Category: Name That Trauma!

I stumbled upon your website the other night and legit read it for hours! I was a "surprise" baby for my 40-something year old parents in 1981 and my sister was 15 when I was born. I grew up on VHS horror movies and my house was officially the little girl's house the other kids were traumatized by. But anyways, for some reason this little movie I cannot remember frightened me more than Freddy and Michael Myers (probably because both of my parents were teachers and my house was overflowing with books). It was about a girl who was locked in a library overnight, could not escape and all sorts of weirdo sh*t happened to her. For some reason I wanna say it was JENNIFER CONNELLY but I may be wrong. I am guessing like 1985 or 86? It may have been a T.V. movie.

Thanks,
Erin

UNK SEZ: Hmmm. Maybe I'm taking your mention of CONNELLY too much to heart but could you possibly be looking for CREEPERS AKA PHENOMENA (1985)? I suppose the boarding school it takes place in could be mistaken for a library. My other guess might be THE OUTING (1987) in which a girl and her friends stay over night in a museum. Or how about I, MADMAN? There are a lot of books in that one! …FROM THE MIXED UP FILES OF MRS. BASIL E. FRANKWEILER? Now I'm grasping at straws. Does anybody out there think this trapped in a library scenario sounds familiar? Let us know in the comments! Help!

AUNT JOHN SEZ: Sounds to me like you might have checked out THE INCREDIBLE BOOK ESCAPE (1981) starring a pig-tailed QUINN CUMMINGS. It was part of the anthology series CBS LIBRARY.

When I was 8, I remember a PBS short that scared the heck out of me.

There was a girl laying in bed, and she spots various animals made out of the cracks in her walls. She imagines them coming to life. They meet a big, evil crack monster! But he crumbles to the floor. Was that Sesame Street? Electric Company? 3-2-1 Contact? ZOOM even?

This was more of my cousin's trauma then mine, but…

In the early 2000's (this wasn't very long ago), me and my cousin would watch a show about a pink dog. In one of the episodes, he goes to NYC, and there's this HUGE cockroach that scared the shit outta my cousin. What channel did this show air on? What was the show called? What was the episode's name? What was the cockroach's name? (Yes, he had a name) And…what was the dog's name? PLZ HELP!

Ok, I'm not sure what this is and I think it might have been a straight to vhs release, but it was about a family of rabbits who live in these tunnels. The tunnel walls were covered in portraits of their rabbit ancestors. I remember that the big brother rabbit told his younger sibling to stop sucking on their ears because they might fall off. (I remember this part scaring me the most because I had a thumb sucking problem) I'm pretty sure their parents were not home because they were gardening and I think that maybe the rabbit children snuck away and were chased around by foxes? For some reason I remember a line that was close to the end:"father rabbit was so tired that he fell asleep with his boots on." Anyone know what this is?

I just came across your fantastic site and think that you could help me! There are 2 movies I've been trying to figure out forever.

The first one is from the 70's or early 80's and I remember seeing a toy attack a woman. It might have been wooden and might have had a yellow pointed hat. I remember someone (the woman or maybe a man) chopping it up with an ax and then it came back together again. It might have been put into a bag at some point. I've researched tons of movies and haven't found it. It is not Trilogy of Terror, it may have been Asylum but still didn't seem right. This movie started my aversion to living toys. Any help would be great!

I also remember a movie or horror anthlogy show where a boy was crouched in the corner of a house while his creepy grandmother or someone called to him from the bedroom. I watched the trailer for Grandmother's House and I don't think this is it.

Thank you!

UNK SEZ: Ack! Not knowing the answer to a killer toy NTT drives me crazy! The only movie I can think of is PINOCCHIO's REVENGE! Pinocchio is wooden and he has a pointy hat- although it's blue rather than yellow. The bigger problem is that it's from 1996 which doesn't fit your timeline at all! Oh well, I need some kind of of image on this post, so up there he goes! Does anyone have a better guess out there? And what about that creepy grandma? Help us out! In the meantime, let's watch the trailer for PINOCCHIO'S REVENGE simply because it's awesome…

Hello Kindertrauma,

I recently re-discovered your website the other day while messing around on Google, and while I am not a horror fan I must say that the stories and blogs you all post are quite fascinating. In fact it got me thinking of a childhood trauma that I still, to this day, can't seem to find or remember. Perhaps you could post this as a Name that Trauma feature.

I was watching tv with my family (it must have been in the early to mid-1980's) and the program broke away for some commercials. One commercial started out as a blank black screen, and, slowly, a skull emerged from the darkness. Once the skull was visible, a spider crawled out of its mouth. Then, a pair of eyes opened in the skull's sockets-EEEEEKKKKK!!!!! This last part reduced me to a sobbing, shaking ball in my mom's lap, and I don't rememer anything after that (except that I was forever terrified of disembodied eyes). Was it a movie? TV show? Promotion for some Halloween event? If any of your staff/forum members have any idea please post it. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Christine C. in Albuquerque, NM

P.S. Some other traumatizing (but not nearly as destructive) moments from my youth include Lou Ferrigno as The Incredible Hulk, the Tyranosaurus Rex puppet from The Land of The Lost, and the evil laugh at the end of Michael Jackson's hit song "Thriller".

