Category: Name That Trauma!

Kindertrauma…what a site! Surely the only thing better than poring through confessions would be to submit one of my own…but someone's already purged themselves of HERBIE HANCOCK'S ‘Rockit', and my other trauma may be a little too obscure. I do have a Name That Trauma, but it's not a film. It's a game. A board game, of all things. Is that allowed? I'll press on anyway…

Late 1980's U.K. – I was 9-ish and enjoying the last day of term before summer holidays. It was tradition for us kidlets to bring toys and games on the last day, and one boy had brought in an odd board game. The first unnerving thing was that no one seemed to want to play it. He eventually scrounged a few victims, me included, and we huddled in a corner away from all the Guess Who's and Mouse Traps.

Now I loved my Horror Top Trumps. Indeed, I was one of those designated odd-kids who love anything creepy or monsterish or plain weird. But this? This was different.

I remember the actual board being quite large, the players looking down through an invisible ceiling of a many-roomed castle. Each room had a different and nightmarish feature. One showed a wall weeping from a pair of drooping eyes. Another was The Bloody Room, the walls splashed with gore.

Then there were the game cards. I think they represented monsters the player had to encounter upon entering certain rooms. I only remember two clearly; the Spider Woman was one, her arachnid body capped with freakish human face. The second was a demure looking woman in profile. On the back of her head, nudging through her hair, gaped a pair of inhuman, fleshy lips. Oh God.

But the rotten cherry on top is this; the centre of the board held a grey plastic mound with three or so holes. Each player had a small plastic sword. At the crux of the game players would push the sword into a hole to hear one of three sound effects; a fanfarish sound that meant you had won the duel against the invisible opponent, a metal clash signifying a draw, or, worst of all, a sinister chuckle.

Even now I shiver when I remember that chuckle, or my brain throws up the memory of Skull-Mouth Lady.

Everyone I mention it to thinks it's Atmosfear (it's not), or that game where a glow-in-the dark skull falls down plastic stairs (nope again).

Please, Kindertrauma, help me learn what this bloody evil game was!

UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Special thanks to reader senski for knowing that the game in question is called HORROR HOUSE.

Dear Kindertrauma,

I have the vague memory of a film that has left me wary of gifts received on Valentine's Day (especially ones that are wrapped and stuffed into boxes) ever since watching bits of it one Saturday afternoon as a six year-old child. I really need help identifying the title so I can feel more at ease, and hopefully be able to find out more about the film so I can at least chuckle about how ridiculous I've been over it throughout the past years.

The film's setting revolves around Valentine's Day, and many events had happened prior to the scene, which fascinated, yet frightened me. I do not care to explain what took place, due to time restrictions and the fact that I really don't want you to waste your time editing my submission.

Anywho, in this scene we are now at the house of a snobby girl in her late teenage years who carelessly wrecked her car days before, killing her baby. She is relaxing by the pool on a white lawn chair, supposedly trying to get a tan (which looked more like a sunburn to me at the time), when suddenly, the phone in the kitchen rings. She gets up out of the chair to go answer it, moaning and groaning all the while about how she 'cannot get any relaxation without people bothering her.'

"Hello?!" she answers in the most sarcastic-sounding voice that any human being could ever muster, but all she gets in return is an annoying dial-tone. The girl grumbles again, turns around to go continue to burn herself to a crisp in the sun, but then she stops. On the counter, right in front of her, is a beautiful white gift box adorned with an adorable red ribbon. She excitedly picks up the box and heads back out onto the patio to open it.

Back on the patio, the girl is already making little "ooh" and "aww" noises as she sits back down in the lawn chair and begins unwrapping her gift.

Now, here is the scene that has forever embedded itself into my mind, although I don't really count it as a trauma since it failed to actually frighten me to up the point of wetting myself.

As the girl unwraps the unexpected gift, her excited expression quickly turns to one of horror as she discovers what is actually inside of the box; a more gruesome, mutilated version of the infant that was killed in the car accident.

The region of i's skull that was smashed in from the impact is now replaced by a gaping hole, and the monstrosity moves its limbs in a robotic-like (it was an animatronic model) fashion as it lets loose horrible screeching noises that could easily be mistaken for a sharp object being grated across a chalkboard. The bawling horror then emits another screech, leaps out of the box, and latches itself onto the panicked girl's face and begins to viciously tear at it.

You are the last source I know of that I can turn to.

And if you happen to find the film's title, I would be forever grateful!

— Matterly

I've thrown this one out to the Internet hordes before, with no luck. Help me, Obi-wan K'trauma! You're my only hope.

I saw this movie on late-night T.V. around 1976, give or take a few years. It was probably on SAMMY TERRY on Channel Four in Indianapolis. (If you don't know SAMMY TERRY, he's worth a look. Check out the link — it's even got Nixon!)

