kindertrauma

Author: unkle lancifer

The Haunted

Posted on By unkle lancifer


For anyone who has ever stayed up late watching a supernatural reenactment show like A HAUNTING or UNSOLVED MYSTERIES and found themselves with an unshakable sense of the creeps, This 1991 television movie may be just for you. Unavailable on VHS or DVD, it has never the less acquired a following thanks to repeated showings on the SCIFI network over the years. SALLY KIRKLAND plays Pennsylvania house wife Janet Smurl, a woman whose family is overtaken by malevolent spirits. With little by the way of special effects or money-shots, this straightforward slice of alleged reality gets under the skin in a way most of its big-budgeted haunted house brethren could only dream of. Taking place over several years and involving not only the family but their neighbors, church, and the media at large, it presents the ghostly manifestations as something exhaustingly relentless in a way that the old "one lone night in a mansion of strangers" never could. KIRKLAND, with her downplayed narration and histrionic free performance, warrants actual sympathy and it's almost impossible for the viewer not to imagine what they would do under similar circumstances. Whether you believe in things that go bump in the night or wonder if the Smurls were bumped in the head, this tale is real "keep the lights on" material.

INDELIBLE SCENE(S)

  • Dad is raped by face changing succubus
  • Voices in the pillow
  • AMITYVILLE HORROR rejects Ed and Loraine Warren investigate and discover creepy looking pilgrim ghosts
  • The strange amorphous shadow that travels through the duplex wall and upsets poor granny
  • The crazy shape crashes the camping trip while the vacant house goes bananas disrupting the neighborhood with shrieks and groans
  • Hey! It's that amulet toting "Bitch" ASHLEY BANK from MONSTER SQUAD! Someone's cruising for a honorary traumatot award!

TRAUMAFESSIONS :: Reader Jason P. on Invaders From Mars

Posted on By unkle lancifer

One of my earliest memories of a movie creeping me out as a kid would be the 1953 original INVADERS FROM MARS. I caught it on television when I was probably no older than six or seven on what must have been a black and white set because I was recently surprised to find the movie was actually shot in color despite my recollections. So this kid sees a flying saucer land in this spooky field out behind his house in the middle of the night and tries to convince his parents and the authorities of what he saw. Problem is, each time someone investigates they get dragged down beneath this sandpit that the saucer has burrowed beneath.

What's worse is that these victims come back…different. The kid's father, who was sucked into the ground, is cold and even hostile toward his own son. At one point the father even smacks the kid down to the floor when his son spots a strange growth on the back of the dad's neck. Soon the father is taking his wife up to be abducted and reprogrammed and the poor boy doesn't even know his own parents anymore. As a child, the Martians (when we finally see them) were much less scary than the thought of my parents suddenly becoming unfamiliar or mean. To this day I still sometimes double check the back of my parents' necks for any strange protuberances!

BUCK ROGERS Season One Ep. 14 "SPACE VAMPIRE"

Posted on By unkle lancifer


Certainly good old Buck Rogers can be relied upon to deliver a nights entertainment to the kiddies without damaging their fragile minds. Sure the entire cast's skin tight spandex attire verges on the pornographic, but the violence is sure to be nothing more than a couple laser blasts, and there's always the lovable "ambuquad" Twiki to keep things light. On January 3rd 1980, in an episode entitled SPACE VAMPIRE, Buck and company may have slightly overestimated their audience's capacity for horror. Unprotected by the ability to seriously question the ridiculousness of what they were witnessing, many children went to bed if not scared, than certainly bewildered. While taking Twiki in for repairs, Buck (GIL GERARD) and Colonel Wilma Deering (ERIN GRAY) find themselves quarantined on a space station, and in the direct path of a "Vorvon", a vampire-inspired alien that sucks the life from its victims. This Vorvon, being that he has working eyeballs, immediately sets his glowing red sights on many an adolescent boy's wet dream Wilma. The creature's appearance, with it's cabbage head and unibrow, is unsettling enough, but the transformation of Col. Deering from intelligent heroine to whimpering victim to lascivious heathen is the stuff permanent psychological scars are made of. Of course our Buck does save the day by sending the neo nosfuratu hurdling into a star breaking his Svengali hold on our dear Deering, but the damage is done. Wilma is left verbalizing her shame like a slowly sobering crack whore and pre-adolescent boys are left contemplating the now horrifyingly thin line between abject terror and vague arousel.

