; tentacled, amphibian creatures responsible for all that previous hardship that are now free to return to their deadly ways. Two young couples learn the hard way that the local doom-saying oldster is not as crazy as he appears. In fact, he's really the local authority on all subjects Boogen as his own personal pappy met his death via a Boogen bite many years ago. Slasher veterans REBECCA BALDING (SILENT SCREAM) and ANNE MARIE MARTIN (PROM NIGHT) star in this entertaining monster mash infused with slasher tropes that delivers authentic suspense while keeping the title creatures securely under wraps until the final reel. The unveiling of the creatures may disappoint those whose imagination painted the beings as something a tad more menacing than the turtle-faced hand puppets they actually are. Thanks to an atmospheric, snow covered, cozy log cabin setting and atypically likable, even endearing characters, it's easy to forgive this low budget flick its few mostly financial limitations.

INDELIBLE SCENE(S):

  • Tiger the poodle steals every scene
  • Old man's passive aggressive vandalism involves spray painting the word DEATH on the mine entrance
  • The Boogens utilize the heating duct
  • Jessica's choice of objects to throw at the camera to thwart off Boogen attack includes empty tea kettle
  • Jokester Jeff gets yanked under a truck

TRAUMAFESSIONS :: Unkle Lancifer on Alan Parsons Project

Posted on By unkle lancifer

What is it about the ALAN PARSONS PROJECT that has given me the creeps ever since I was a wee lad? Why is it that even now, whenever I hear them playing in a drugstore, I either immediately feel like committing suicide or I imagine it's a bad omen that foretells that at any-second there will be a hold up that will leave cashiers and customers alike sprawled out on the floor swimming in their own blood? Alan Parsons was the audio engineer for PINK FLOYD's THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON which explains a lot, but whereas the FLOYD come off as anti-authoritarian and kick-ass, Parson reeks of a sort of surrender to a larger malevolent power. It's euthanasia music, a soundtrack for pulling the plug. The old man in the SENTINEL who has to guard the doorway to hell for eternity has ALAN PARSONS PROJECT on his iPod. The scariest song may be TIME which is an existential taunt just perfect for a hospital death bed, but the one that really gets stuck in my craw is EYE IN THE SKY which is either about a floating God face that judges your every move or a stalkers theme. I think maybe that guy who killed the girl from MY SISTER SAM listened to it. It may be responsible for the death of DOMINIQUE DUNN. I'm glad that there are some folks who do enjoy these admittedly well-produced ditties. It makes me feel that perhaps there is not really anything inherently evil within them. For me I'll be fine never hearing them or getting that goosebumpy feeling ever again, and if some smart ass plays them at my funeral, I vow to rise up screaming!

Kinderguest Vicar of VHS on The Children

Posted on By unkle lancifer

The plot was some dumb thing about kids being turned into zombie-like killer munchkins by toxic waste, then going around hugging their parents to death in a cloud of flesh-dissolving chemical fog. Much like WHO COULD KILL A CHILD?, in this one the adults had to defend themselves by murdering the kids–by cutting off their hands, or something, I believe. (Don't ask me, I didn't write it.)

Something about this movie just GOT me as a kid–maybe it was the creepy, CARNIVAL OF SOULS makeup on those innocent little faces. Maybe it was the idea of Mommy reaching out for a hug from her beloved daughter and instead of warm fuzzies getting SCREAMING CHEMICAL DEATH! Or maybe it was the emotionally gut-punching notion that in order to survive, the parents had to kill their own children–an idea so distressing to my 9-year-old mind just thinking about it made me cry. Whatever the case, this movie got into my brain and stuck there. Anyway, I loved my parents, and I knew they loved me…so the horrification of that love, even making that love DEADLY, was truly traumatic.

I rewatched it years later and found (as I figured) it wasn't a well-made or well-acted movie–and yet I still had the same visceral emotional reaction to it! So there's still some scar tissue, obviously.

Afterwards, I called my Mom.

  • Thanks V.O.V. The Vicar of VHS can be found holding court over at MAD MAD MAD MAD MOVIES, a great spot with an eclectic mix of cinematic oddities. Visit often!
  • For more on THE CHILDREN check out this KINDERTRAUMA REVIEW!

