Category: Name That Trauma!

I have been trying to find the title of this made-for-TV movie since forever. I watched it in the late ‘90s although it could be early ‘90s, or late ‘80s even. I asked a friend who said the people at Kindertrauma usually can find ANYTHING. However I think this one might stump you as I have asked on every horror site known to man and nobody recalls it.

It was about a department store that may have been called "Boyles" which sold clothes, beds etc… So anyway these people get trapped inside and the mannequins in the store are trying to kill them! The opening of the movie has a man in the store basement that is impaled through the chest from behind by a CHARLIE CHAPLIN-looking mannequin holding an umbrella which he then opens.

I also remember two other specific scenes. At one point, a girl is tied to a pillar and has a very short amount of time to escape before a mannequin squirts acid onto her face from a crystalline decanter. There's also a part where the people who are trapped have to jump across a row of double beds because the floor is electrified. There may also have been a back story about the store's previous owner having a fat son who was bullied.

I can remember a lot of it so vividly but only one person on the entire Internet has described something vaguely similar and he never found out what it was either.

Can you help? This movie freaked the hell out of me.

Thanks,

— Keanu E.

UNK SEZ:: Thanks for the challenging "Name That Trauma" Keanu! I foolishly thought that we had covered every possible mannequin trauma on these pages but this one sounds different! I did notice other folks wondering about this same flick online so I hope one of our readers can help! The mall setting means we can rule out previous mannequin traumas TOURIST TRAP & the short LIVING DOLLS! I hope we can find this one, it sounds cool!

Remember THIS evil little nugget?

My particular trauma-trigger was the scenario in which the reader is confronted with a plate of cheese and crackers and the choice to eat them or leave them. My chubby cheese-loving eleven-year-old self naturally chose to devour the food…and when I turned to the page that revealed my consequent fate, I found that I'd been turned into a MOUSE.

Seriously, it was scarier than it sounds.

Really.

— Propagatrix

I absolutely love your website and have been visiting it daily since I discovered its existence! I've been knocking around the idea of sending in my own Name That Trauma for quite some time now, but I had always held off on it because I'm not sure how solid my memory of the scene I want to reference is, and also, I'm not entirely sure it wasn't just some crazy fever dream. But I decided, what the hey, I'll just submit it for some peace of mind and if someone knows what I am talking about, I will have ended a many, many years long mystery, which will be a relief!

I remember being 8 or 9, and I want to say the movie had to be from the mid-to-late ‘80s or early ‘90s. I remember that there was a class of children who made lanterns as a project and they were going on an evening parade to show off the lanterns to their parents and families. They went over a hill and disappeared on the other side. I remember being extremely creeped out by seeing the lanterns going over the hill, just little lights in the darkness, and you could barely see the children. There was a boy who was in bed when this happened, and he was watching out of his bedroom window. I think he had gotten in trouble or had not completed the project or some other thing, so he was not at the parade. He watched through those curtains with horizontal slats in his bedroom, and he saw the kids go over the hill and then saw a bright flash of light…he didn't know what had happened, but it was at that moment when the kids went over the hill that they all disappeared. Which makes me want to believe that this was some kind of alien abduction movie, or some other sci-fi flick. But that one scene is all I remember of this movie because it made me horrified to go outside in the dark – I might suddenly disappear like the kids in the movie, you know!

I apologize if it is a really well-known movie (or, for that matter, if it is not even a movie, and just something that I dreamed). I will feel stupid. But I do not typically watch alien movies or sci-fi movies…I'm much more into slasher flicks and survival horror. So forgive me if this is a common film…it just isn't in a genre that I usually watch!

If anyone has any ideas about what movie this might be, I would be so grateful! And please keep in mind that it was fifteen years ago and my memory of the scene may be shaky; so take my synopsis of the scene with a grain of salt. I'd appreciate anything that sounds at all similar, just for the leads, and who knows, it might be right!

Thanks so much for your help!

— Lizzie C.

Hi there! Dig the website!

Anyway, I have a vague recollection of either a T.V. show or a movie…all I remember is a man bursting into a hotel room to find his wife having an affair. The man shoots both his wife and her lover. In one of the next scenes, he's shown filling the dead guy's chest cavity with bricks, and has decorated the woman's coffin with icing or something of that sort. Very vague, but it freaked me out majorly as a kid and I'd love to know what the hell it's from after all these years!

Thanks and happy traumatizing,

— Dane

Hey there, I adore your website. I was wondering if maybe somebody could shed some light on something that has bothered me for years. I used to watch NICK AT NIGHT back in the '90s/early '00s when I was a little kid, and used to be a big fan of the sitcoms (which all sort of run together in my mind now). I remember I saw something on that network on one of the sitcoms (a rerun, not sure of the original air date), and then refused to turn on nick at night for maybe about a year after because it upset me so badly.

