Category: Name That Trauma!

Back again, having given up trying to identify a short film (maybe 2 minutes long?) I saw on television in the early 90s (possibly on Night Flight, USA Up All Night or similar type clip show). It was in color and looked like it could have been made in the 1980s(?)  It was about a family living in a desert cave years after a nuclear apocalypse. The parents are preparing a meal in a pot around a campfire and begin telling a story to the children about life before the bomb. In the story, which we see rendered as a flashback, a housewife is preparing dinner in a typical suburban kitchen, only to be frightened by the presence of a cockroach. She comically screams directly in the camera before the roach is killed off in some manner (can't remember if it gets stomped or sprayed). Returning to the cave, the children are in disbelief that someone could be so afraid of a cockroach. Then we find out why. The food the parents are preparing in the pot is a cockroach soup, cockroaches being the only animal to survive the nuclear war. 

It's definitely NOT Damnation Alley or Twilight of the Cockroaches  (which is what you are going to find when you Google for "post-apocalypse roaches")

Thanks! 
Brother Bill

Dear Uncle Lancifer, I need some help with finding a trauma. I can not find this short film that is stuck in my head. I only know it was part of a collection of short films or some anthology series. I am not really sure. The plot is about a guy that gets in a car accident and is completely paralyzed except for being able to move one of his fingers. All I can remember is at the end he is trying to move his finger but it won't move, and the twist is that he is an organ donor. The last image is of a surgeon, and the sound of a bone saw being revved up before the screen goes black. I hope I was not imagining things and would like to find out the title of what this was and see it again.

Hello! I've been trying to figure out this movie I saw maybe in college or high school about a group of teens who go to a cabin the woods. I don't remember much about it but there is an evil ventriloquist dummy/puppet, made of wood. I seem to recall that Julian Sands owned the dummy/puppet, but I've looked through his IMDb page and can't find anything even close to that. So, there is a Julian Sands-esque guy in it. At this point I might be conflating movies, but I also think the dummy might have granted wishes? Hoping this rings a bell for someone! Thank you!
–Aubrey

Love the site, have been following for 12 years.  I am trying to find an early to mid 70s, like a made for TV production. I only remember one scene, and it was terrifying as a 5 year old to watch, and my school classmates agreed.  I think I saw it later in the early 80s.  What I remember as follows: Interior of In an old Victorian style house, a large social room. We see the back of an elderly woman sitting in chair, maybe knitting. A man and a woman (one might be her son or daughter) enters through the front door and sees the old woman in the chair. The couple tries to greet the old woman verbally with no response. They approach her,  put a hand on the old woman's shoulder, she slowly turns to them, standing up and screams like a demon. The old woman has no pupils, only milky white eyes. The couple panics  and screams while the old woman runs past them and crashes out the large front  window in slow motion. She hits the ground outside and runs into the woods. I can remember hearing the crummy stock audio of glass crashing that does not match the visual.  Thanks for any idea of what film this might be in advance!

Best,
Art

I was wondering if you are familiar with an educational cartoon that I saw during my gradeschool years (70s to 80s) that was about nutrition and hygiene that had an inflation scene in it. The film followed a number of characters with diet and hygiene issues and showed the pitfalls of each to the extreme.

The only one I remember vividly was a boy who was overweight and was always eating candy. He was sluggish and couldn't keep up with his peers while running in PE and he had candy bars sticking out of his pockets. He gets invited by some sort of mad scientist to go to his candy factory for "just a taste". Though he says he really shouldn't, he agrees that "just a taste" would be ok.

Instantly, he is strapped to a chair and whisked away into the candy factory. A feeding tube is attached to his face which squirts pellet candies into his mouth and two robot hands grasp his jaws forcing him to chew. Humiliating music is played as the chair moves rapidly along a conveyer belt from station to station, where he is force-fed various sweets. His belly grows and grows, sticking out from under his shirt, to enormous proportions. I seem to recall seeing little robot hands squeezing his belly, sort of plumping up his fat almost as if they were tickling him.

Seeing this as a young child of probably 7 or 8 years old, this scene kinda traumatized me. It was more traumatic for me than the Violet scene in Willy Wonka because it actively showed force feeding whereas with Violet, the inflation seemed accidental rather than intentional.

My questions are: Have you seen this film? Do you know the title? Do you know where I can find it, ie: youtube, etc…?

I would be greatly appreciative of any responses.

Sincerely,

Giacomo

Hello! Was looking for some help on this one.  I remember watching either a movie or TV show probably late 70s/early 80s and it had this scene where a witch is hovering outside bedroom windows looking in to see which kids are still awake after a certain hour.  The kids that were sleeping were left alone and the kids that were still awake got turned into mice or some other small creature.  It may have been claymation or animation. Any help would be appreciated. Kyle S

Hey there, Kindertraumautizers…

A friend of mind suggested reaching out to you guys.

I can't remember where I was, who I was with or how I old I was when I saw it, but I remember watching a film on television -– a black-&-white mystery, possibly "noir" -– involving a protagonist haunted by a recurring nightmare or vision. In that mysterious scenario, he's in some clandestine chamber that holds some horrible secret –- a murder, perhaps? The thing that makes it distinctive, however, is that there is music playing -– a strange, lulling, creepy dirge. Again, the protagonist is driven to distraction by this eerie vision, but cannot connect the dots as to where it happened or its significance.

Later in the film, he's at some social function, and there is music playing via an old-time record player. At one pivotal point, a woman near that turntable bumps into it with her elbow, inadvertently changing the speed of the turntable to a slower revolution-per-minute, like dropping from 45 to 33 1/3. When she does this, the music playing suddenly replicates the creepy music in the protagonist's recurring vision, and he becomes convinced that the clandestine chamber with the horrible secret is immediately nearby.

Like I said, I wish I could cite more specifics, but I cannot. For the life of me, I've never been able to figure out the film. Much like the tortured protagonist, I cannot figure out the mystery.

Does this film sound familiar to you?

PLEASE HELP ME SOLVE THIS!
-Alex S.

Howdy! I've got another Name That Trauma query.

I'm struggling to remember the title of a Young Adult horror novel, in the vein of Fear Street but not from that series, involving a tentacled monster (which may have lived beneath a high school) that was killing students. I remember only one of the kills specifically, but it stuck in my mind because the monster used its tentacles to pop off the victim's fingernails "like soda-can tabs." (may not be an accurate quote, but it was something like that.)

I also remember a killer leaving poems for their victims, including one that ends with the line, "Will they wire your coffin with cable?" This might be from the same novel as the tentacle-monster, or it might be a different one.

Any ideas?

Cheers,

-AS

-AS