Category: Name That Trauma!

It's an early 80's film (between 1981-1984). The film is essentially a one man show. I think it was originally in 3D. It's a low budget sci-fi flick. The protagonist is a thief of sorts. He's trying to steal a gem or gems from a church that has large number of booby traps. The entire movie is him navigating a series of traps to reach the alter where the jewel[s] are. I think he ultimately gets killed in the end. I've been searching for the title to this flick for a long time.

UNK SEZ: Hey, Rob! Not every piece of the puzzle fits perfectly but so much of what you described sounds like THE TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS from 1983. I wrote a review about the movie way back HERE, you can watch a trailer HERE and check out the incredible head-spinning scene below! Let us know if we caught the appropriate culprit!

This has been driving me nuts. It's been practically forever, and I still cannot find what movie this scene was from. It's the only scene I remember from the movie. I don't remember being scared to the point of crying or running to one of my parents, but it did deeply disturb me. It's one of those things that gives you a weird, uncomfortable feeling in your chest, you know?

I was born in '94 and saw this as a little kid. I want to say that I saw it on TV. With that in mind, I know that the movie can't be any more recent than the 90s. In the scene, a building is burning. Outside the building a woman is running around screaming as she burns alive. A kid is watching this all unfold from a car, very nonchalantly and uncaring, too. If I remember correctly, an adult, a woman I think, joins the kid in the car. I think this scene took place at the very end of the movie.

Can anybody tell me what movie this is? Thanks!

Hello All, it's been entirely too long! Follower for – I can barely believe it – SEVEN years now, and I still wear my fantabulous white-with-green-trim Kindertrauma clown t-shirt proudly.

Three quick hits for you today, that have surfaced to haunt me here and there over the years:

1) Episode of what I've always thought was Macgyver, but now I'm doubting that, where I think there is an ongoing search for a missing girl, and there's a painting of the girl and/or multiple photos of the girl that have the face cut out, and the perpetrator has all the missing faces or something.

2) Episode of, I think, the reboot of Outer Limits where there's a TV that's off but a set of female eyes and possibly lips that materialize in the dead TV screen.

Hmm… interesting that both of those have a female face or face-parts theme…

And now to completely veer away from that theme…

3) Gangster movie I saw my granddad watching one afternoon in the late eighties or early nineties (he'd sometimes watch a lot of Chuck Bronson and other vintage violent action stuff without enough regard for a little girl hanging around) and I think a drug boss or something was mad at his lackey and forced him to eat like a whole bag of cocaine (more gritty realistic suffering than horror, but still chilled tiny me).

Thanks! I love y'all!!

OnlyChild1213

HI!

I'm told you may be able to help me…

Do you know the name of this movie? I think it's a one-word title beginning with "D". 50's, 60's or 70's b/w. About radioactive waste off the coast somewhere in the British Isles. Possibly sunken in barrels. The people in the village get overgrown brows, and their fingers possibly begin to fuse. Babies born with defects. Some outside agency tries to convince them it's radiation but they're too superstitious to believe it? I think? I saw this at age eleven and it's haunted me since. It's not "The Giant Behemoth". Does it sound familiar at all? I developed a habit of brushing my fingers across my brow, just to check that it hadn't "grown over". Thirty-six years later, and I still do this.

THANK YOU

UNK SEZ: Hey, I think I know this one! We had it at the video store I worked at and it happened to have a very unusual VHS box with its poster art image going sideways. I do believe you are looking for DOOMWATCH (1972). Check out its wikipedia page HERE and the trailer below and let us know if we got it right. Thanks for writing in (and the great description), DX!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hi at Kindertrauma-

I watched these movies when I was little but turned off the TV and walked away immediately after these scenes. I watched these on basic cable in the early 90s…

-two teenagers making out in the hospital and their tongues become attached

-possessed girl gets needle from under bed and pushes in little brothers belly button while sleeping

-haunted painting of graveyard changes as the story unfolds old man comes out of grave and later on is buried again? Paintings are on a wall along a staircase. Might be from the 50s… or 70s…?

Thank you! : )

Maggie

UNK SEZ: Thanks for writing in, Maggie! I may be able to help you with that last one! A haunted painting of a a graveyard that changes sounds a lot like the pilot episode of NIGHT GALLERY entitled "Cemetery" starring RODDY McDOWALL. You can read a classic traumafession of that very episode HERE and watch the episode itself right around HERE. As for your other two NTT's, I'm hoping one of our knowledgeable readers can help!