Anyway, I remember this movie in black-and-white, but we had a B&W T.V., so it may have been in color, no thanks to my cheapskate Dad.

The opening scene involves some unscrupulous capitalists dropping nuclear waste on an old shipwreck. Through the magic of double-exposure, we see the nuclear waste transform the dead pirates into gill-men.

The next scene I remember is the gill-men coming up on land and menacing some bathing beauties. The image that is seared into my pre-'tween memory is of a gill-man disemboweling a bathing beauty by gently stroking his claws along her abdomen, releasing a torrent of Hershey's Syrup. It was the most gore I'd seen at that point in my life. And it looked really fake.

The movie I'm thinking of is most definitely not THE HORROR OF PARTY BEACH, which is an awesome film that I recommend to everyone. Nor is it the Italian-made, ROGER CORMAN-produced THE ISLAND OF THE FISHMEN. I have seen these, and ruled them out.

I was hoping you guys could name this trauma for me!

I must have been 9 or 10 when I was babysitting these two little girls and flipped the channel to this creepy looking movie T.V. It came in at like a female cop with short blonde hair who I guess had been futilely trying to conceive a baby. She gets dropped into some sort of weird underground cavern, I think she was chasing a guy…and she's on top of all these nasty, flesh-colored rotting things that look like human rib cages… or the front part of the ribs at least. She's all freaking out and stuff and then these cages start flapping like bats and each side of the rib cage is a wing and she's all freaking out and starts running and crying trying to find a way out.

Then all of a sudden she wakes up in a hospital and a creepy older lady is standing over her and starts cackling about how she's got her baby now and opens her dress to show a huge pregnant belly, only it's see through and you see a creepy baby growing inside and it's all nasty and opaque with nasty liquid and veins and stuff and the lady cop starts screaming and writhing in the bed; only when they pull the blanket off… her legs and arms have been chopped off!

The only other messed up detail I remember is when some guy she's looking at reaches and grabs hold on his upper lip and proceeds to pull up and rip his whole face off revealing a crazy looking nastiness underneath with no eyes or anything… just a creepy looking grin with teeth!

I've never been able to get those details out of my head for like 15 years and I never knew what the movie was called or what it was even about. I just remember I knew it was bad ‘cuz I made the girls I was babysitting watch something else out in the living room while I was rooted to the spot watching this nasty traumatizing stuff…gore has never been so eerily addictive!

Well, my searches thus far have been futile but hopefully someone on your site can enlighten me about this horrible kindertrauma I experienced!

UNK SEZ: Dear Emily, you have come to the right place because I know just the movie you are looking for! In fact I just finished watching an old VHS tape of it to double check and make sure. The movie is called NECRONOMICON and it is from 1993. It's an anthology film based on the work of H.P. LOVECRAFT and the part you remember was the third and final story "Whisper" which was directed by BRIAN YUZNA (BRIDE OF REANIMATOR). The film, as a whole, has an amazing cast of character actors that includes JEFFREY COMBS, RICHARD LYNCH, DAVID WARNER, BRUCE PAYNE and DENNIS CHRISTOPHER. This is a tough one to get on DVD but if you got one of them old-fashioned tape players you are in luck! Not everybody is too kind to this flick but I agree with you Emily, that the third segment is so whacked out it does kind of get under your skin!

I have two, actually. Not sure if they're from the same movie or not. The first one involves a woman standing on a ladder which is in the hallway on the second floor, by the balcony. Someone (perhaps a child) pushes her off the ladder and she goes flying over the railing and hits the ground and dies. I thought that perhaps it was the scene in THE OMEN but it isn't. This is from a different movie.

The second trauma I have involves a birthday cake. I don't remember if it was a woman or a child, but just before or right after they blow the candles out, some sort of creature pops up from the cake and lets out some sort of ghastly scream. For a long time I was leery of birthday cakes because of this scene. Hope you can help!

UPDATE: The "Bad Birthday" trauma stems from the 1983 PETER WELLER classic OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN. Special thanks to reader jaakko, and check the comments for a clip.

Salutations,

I got one for everyone that has had me going nuts for YEARS!!!

All I can remember for sure that it involved British or German soldiers during a war I just don't recall.

They were being preyed on by what I remember to be giant crab-like creatures (Yeah…that's right. Crab-like creatures). Why were the monster(s) there? I don't remember.

I remember one particular scene where a group of soldiers come upon a victim of said creatures & one of them vomits in disgust at the sight. That's all I remember, that & the poster which I believe was all black except for the eyes of the creature glowing in the dark….I think.

I don't even remember if it was in color or black & white but I'm leaning towards b&w.