Book Report :: Miss Hickory

Posted on By unkle lancifer

This book by CAROL SHERWIN BAILEY has haunted me since my youth. I knew there was something about the ending that was disturbing but happily my brain had repressed exactly what that was. One visit to eBay and a couple of days later, I had the answer in my hands. It was time to re visit the nightmare world of MISS HICKORY. First of all the character of Miss Hickory is kind of a jerk. She's a prickly fussbudget, know-it-all twig doll with a nut for a head (A hickory nut natch). She spends her days drinking tea and making preserves in a corncob house that she obsessively cleans as she makes critical judgments of the animals around her. She finds out from the gossipy crow that her human hosts and the child that watches out for her have moved to Boston and abandoned her for the winter. Miss H at first refuses to believe this news. She usually spends the winter indoors on the kitchen windowsill. How will she survive the harsh New Hampshire winter on her own with just a tiny corncob house to guard against the elements? Well she needn't concern herself with the corncob house because in short time, a chipmunk squatter takes over the digs and she's left homeless… (more…)

Humanoids From the Deep

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Once again messing around with Mother Nature spawns slimy results in the ROGER CORMAN produced monster-thon HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP. Here it is mankind's eternal quest for a superior salmon that gets him into hot water with the powers of fate. Meddling with the DNA of these fishes produces the inevitable result of eight-foot tall, long-armed fish-men with one-track minds. Think late night double feature mash-up of CREATURE OF THE BLACK LAGOON and THE ACCUSED. DOUG McCLURE (You know him from such films as THE HOUSE WHERE EVIL DWELLS and SATAN'S TRIANGLE) teams up with "a great little lady scientist" (CARLY SIMON double ANN TURKEL) and scapegoat American Indian (apparently sufficiently non-Caucasian Latino ANTHONY PENA) to thwart the horny hybrids power move for the next step on the evolutionary ladder. Whether our heroes are successful is anybody's guess. I do know that the town of Noyo's annual salmon festival was a complete disaster, with dozens of humanoids crashing through the pier to tear the tops off of every female they encountered and ripping the faces off of any man who stood in their way. Directed by "great little lady" BARBARA PEETERS and considered too dull by producer CORMAN, HUMANOIDS was hijacked and injected with extra scenes of gore and nudity to fit the tastes of 1980 teenage audiences. These outlandish, over-the-top trashy breaks from the story have done much to cement HUMANOIDS into the minds of puberty stricken, cable-watching males over the years. Let's be honest, this is one cult favorite where nobody's clamoring to view the original director's cut. Even without the T&A though, HFTD is an entertaining throwback and fun diversion from the then current slasher craze. It's a goofy spectacle of bad taste and, like the impressive ROB BOTTIN creatures that inhabit it, its cross-pollination lineage may be it's strongest suite.

INDELIBLE SCENE(S):

  • PETA baiting multiple dog disposals
  • Tent attack ventriloquist dummy gets an eyeful and is unusually animated after owner's demise.
  • Baby in danger is saved by drain cleaner
  • Salmon festival attack garnished with same scream over and over in maddeningly endless loop
  • Dilated eyeball ALIEN rip-off baby birth

TRAUMAFESSIONS :: Reader Ian on the Kindertrauma Channel

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Have you checked out the Kindertrauma Channel yet? What are you waiting for an invitation? Well, here it is: We invite you to check out the Kindertrauma Channel. You'll find stuff you'll wish you hadn't like reader Ian here, who was re-traumatized when he stumbled upon the trailer for IT'S ALIVE…

I nearly shat myself with evil old memories when I saw the movie trailers on the KINDERTRAUMA CHANNEL! The worst offender has got to be IT'S ALIVE. LARRY COHEN is in need of serious psychiatric help. I remember the first time I saw that trailer…I was 11 years old, May 1977, on an afternoon after I'd just got home from school. My mother kept going "what the hell is that?" I was so freaked out she had to dose me with NyQuil just to sleep…my school attendance improved markedly because I didn't want to see that trailer! Now, at 42, I still can't bring myself to look at pix from that movie…and I'm bloody dreading when the trailer for the remake hits TV… I thought I was the only one who got warped by these trailers…

Who Can Kill a Child?

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Opening with documentary footage of children suffering in Auschwitz, India, Korea and Vietnam, WHO CAN KILL A CHILD? promises to be a grim experience. Once you get past those initial scenes it is thankfully less savage than one would imagine, and a rather well directed film. Thematically, it's actually a kissing cousin to animal revenge films like THE BIRDS. Here children (who it is pointed out suffer the most in times of war) collectively decide enough is enough and set out to kill all existing adults rather than continue to be doormats and pawns. This Spanish precursor to CHILDREN OF THE CORN begins as a young couple Tom (LEWIS FLANDER) and Evelyn (AMY STEELE clone PRUNELLA RANSOME) decide to take a holiday on a remote island. She is pregnant with his child and although he was originally not too keen on bringing an infant into such a mad world, he has since warmed up to the idea. Upon reaching their destination they find a somewhat deserted seaside town. It's actually only the adults who are M.I.A. as children roam the streets randomly and in packs. Eventually, through the testimonial of an adult survivor, they learn that the children just snapped one night and went on a non-stop killing spree. Their attack was easily successful because, as the bloodied witness points out, "Who could kill a child?" Well, it turns out Tom could, especially when his wife and unborn son are on the chopping block and he's left no other choice. After the survivor is lead away by his daughter to be hacked to death by a kiddie mob, Tom and Evelyn decide to cut the R&R short and head for the mainland, which proves less than easy. The audience is delivered one suspenseful scene after another, until a grisly finale that harks back to NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD occurs. This all may sound exploitive, but it's not. Anyone who feels squeamish about the demise of the underage in this movie need only rewind to the film's news footage introduction to see what real horror is.