Hello!

Some time back (HERE) I asked for help remembering the name of a creepy live action movie where a St. Bernard dreams of being chased by a man dressed as a terrifying skiing cat. Turns out it was called Fantasy on Skis, a 1962 film that later showed up on Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color TV show. After a little research, I think I saw it in the theaters in 1975, when they rereleased Snow White. It served as a short subject before the main film. Watching the rest of the film provides PLENTY of other nightmare fuel…on skis! A scarecrow chases a pair of crows, cowboys (skiers wearing horse costumes around their waists) have a gunfight, Captain Hook chases Peter Pan…it's amazing. The cat part though IS especially terrifying, and starts at about the 24:50 mark (HERE).

Thanks to Dan S.—who had similar childhood memories of the film and managed to find the above link—for tipping me off!

Hi there,

Terrific site. I was wondering if you could help me with a half-remembered TV-based trauma from my childhood.

My brain's telling me it was a scene from an American TV series, like Columbo, although it could have been a made for TV movie, and it would have been shown during the day on UK TV around the end of the 1970s (possibly beginning of the 1980s)

I remember a woman at home, alone, trying to track down the source of the sound of a baby crying. She kept looking around the house trying to trace where the noise was coming from and eventually narrowed it down to the cupboard under the stairs. She slowly opens the cupboard door and inside finds a Victorian doll, slumped motionless on a chair. Cut to the next scene and cue me running from the room, unable to tell my mum what I'd seen.

My brain's probably filling in the blanks, but it may have involved a tape recorder/dictaphone next to the doll which was producing the crying sound (maybe to send the woman mad/chase her from the house.)

It wasn't Spielberg's 'Something Evil' (which also features a following-the-sound-of-a-crying-baby moment) as this wouldn't have been shown during the day.

I'd be grateful for anyone's help on laying this to rest and can only apologise that there isn't much to go on.

Thanks in advance

UNK SEZ: Thanks, Alex! I have a vague suspicion that what you may be looking for is 1978's NIGHT CRIES? It's a made for TV movie that is all about a mother (SUSAN SAINT JAMES) whose baby died in childbirth and is haunted nightly by the sound an infant crying. It fits the time period and it also stars WILLIAM CONRAD (CANNON) which might explain the "Colombo" vibe. NIGHT CRIES is available on YouTube (first part below) so you can check it out to verify. On the other hand, I may very well be wrong so if anybody has any other guesses or suggestions feel free to share your ideas!

I'm about 23 now and I have a VERY vague memory of something I saw that scared the crap out of me when I was 7 or 8 years old. I don't know where it was, I want to say Sesame Street since I watched it so often, but I also watched Cartoon Network back then and it might have been from there.

It was this red (possibly orange) demonic looking thing animated in CGI. It may have appeared on a screen or monitor. It had these creepy yellow eyes and I recall a mouth that looked like a vent… I remember it had a deep evil voice, and that at one point it said "Who am I?" and laughed evilly. That's the ONLY thing I remember about it.

I saw it for a short time and every time it appeared I'd run out of the room. If this was SS, I think they took it off because it was scary. This thing gave me nightmares and I wanna know what it was!

Here are ten images from ten movies directed by the ever prolific David DeCoteau! How many can you identify?

One fine Saturday morning back in the early '80s I jumped out of bed, bolted for the living room and promptly switched on the TV, thinking I would get in a couple of cartoons before everyone else woke up – the usual weekend routine. This morning, however, I was met with a jolt.

The (color) image that faced me showed a man, then cut to a woman, both looking somewhat surprised. I cannot recall who the actor and actress were, but they were middle-aged and the setting looked to be a nicely-appointed house sometime in the '30s or '40s. There was a knock on the door, and one of the individuals turned and answered it.

Standing on the threshold was a ghost, but, instead of seeing a semi-transparent actor, the phantom looked like it was made of blue glass and had very vague features (there were no eyes, for instance). And man did it freak me out. I jumped up, ran to my parents' bedroom and began yelling about what I had seen.

I can't recall a good deal about the details, other than that the movie seemed to have been made several decades before. It was also probably playing on our old local South Florida channel, WCIX 6. Was anyone else startled by this scene?

-Jackball74