The film traumatized me then & while I think I'm pretty much over it, I haven't seen it since (I saw it on the big screen by the way with my dad somewhere between '69-'73. I know that's a big time span but I'm pretty sure it was in there 'cuz I started going to the movies with my dad in '68 & I'm pretty sure it wasn't that year) so who knows?? I might just shrink into the fetal position if I got a chance to see it again.

I'm not sure I wanna do that but I do need to find out the name of the picture so if anyone out there has any idea what it is…then lemme know & free me of this torture!!!

By the way, this is the greatest website ever. I just thought I oughta throw that in. Thanx for rehashing the worst memories of my celluloid childhood.

Sanjr

Hey Aunty and Unk!

Got a Name That Trauma for you guys, hope someone can help me out. Once again, this little trauma comes in the form of a book. I don't remember much about this book, I only remember that it was titled something odd. Something like "The House that Came to Life" or something of the sort. Anyway, on the front of this book was a really freaky lookin' old abandoned house, and on the center balcony of this haunted house was a ghostly woman.

Like I said, I don't recall much about the book having only looked at the pictures inside. I think there was something about a family moving into the haunted house… and there was a fire near the end. That's it. Hope someone can help me out!

Sincerely,

PhanWolf

Hi there! When I saw this film I'm looking for, I was about 10 (31 now). So here it is:

Husband and wife; husband a doctor or something, says to wife he will go on a business trip for some time. She stays home alone, the same night she turns on the T.V. and while she is watching something, this is interrupted and she is now watching a woman's torture and killing. She thought it was a movie but the next day she gets a newspaper and realizes that it was a real murder. This story is going on for another 4-5 girls and the last night the serial killer gets into her house and tries to kill her. She kills him instead and finds out that he is her husband. Last scene of the movie: Phone is ringing, she answers it and hears a scary voice saying to her, "Who do you think was holding the camera?"

Back then it seemed to me sooo creepy. I don't know if it was T.V. production or a theatrical release, but it's been over 15 years that I've been looking for this one. It was a mid/late ‘80s production I think. Can you help me? Thank you.

Alright guys, after telling my fiancé about the website and how you guys found my trauma, she wonders if you guys can find her trauma…

A movie about an alien who hunts humans and throws these strange discs at the humans (they're almost fleshy discs) and when discs hit, they suck the humans dry and then he hangs the humans in an outhouse or a barn or something!…

Any help??

UNK SEZ: Dear Julian, The movie your fiance must be talking about is 1980's WITHOUT WARNING (some might suggest that she has also described 1987's PREDATOR, a movie that has been frequently accused of ripping off WITHOUT WARNING.) It starred genre veterans JACK PALANCE and MARTIN LANDAU (both of ‘82s ALONE IN THE DARK) and featured an early performance by DAVID CARUSO.

WITHOUT WARNING has built quit a reputation over the years, much of which might be due to the fact that it has yet to have a proper release on either VHS or DVD. As a kid I remember a friend of mine's dad took him to see this one and ya know what? I'm still jealous! (Now that I think of it, that was the same kid whose dad took him to see DON'T GO IN THE HOUSE, some guys get all the luck!) This one might be a hard one to track down but here are some clips from the Youtubes if it helps….

Hi there,

Okay, when I was a kid we would check out a rotating series of VHS tapes from the public library – mostly fairly benign things SHELLEY DUVALL'S FAIRIE TALE THEATRE or RAMONA, but there was one particular clip from some video that still haunts me and I can't figure out what it was. For a long time I remembered it as 1980s CAPTAIN KANGAROO, but now I think it might have been from ROALD DAHL'S TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED. Just knowing how my parents are, I've always assumed it was something produced by or aired on PBS.

Anyway, in it this man is out on a dark foggy night and he runs into someone he knows. He is going to write something down for this person, but when he pulls out his family heirloom pen he drops it down the stairs of the subway. He runs down the stairs to get the pen just as the subway closes, trapping him on the platform. A mysterious man emerges and tells him that in order to get out, he has to collect a fork, spoon, and knife. (Bear with me; it's been 20 years.) He gets into a subway car that is totally empty to travel through this foggy underworld (basically, empty sets with a lot of dry ice) to find the requisite silverware. The train would stop and he'd get out and find some strange character swinging from a soup ladle or standing at fork in the road (get it?).

The creepiest part of the whole story was that while on the train, the lights would blink on and off – sometimes the train would be full of mannequins sitting as passenger, and then the lights would blink off and then back on, with the train totally empty. It scared the shit out of me as a child. As a result I still prefer packed subway cars.

The guy eventually completes the tasks and emerges from the subway netherworld, just as morning breaks and the subway reopens.

If you have any idea what kids' show series this is from, I would be so happy/terrified!

Christa

UPDATE: NAME THAT TRAUMA SOLVED! Believe it or not, it actually did come from CAPTAIN KANGAROO. Special thanks to Reader P. for emailing the confirmation!