INDELIBLE SCENE(S)

  • E.T's mom's main squeeze CHRISTOPHER STONE's awesome ‘stache
  • The Vorvon cruises the space station's disco singles bar and only Wilma can see him
  • Vorvy appears as glowing red orb to enter Wilma's quarters and drains her with his long fingers
  • ERIN GRAY goes totally nuts draining folks, coming on to Buck, talking like a tranny and planning world domination! "I like the taste of fear best of all!"

Food Of The Gods

Posted on By unkle lancifer


Ozone depletion and the melting of polar ice-caps seem like a small environmental price to pay when considering H.G. WELLS' notion of mother nature's ultimate revenge. If the idea of a giant chicken pecking you to death isn't enough to get you to separate your glass from your plastics nothing will. Hayseed farmers Ma and Pa Skinner (JOHN McLIAM and actress/director pioneer IDA LUPINA) stumble across some Texas tea that bubbles from their property. Resembling pancake batter, the gruel has the unique ability to transform animals and insects to abnormal size. The INCONVENIENT TRUTH though, is that once super-sized the denizens of this farm develop an ornery attitude that leaves several unfortunates very dead. MARJOE "Are you washed in the blood of the lamb?" GORTNER and PAMELA FRANKLIN (lil' Flora from THE INNOCENTS!) must battle these abominations, not to mention many an unconvincing miniature and split screen effect in order to stay alive. Besides the faulty fowl previously mentioned, wasps, worms and a plethora of rats must also be reckoned with. This PG-rated late night favorite delivers more laughs than chills, so call some friends and watch this baby with plenty of beer. Just remember to recycle the cans.

INDELIBLE SCENE(S):

  • Giant rooster attack is one for the ages
  • The nearly transparent pre-CGI wasps
  • Ida's arm being chomped by giant worms is one effect that still effectively turns the stomach
  • Extensive scenes that can only be described as actual rat snuff
  • The ominous carton of milk at film's end

Kinderguest Jacob Lambert of PhillyTurkey.com

Posted on By unkle lancifer

It was a childhood visit to my cousin's house in Blacksburg, VA that scarred me for life. My visits to Dwight's were usually spent playing R.C. Pro-Am, or pool, or baseball, if the weather was nice. But for some reason, that afternoon we wound up in sitting in front of PET SEMATARY—a horror-movie experience that I'm not quite sure I've ever recovered from.

I had actually read the book, so I knew that the whole thing would end badly—but the novel hadn't prepared me for the movie's scene in which the mother finds her crippled sister in a filthy upstairs bedroom. As she looks in, the woman rises from her soiled bed and hobbles insanely around the room, screaming, "Rachel! You'll never walk again! NEVER WALK AGAIN!" As an eleven-year-old, I could handle mean cats and even scalpel-wielding zombie toddlers—but this scene was unmanageable. It was so viscerally disturbing that I had to avert my eyes, but by then, the damage had been done. And besides, I couldn't block out her cackling shrieks.

When I went back to my grandparents' house that night, I was, as clichéd as it sounds, afraid of the dark. I flipped the light off and jumped into bed, afraid not of little Gage slicing my ankle from beneath, but of a demented, abandoned woman with protruding vertebrae. Even today, if I'm stumbling around in the dark and I think of that scene, I break into a minor panic.

I don't know why we didn't play baseball that day.

Editor's note: After an extensive background check, we here at kindertrauma could find no real evidence that Jacob Lambert and PET SEMATARY director Mary Lambert are in any way related. What we did discover though, was Jacob's hilarious satirical news site THE PHILADELPHIA TURKEY.

