Category: Name That Trauma!

Greetings fellow Traumatized Tots!

I'm going to start this off in pretty much the same way others have, by gushing over this amazing, informative, and truly entertaining site. It really helps to know that I'm not the only one who suffered through childhood (misery loves company and all that jazz).

While browsing through the numerous Name That Traumas I was reminded of a particularly nasty memory of what I'm pretty sure was some kind of freaky short film on T.V. It was the 80's. Of this I am positive. The plot involved a guy who intended on creating a girlfriend for himself with some kind of weird chemical (I think it was pink colored, but that's not important).

Anyway, he was flipping through some swimsuit magazines and picked a girl he liked and then dropped the weird goo on the girl's image. Poof! She comes to life!

Only there was one problem… her lower half was still stuck in the magazine.

I could actually feel the color drain from my face as this creepy half-girl started reaching for the guy and begging him to kiss her. Then she melted or something. The guy made a second attempt and poured the girlfriend formula over another sexy chick and poof! Another horrible disaster.

This second girlfriend was GIGANTIC and took up the entire room! Once again she begged him to kiss her and in my little child brain I just knew that if he tried she would suck him into her jumbo lips like a piece of gum and start chewing. Then she melted too. Thank God!

But this guy clearly didn't learn his lesson and tries a third time. Poof! Experimental Girlfriend #3 arrives. She was beautiful with a perfect body and long, luscious hair. I wanted to look like her when I grew up… until she moved the hair out of face… which looked like chewed up roadkill. I was rooted to the chair with terror!

This reject from a TALES FROM THE CRYPT comic didn't beg to be kissed like the others but demanded it and even started choking the poor guy! But mercifully she melts away, too. I just knew that this would be his last attempt to make a girlfriend.

I was wrong.

A fourth attempt was made. This one… turned out just fine. The only problem was she kissed a different guy and left the building with him instead of the poor mad (stupid) scientist. Oh well. At least he didn't get eaten. What happened toward the end is kinda fuzzy but I seem to remember the girl-making goo falling on a picture of some weird… cartoon vegetable creature… I have no idea. By that time I started to wander off to check under the beds for giants, mutilated half-torsos, and hideous faced monsters that would kill you if you didn't kiss their slimy, dripping lips.

Please help me find this weird little T.V. nightmare so that I can finally face my demons!

— The Youngest Hewitt

Hello again!

Thanks for naming my most mysterious past traumas! I've tossed a couple of tough ones your way and you never fail to name them. Before I get started on my newest one, did anyone ever manage to find the scary cymbals-monkey PSA? I've been looking for that thing since I read about it on your blog and thus far have come up dry.

This trauma has to do with a Disney film from the late '70s, whose title sadly continues to elude me. It wasn't an animated feature and the trailers featured a little girl with long dark hair and at some point there was a small (possibly man-made) waterfall. I think there may be a well in the film but can't swear to it because the ad creeped me out so utterly that I never stayed in the room past the first few seconds.

Seems to me the girl's hair was also in her face alot, kind of like Sadako/Samara in RINGU/THE RING. I think there was also a large flower somewhere in there but can't swear to it, one of those huge pink things that's used as a wrist corsage. The part of the trailer I saw had the girl standing in what may have been a garden. I remember telling my mom that Disney was making scary movies, which at the time I was pretty unhappy about. Now just about any horror rocks my stripey socks unless it's done by UWE BOLL.

Does any of this sound familiar? I'd love to know what this is so I can revisit it.

Thanks in advance,

— Shannon

UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Special thanks to Pinchy for naming it with CHILD OF GLASS.

This unknown film left me weak with horror and unable to look at the chimpanzee issue from my Zoobooks subscription for years!!! I had to have been in grade school, so this movie would have been around during the late ‘70s to mid ‘80s. Here's the story:

I was waiting in the entryway of my friend's house while she was getting ready to come and play outside. Her two older brothers (teenagers) were watching a movie in the living room and I could see it from where I was waiting. It was about some crazy lady and her sister who watched after her. They had a grown chimp they kept as a pet.

At one point the crazy lady locks herself in the cage with the chimp and proceeds to beat it to a bloody death with a long chain. The chimp is trying to helplessly defend itself and doesn't attack the nutjob. The whole time the other sister is locked outside the chimp's cage screaming and crying for her sister to stop.