INDELIBLE SCENE(S):

  • That creepy kid fishing; what the hell is in his tackle basket?
  • The oldster who gets bludgeoned with his own cane
  • The kid's interpretation of a piñata party
  • Isolated normal kids are recruited by some ambiguous psychic means and stagnantly pose in what must be a salute to HITCHCOCK'S famous birds on a jungle gym scene.
  • Evelyn is attacked from within
  • The po-po come to save the day! (Well…maybe not)

TRAUMAFESSIONS :: Reader Devon on The Pit

Posted on By unkle lancifer

THE PIT used to freak me out when I was a kid. Those trolog things that lived down in a hole in the ground that the kid, Jamie, started talking to and then started feeding people to them. I remember just being scared of the trologs, glowing eyes and all that, kinda hairy Bigfoot type creatures. Also the talking bear with glowing eyes was pretty creepy too. Some funny parts to me as I watch it now are the grandma getting thrown into the pit after Jamie pushes her there in her wheelchair, and just Jamie being a pervert peeking at girls all over the place.

Uncle Lancifer says: Devon, that Jamie kid was an oddball, and THE PIT is one of our favorite "Kids Who Kill" movies. Expect to see more of him in these pages in the future, good pick!

TRAUMAFESSIONS :: Reader P 'orour Ingi on The Yulemen

Posted on By unkle lancifer

The holidays may be over but here is one last creepy seasonal greeting care of a reader in Iceland whose name we are afraid we may have mangled. (It's not our fault our lowly keyboards don't even have those fancy letters and that's the closest we could get! ) Oh well, serves you right "P.I." for being so late with your holiday gift!

Sure, Americans have stuff like SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT and CHRISTMAS EVIL, but old Icelandic folk tales speak of 13 yulemen, not the ho-ho-ing Saint Nick you all know, but mean spirited demons that stole and killed. Their mother, "Gryla" was a cannibalistic ogre that stole naughty kids and put them in her bag. Her humongous cat ate them. These old stories have been fed to us icelandic kids for centuries, and no one has really thought about how seriously fucking disturbed they are and how traumatizing they are! Heres a trailer for a recent horror-short on the subject, "UNHOLY NIGHT"

"P.I" even sent us a video! (Not to mention the above pic). How cool is he? O.K., we promise by next Xmas we'll have spruced up, Icelandic friendly keyboards to accommodate our new pal!

Prophecy

Posted on By unkle lancifer

prophecy
After aiding an infant that has been gnawed on by a rat, Dr. Robert Vern (ROBERT FOXWORTH) decides city life is for the birds. With secretly pregnant musician wife in tow (TALIA SHIRE), he accepts a new job examining bizarre health issues that are appearing in a part of rural Maine that is suspiciously close to a paper mill that likes to dump mercury into the water. Well, rats are one thing but ferocious, mutated animals are another, and whereas oversized salmon may seem like a perk, what the contaminants are doing to the local bear population is cause for major concern. The begrudged Indian camp lead by granite faced Irish-Italian ARMAND ASSANTE believe the monstrous creature that's bitch slapping campers to death is the resurrection of a legend known as Katahdin, a creature who is a combination of all of God's creations. Poor preggers TALIA who chomped on some of the super salmon is suspecting her in utero offspring may be a freakazoid too. After finding an adorable mutant bear cub trapped in a fishing net, the Dr. and company decide to high tail it out of there with the evidence, but mutant momma mercury bear is having none of it and chases them down in a land locked man-against-nature tribute to JAWS. With its earnest ecological pontification and ultra serious tone, PROPHECY is gleefully unaware of its actual identity as a throwback to the 1950s era rubber-suit monster movies. This remarkably PG rated, blood-soaked offering is a tad long-winded for sure, but whenever the momma beastie makes an appearance, it's pure B-movie magic. Lumbering about hopelessly like a slimed BARNEY the dinosaur, this pissed off cousin of GRIMACE, though painfully filmed in ultra darkness to hide it's ineptitude, steals the show every time and is even rumored to be the inspiration for SOUTH PARK's Al GORE nemesis ManBearPig!

INDELIBLE SCENE(S):

  • With apologies to Mr.Vorhees, ManBearPig is responsible for the very best sleeping bag death ever put to film!
  • Ultra-hilarious raccoon attack, this scene deserves legendary status!
  • Giant tadpole resembles GODZILLA foe HEDORA (the smog monster) as a child
  • Cute lil' BabyManBearPig takes a bite out of TALIA's neck
  • Injured guy strapped to overturned vehicle is decapitated
  • Mysterious new creature emerges to cue credits and beg for a sequel that has yet to emerge