Kinderguest Andy of Hollywoodsaloon.com

Posted on By unkle lancifer

I remembered this made for TV Movie called SSSSSssssss. It was about a guy who slowly turns into a snake. The visuals of the character in between the metamorphosis scared the hell out of me as a kid. I was terrified by it.

Thanks Andy! All film fans (especially HALLOWEEN fans) should run over to THE HOLLYWOOD SALOON A.S.A.P. and wet their whistles on their incredible podcasts! Check'em out HERE

Official Traumatot: Drew Barrymore

Posted on By unkle lancifer


She established herself as a superior screamer in STEPHEN SPIELBERG's love letter to space aliens E.T. She saddled up next to scaremeister extraodinaire STEPHEN KING for FIRESTARTER and CAT'S EYE. And as a young adult in WES CRAVEN's SCREAM she pulled an audience crushing early departure that would make JANET LEIGH shower her with praise. If Drew's not TRAUMATOT material… nobody is!

TRAUMAFESSIONS :: Reader Houston on Jason Goes To Hell

Posted on By unkle lancifer

The scene with the melting policeman character (whose body Jason had been occupying for a while) scared the living shit out of me. This poor guy looked like he was in extreme anguish. Absolutely terrifying.—-To top it all off I was about 6 when I saw it!

Cat's Eye

Posted on By unkle lancifer


KAREN BLACK, watch your back! You think you own the corner on horror anthologies? Well, lil' DREW BARRYMORE has got some wigs up her sleeve too. She makes playing four separate characters look like child's play in this whisker-licking STEPHEN KING penned comedy-horror hybrid. Her first appearance? A magic mannequin that sets a wayward feline on a vision-quest. Ever played a mannequin before Karen? Didn't think so. Next up, Drew is JAMES WOOD's mentally handicapped child in the black comedy showcase "Quitters Inc." Here the unstoppable Drew sports oversized glasses, talks slower than normal, and is threatened with electrocution if her dad doesn't nix the nicotine.(Don't people usually get nominated for OSCARS when they go GUMP? I guess not when all of Hollywood is jealous of how cool you are, like in Drew's case!) This story is also laced with more danger for our cat pal who must escape being used as a guinea pig! In story two our little Drew is spotted in a cat food commercial wearing an ANNIE fro. Go Drew GO! It's called "The Ledge" and the cat's in it too, along with the meanest pigeon you've ever seen. He pecks ROBERT HAYS' foot while they're both a jillion stories high trying to escape a cuckoo cuckold from Jersey. Finally our Puss find's his way to the final story which is always the best one. This segment is named "General" and now so is our cat friend. He must protect America's darling from a harlequin-hooded troll that wants to steal her precious breath! General's major obstacle is Drew's bitch of a mom who won't listen to reason and thinks she's the center of the universe. This character was obviously based on real-life spaz JADE BARRYMORE. Anyway the dumbbell mom tries to put the cat to sleep but fails miserably and before you can say "euthanasia" General returns to save the day! And when I say "save the day" I mean participate in the rockingest throw down that has ever graced theater screens EVER! Now Drew and her Cat can live happily ever after and look forward to a future without wigs! 

INDELIBLE SCENE(S):

  • This cat is so awesome that he foils both CUJO and killer car CHRISTINE both on the same day! If anyone knows how he configures into the DARKTOWER series please email me!
  • ALAN KING rules as the head of "Quitters Inc."
  • Suicide is not an option in a universe that is home to a film that features a cat putting a troll on a record player and then playing it faster with his paw at DREW BARRYMORE's command! This scene could put Bellevue out of business for good!

TRAUMAFESSIONS :: Reader Matt N. on Watership Down

Posted on By unkle lancifer

(WATERSHIP DOWN) was shown to our 3rd grade class on a rainy day. It ruined my life.

Editor's note: I would like to officially announce my first ever Traumafication-by-proxy which took place while hunting down an image for this post. WATERSHIP DOWN is a veritable nightmare that has now ruined my life as well. Thanks, Matt!

P.S. Matt: Whatever you do, do not click HERE