I remember being so disturbed I ran out of there and went straight home. It depressed and horrified me for weeks! I have had no luck in finding out the name or details of this movie, Google and YouTube have no answers, so maybe you can track this film down.

I really want to know if the crazy lady ever got her comeuppance!

Thanks!

— Shannon H.

UNK SEZ: Shannon, you have sent in my favorite type of NTT because I think know the answer and the movie in question is so unusual that I almost have to be right. You my friend, must be speaking of 1978's THE MAFU CAGE (aka DEVIATION & DON'T RING THE DOORBELL) which stars CAROL KANE (WHEN A STRANGER CALLS) as one sister, LEE GRANT (DAMIEN OMEN II) as the other and BUDAR the ape as Mafu! Once upon a time this oddity was difficult to track down but these days it's available on DVD and you can even rent it to watch on your computer via Amazon HERE! In the meantime let us all take a moment to enjoy CAROL KANE boogying down with the priest from AMITYVILLE 2!

Hello,

Your site is my newest daily addiction; I can't tell you how many repressed memories have been unearthed by reading the recollections of other readers…great work! Anyway, my personal trauma is a bit obscure, as it doesn't come from a movie, TV show, or book, but hopefully somebody can help.

When I was in my teens, somewhere around 1989-1990, I saw some sort of "underground" art magazine at a friend's house. In the magazine, there was a profile of a female artist whose name I can't remember, but her work was the stuff of pure nightmares, and has stayed with me ever since. The pictures were black & white illustrations (though that may have just been due to the B&W format of the magazine) of nursery rhymes and other images done in a horrific, yet realistic style. The one that sticks in my mind the most was a piece called "Rock a Bye Baby", that depicted a baby's crib perched high up in a treetop. It was a top-down, close-up view that showed the terrified child stuck in a tree screaming at the top of his lungs, just like the nursery rhyme says.

Another piece was a picture of a normal, everyday suburban kitchen. Everything looked perfectly normal, but if you looked really close, there was a small pool of blood oozing eerily onto the floor just at the edge of the frame; it was a brilliant picture that took a mundane setting and injected a horrifying yet subtle hint of the macabre.

The only other one I remember in any detail was a piece depicting a topless pregnant woman cradling her baby bump, but the baby bump had a face, as if she was carrying a Siamese mutant to term.

I believe there were a few other nursery rhyme-themed ones, but I can't remember what they were. In any case, I have been looking for these images online, or at least the artist's name FOREVER, and have come up with nothing. If this rings a bell with anyone, I would be eternally grateful for any leads.

Thanks & keep up the great work!

— MD2112

UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Special thanks to reader zombiefreak for positively identifying Laurie Lipton as the artist in question!

Hello there,

I am trying to find a classic horror movie which I watched with my family when I was little (about 20 years ago) which the movie at the time may not be a new release. Can you see if you can help me find out what it is based on the short description below? Here is what I remember …

This movie talks about an old house which is rented to a family, and there have been many strange things happened after they moved in including people/visitors to the house being killed. Every time there are people killed around this house, the house gets more beautiful and more colorful. The family somehow sensed there must be wrong with the house and found out the landlord (husband and wife) were dead and were buried in the back of the house, they tried to escape. At the end, the house would not let them escape and killed all family members (don't remember how many, could be 3 or 4 people in this family).

After they are all killed, the house again became more beautiful and colorful and the family pictures end up being placed onto the fireplace in the house and join the pictures of the original house owner (the landlord).

This is about all I remember, and please see what you can do to help as this is a movie that all of my family members remember the old days and for me it's quite important for us talk about when we reunion coming up.

Thanks in advance!!!

— Ian

AUNT JOHN SEZ: Ian, based on your recollection, I am going to say that you are remembering the 1976 classic BURNT OFFERINGS. A family is hired to look after a creepy house, which eventually does them in, and their photos end up on the wall after the house undergoes an extreme supernatural makeover. Many other fine folks have been traumatized by this all-star chestnut, especially by the scene with the creepy chauffeur.

PS: Last but not least, a tip of the Name That Trauma hat to Nate Yapp of Classic-Horror for sending you our way.

I'm looking for something I saw a long time ago on T.V. It was quite late at night and my brother had his friends round, I was pretty young then but I couldn't tell you how young, my memory's not that great.