UNK SEZ: I think I've got this one Christine! It sounds like what you caught was a TV spot for HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH! The ad begins with a black screen (and some horrifying kiddie laughter) and then a witch's face appears (which could easily be mistaken for a skull). The face looms closer to reveal a spider crawling out of its mouth and we then close on two very disturbing eyes! I remember catching this on TV myself and I agree it's a doozy! It's one of those superior ads that lets your imagination run wild by not showing any scenes from the movie at all!

Hello again! I have been trying to think of the name of this film for quite some time (years), but I just never can. It was a late 80's or early 90's horror film involving a group of teenagers getting lost in an evil dojo or something similar. Maybe there was a part involving an asian restaurant. My longing to find out which movie this is was sparked today by seeing something referring to DAIMAJIN. Even though those movies were from the 60's, there is a particular scene in the film I am trying to remember that involves a statue that is slightly larger than a normal person that resembles a Daimajin (except it is not gigantic) coming to life and grabbing a member of the group as they are walking around the creepy dojo (or whatever it is) and pulling them off into the shadows. That is all I really remember, but the movie totally scared me when I was younger! I was wondering if you or anyone else can help me find this film or experienced the film when they were younger. Thanks so much!

Hi Kindertrauma!

I'm looking for something that would have been on TV sometime between 1990 and probably 1998, although I'm not sure if it was originally a theatrical release or (more likely) a made-for-TV feature (I do know that it was a longer format than the 30-minute Are You Afraid of the Dark? series, for instance)… Anyhow, a girl moves into an old house or hotel with family members and gets to know a boy who hangs around. He seems to always be eating strawberry ice cream in a fancy-pants sort of dish with a long spoon. One of the big reveals is near the end of the film, when the boy turns out to have died there many decades before. He was a rich little brat who lived alone in a hotel room, and one day he fell down the elevator shaft and dashed his brains out at the bottom. As I recall, it turns out it was always vanilla ice cream, but when they found him his brains and blood had mixed with the ice cream to make it all pink and lumpy. Et voila: strawberry ice cream, which I've never been able to eat since.

I get the impression there were other ghosts that had seemed like guests, but the boy always stuck out because of that corny but effective ice cream gimmick. I've looked at Disney's Tower of Terror (1997), and while it looks like a similar premise I really can't find a rich boy with brain-flavored ice cream in the skimming I've done so far. Any ideas?

Best,

Allison B.

Here's hoping you can assist me with a Kindertrauma by proxy –

A friend of mine tells me of a movie she saw when she was younger, which would place it around mid-80s or perhaps a little later.

Details are vague, but here's what she knows:

There's a girl who keeps having visions of a demon surrounded by fire. She goes somewhere – an island? a cave? – because it's her "destiny" to confront this demon.

My friend thinks that the title is one of those totally generic 80s one-word horror movie names like DESTRUCTIONATOR or KILLMONSTRINATOR or DEVILATOR or something to that effect.

Hope you all can help!

Hi!

Love your site!

My friend has a traumafession and I told her you could help her out. The details are spotty but here it goes…

Late '90s, early 2000s movie that her parents had rented….there was a little girl locked in a closet, a kidnapping situation. And then spiders got involved!

This is probably a tough one.

Thanks for everything, whether we can solve this or not.

UNK SEZ: This a tough one and I have a wild, wild guess. Could it be possible that the spider mentioned was not in the closet but in the film's title? I'm imagining a kid watching ALONG CAME A SPIDER (2001) which involves a kidnapped girl, who at some point, I believe, is kept in a closet and thinking that at any moment surely a spider was going to make an appearance. I know it's a reach but you never know. Of course, there is probably a movie out there with a little girl in a closet with an actual spider in it too! Do any of our fine readers know of such a movie? Please come into our parlor and let us know!

I recently heard about your site through one of Geeknation's podcasts and was hoping to submit, for your approval, a "Name That Trauma."

The trauma– that I can't get out of my head after 20 something years– is a film where a group of people are held up in a junkyard (?), where the survivors are trying to figure out who is human and who is a killer robot, I think. Anyway, my trauma is a scene in the film where each survivor cuts their finger to prove their humanity. One of the survivors cuts his thumb too deep and it gets infected. That scene traumatized me just because the dirty and sweaty feel of it all. If you can help me find out the name of the film I will be eternally grateful. Kindertrauma, you're my only hope.

UNK SEZ: I sadly do NOT know the correct answer for this one! I was hoping it might be MUTANT HUNT (1987) if only to justify my posting a video from MUTANT HUNT. Oh well, we can still watch a scene from MUTANT HUNT as we try to identify the correct answer can't we? Yes, we can! MUTANT HUNT used to be on Netflix Streaming but then it ran away! Come back, little Sheba!