I don't remember what show it was, but I remember that a young boy got some sort of small rodent (either a hamster or mouse or something) and a bully (I have a feeling that it was his older brother, but I could be wrong) murdered it by sucking it into a vacuum cleaner. I was really shocked by it, because I didn't realize that the older boy had killed the cute little animal until the two younger boys are shown having a funeral for their pet, which I clearly remember was in a brown paper bag. I ran out of the room crying, and never finished it, but I remember that it bothered me for weeks.

Does anybody know what show this was?

— Ashley R.

UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Special thanks to Facebook kinderpal Heather S. for knowing this trauma comes from the Season 2 WONDER YEARS episode "Hiroshima, Mon Frere."

Hi,

Probably early-mid '70s anthology horror T.V. movie/special, not part of a series, which means it could be ABC.

Male child killer, possible family member, kills child, and then in the mansion where it took place, is tormented seemingly by the dead child.

At the end, child killer is on long winding stairs leading to ground floor, at wits end. I'm not sure who says this, but he is told that the dead child couldn't be here, but he sent us to etc, etc. Screams, black out.

Scared the shit out of me. Don't remember anything about the rest of the anthology, but I think there may have total three stories. But I was too traumatized to remember the other two parts!

Thanks Kindertrauma!

— Ken J.

UNK SEZ: My bet Ken J. is that you were rightfully terrified by the last segment of DAN CURTIS' 1977 anthology DEAD OF NIGHT entitled "Bobby." Check out the clip below and my review from long ago HERE! Wow, I just watched the scene again myself and it just never stops being scary does it? BTW, "Bobby" was remade by CURTIS in 1996 and appeared as the second segment of TRILOGY OF TERROR 2!

Hey there —

So, back in the '80s we had a show in Chicago on PBS called IMAGE UNION. A fantastic show that played independent films and videos. This was serious avant-garde stuff – some narrative, some abstract – but always interesting. Especially if you were obsessed with film making as I was during my childhood.

So, one of the shows played this really crazy film. It had a funky, 16mm, New York, whimsical tone.

It tells the story of little boy sitting at the front of a subway train (I'm guessing in NYC.) He's staring out into the moving darkness in front of him as lights whiz by. And then the film starts to cut in quick shots of Darth Vader. As the train gets faster and faster, the images of Darth Vader come more rapidly. The train stops and the little boy gets off on the platform. He starts to run because….Darth Vader is now chasing him through the crowd in the train station. As Vader closes in on him, he grabs him. The boy turns to realize… it's just his mother. Apparently, she was waiting to pick him up in the platform.

I swear, I'm not making this up. And doing a Google search for "Darth Vader + independent films" comes up with a bazillion fan films, but not this one. It has to be late '70s, early '80s.

Maybe someone in Traumaland has a lead.

Thanks!

Patrick J. D.

P.S. – A quick Metafilter search came up with another person asking for a similar video.

AUNT JOHN SEZ: Thanks for the traumafession Patrick J.D.! Sadly, I have no idea as to what the short film is you are referring to; however, I did pilfer the above images from the below ImprovEverywhere short. (Hey, it was either that or this BLONDIE video and I.E. won out.) Does anyone remember the source of Patrick's trauma? Use the force and sound off in the comments!

Hey there,

I love your site…now onto my very vague clue. An '80s horror movie which involved people (friends/couples/family… I can't recall) who go into a wooded, forestry area and are terrorized and killed by a humanoid, animal-like creature. At the end of the movie the characters set up an elaborate trap to try and capture the beast. I recall the beast using the tree tops to get around as well…I realize this doesn't offer much but it's been killing me for years to try and recall this movie I saw one Saturday afternoon in my youth. (I'm guessing it appeared on the good ole Saturday Shocker creature feature which aired from a Detroit-based station in the '80s).

Hope you can help out!

/stu

UNK SEZ: This is a tough one /stu! It could be so many movies! I hope I'm not barking up the wrong tree but three films popped into my head immediately: HUMONGOUS, MADMAN and THE FINAL TERROR. I posted the trailers below for you to take a gander at and because they're sure to be fun to watch anyway. Do any of our readers know of any other movies this might be? Throw your bets in the comments section and if nothing else, we'll end up with a nice collection of woodsy horror titles!

Hello,

I am new to your site, and was intrigued with how many of its visitors had the same reactions I did to random things from television. My biggest one had to be a commercial that ran throughout the ‘90s (not sure of the dates) that was an anti-smoking campaign for teens.

It started off with a bubbly type of music, and some girl sitting in front of a mirror. If I remember correctly, there were actual creepy bubbles flying around. Everything seems normal, then she opens her mouth and it's full of ashes and cigarette butts.

Well, as a kid, I had no idea that it was supposed to be cigarettes and I would run and hide as soon as I heard the music start playing. It still makes me shiver when I think of it!! I looked around on YouTube a little, but had no luck.

Do you think you can help me find this terror?

Thanks,

Sarah Queen