It's possible I dreamed this but I have no idea and it's bugged me for years so, here goes:

I can remember a giant white rabbit with red eyes guarding a cave or something. I think there were some people who tried to attack it.

I can also remember three or more mens faces in the sky, during the day time…

They may be from different movies or programmes but that's all I can remember. Sounds silly but they really terrified me as a child and I've tried so hard to find out where these memories are from. Hope someone can help!

Thanks,

— Mason

UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Unk gets it with MONTY PYTHON & THE HOLY GRAIL!

I have vague memories of two T.V. shows that have eluded me despite intense Googling over the past few years.

The first was from the early or mid '70s and was probably shown on The CBS Children's Film Festival, though I can't find anything like it on their episode list. The reason I remember it so well is because I only caught the tail end and have always wondered what the full story was.

From what I gathered, it was about a bunch of kids having an adventure in a fantasy kingdom, and one of the kids ends up in a situation where he had to jump to his death off a tower, as part of some ritual. There was a very creepy scene of this kid being forced up the stairs by two guards carrying spears. In the end his friends save the day by throwing a dummy off the tower instead.

The other one was from the late '70s or early '80s. My parents were watching an opera on PBS one night, and for some reason I decided to watch it with them. It was a modern opera, in English, about a woman who was progressively going insane. Her husband was missing or presumed dead or maybe he just left, but the upshot is he wasn't there. The woman was battling some kind of awful bureaucracy that had her constantly filling out forms.

In one disturbing scene, she says (sings) "I ask you for help, and all you give me is…PAPER!" Then she goes on a rampage, screaming and throwing paper around.

The conclusion was even more horrifying: The woman has finally had enough, so she sticks her head in a gas oven. She starts to hallucinate, and in her hallucinations she's STILL doing paperwork. The whole time the phone is ringing, and somehow you know the call is to tell her that her husband is alive, or coming back. And then she dies.

It was deeply disturbing, but I didn't say anything to my parents because I didn't want them to know that the opera had gotten to me. But the memory lingered for years, until I finally decided I needed to see it again. I asked my parents about it, and of course they didn't know what I was talking about. So I'm on my own. Hope someone out there can help!

— Jody Susskind

Gods of the Game

UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMAS SOLVED! Special thanks to kinderpals BigWig for getting the first one with THE BANANA SPLITS' "New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" episode entitled "Son of the Sun" and FatherOfTears for knowing that the second opera in question is THE CONSUL.

Hello Unkle Lancifer and Aunt John,

The movie I would like to find was one I watched on late night Cinemax or HBO sometime between '85 and '91. It was an "inmates take over the asylum" movie, but it was definitely not DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT. It looked to have been made in the '80s. I think the only sane person was a nurse, and she didn't find out until the very end that everyone else who "worked" there was insane. Pretty sure she ended up committed. I think it may have been British, but I'm not sure. It seems like the asylum was in a big Greek revival mansion.

Any help would be appreciated. The movie will probably turn out to be bad if I do find it, but I like bad movies.

Thanks,

— Wednesday's Child

Deep Red Rum (aka In It For The Kills: Horror Perspectives)

All I remember is a scene were a group of astronauts are walking through a room in an alien spaceship. Suddenly one of the astronauts falls onto the floor and enveloped by it, almost as if he were eaten.

Do you know the name of this movie?

Does it even sound remotely familiar?

Please let me know!

Thank you!

— Bridget C.

UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA PROBABLY SOLVED!?! Reader Chris offered up HABITAT as the answer, and Bridget emailed to say:

"That could be the movie I was looking for, but I'm not sure that's it. Thank you for looking!"

It was probably a made-for-TV movie in the early '70s — think it featured JOHNNY WHITAKER from FAMILY AFFAIR… Anyway the image/sound that stayed with me was this:

A backyard covered trellis with vines, etc. (very pretty) with a jar on a table that appeared to have a fetus in it that cried… VERY disturbing… don't remember anything else about the movie, but that image and sound are still with me over forty years later….

— SK Duff

UNK SEZ: JOHNNY WHITAKER and a crying fetus in a jar? That's got to be 1972's SOMETHING EVIL which also starred SANDY DENNIS, DARREN McGAVIN and RALPH BELLAMY. SOMETHING EVIL has never found it's way to VHS or DVD which is kind of strange since it was directed by none other than STEVEN SPIELBERG. Check out our review HERE!